Although the Chinese couldn't tell anyone exactly what an earthquake measured on the Richter scale (since the Richter scale wasn't created until 1935), they did manage to invent the world's first earthquake detector -- a seismograph.
WHAT IS AN ALIBI? An alibi is any evidence showing that a citizen accused of a crime was somewhere other than at the scene of a crime when the crime occurred. While T.V. and movies often portray the alibi as a fraudulent and untruthful, in the real world, the alibi is a perfectly respectable legal defense.
Alibi in Latin is an adverb meaning âin or at another place.â Its earliest English uses, in the 18th century, are in legal contexts, both as an adverb and as a noun meaning âa plea of having been elsewhere.â The extended noun senses âexcuseâ and âperson used as one's excuseâ developed in the 20th century in the United States and occur in all but the ...