Posted on: Apr 09, 2013
Hemp is the word used to describe some of the varieties of the Cannabis plant and its products, but I bet that you didn't know that hemp is a plant that was commonly used for several other purposes in the past.
Did you know that...?
1. Hemp industrialization is assumed to go back to ancient Egypt, but the oldest known records of hemp farming go back 5000 years in China.
2. The war of 1812 was fought over hemp, as Napoleon wanted to cut off Moscow's export to England.
3. Refusing to grow up hemp in America during the 17th and 18th centuries was against the law!
4. Until the 1820s almost all the fabrics, clothes or linen were made by hemp and until the 1880s hemp was one of the basic materials used to make schoolbooks.
5. Henry Ford's first model-T ran on hemp gasoline and it was constructed by hemp, which made the car 10 times stronger, than the ones constructed by steel!
6. Almost 60,000 tons of hemp seeds were used in America for paint products in 1935 and until 1937, quality paints were made from hemp seed oil.
7. The word canvas comes from the Middle English word canevas which comes from the latin word Cannabis.
8. 1 acre of hemp is equal to 4.1 acres of trees and the U.S. government had predicted that until the 1940s all paper would come from hemp and no more trees need to be cut down.
9. In 1938, hemp was introduced as a cash crop with a business potential to exceed a billion dollars and it was actually the largest cash crop until the 20th century!
Source: http://www.collective-evolution.com/2012/10/16/10-eye-opening-facts-about-hemp/
