 faraway lands inhabited by new peoples.
13. The name 'carpet' has its origin in the Latin word 'carpere' which means 'to pluck'.
14. If you have £100,000 or more to spare, you could grab yourself a carpet woven with gold and silver strands. Further, you could have precious stones of your choice stuck on the fabric.
That’s not conducive to wandering around in bare feet!
15. The Clark-Sickle Leaf carpet from Persia is the world's most expensive floor covering. It was auctioned for an eye-watering $43.8 million in 2013.
Now we love carpets, but that’s plain ridiculous!
16. The Ardabil Carpets are the most famous carpets in the world. They are of Iranian Azerbaijani origin, popular with such notable personalities such as Hitler and the British Prime Minister.
Not often you see those two in the same sentence!
17. The 'Spring Time of Khosroe' was a carpet considered so valuable that nobody could be allowed to own it alone. It was eventually stolen and cut up to be given to kings as a trophy.
Hmmm – strange reasoning there.
18. Carpets can be used for emotional symbolism: red denotes wealth, green denotes renewal and life, yellow is for royalty, blue is for honesty while white stands for peace, gentleness and tranquility.
19. Carpets rank as one of the most common items of trade throughout history. Rare rugs were given as gifts between kings.
20. Every hour, the human body shed around 1.3 million skin flakes. Most of these end up – you’ve guessed it – on our floors.
21. The Qasr al-Alam holds the record for the world's longest carpet. It is a whopping 5,625 feet long and took 1,200 women working 16 months to complete it.
22. 'Norovirus', the virus that causes stomach flu, can live on a dirty carpet for more than a month.
Yikes – is this true??
23. Sprinkling salt on a carpet and letting it stand for one hour has been found to be a way to leave a carpet shinier and brighter.
Please note: we don’t recommend you try this but include it as a fun “internet fact”
24. Every year, a carpet can gather more than 1 pound of soil.
This we can believe!
25. The first vacuums ever created were so big and heavy that it took 3 people to carry and operate one. They were coal-operated and had to be used outside the building. Large hoses had to be passed into the house through the windows.
Well thank goodness technology has simplified carpet cleaning!
26. When Edmund Hemming invented a street-sweeping machine in 1699, he had unknowingly created a vacuum cleaner.
Hope you enjoyed this assortment of fun facts. If you have any more you’d like us to add, please email us.
Thank you to David for this guest post.
Humans have used rugs and carpets in our homes for a long time. However, most of us don’t really know the history of these two items; where they originated and how they were first made. I found it interesting to learn about the history of how rugs and carpets came into being.
A rug is a essentially a piece of thick cloth, usually made of wool or animal skin meant to cover a specified floor area for decoration or for warmth. In the past rugs were used extensively by travellers to keep them warm as they drove around in horse-drawn vehicles and later in open-top cars before the days of heaters and air conditioning!
The weaving and making of rugs can be dated back to ancient Egypt. Fragments of rug remains were found in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. These pieces of rug were discovered by historians in places like tombs and what could have been temples. In Asia and parts of the Middle East, weaving of rugs can be dated back to 2000BC. The nomadic wanderers in Asia had the ability to make many rugs due to the fact that they had readily available wool from their large flocks of sheep.
However, the oldest existing rug was discovered by a Russian archaeologist called Sergei Rudenko during the unearthing of a burial site in Serbia. It dates back to the 5th century. This rug was made with a knot called the Ghiordes knot, intertwined at an average of 200 knots per square inch.
Making rugs in Europe started around 1000AD, most likely in Spain due to its pr