Random thoughts

An uncommitted blog on just about anything

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Discovering the stirrups

December 28th, 2008 · No Comments

Learning a language is a life-long experience. For as much as one uses it, some words escape his vocabulary, hidden in never-explored topics and conversations. As a person who’s never had any interest in horseback riding, or spaghetti western movies, or horses in general, I had never met the word “stirrup”.

What’s most interesting about stirrups though is their history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirrups

I can’t believe it took us humans almost 5,000 years from the time the horse was domesticated to the day someone realized the chances to fall off a horse were very high without the possibility to use our feet to rebalance. Wow…

P.S.: I’m assuming there’s no english equivalent of the italian expression “perdere le staffe” (“losing the stirrups”).

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