The umbrella is such a common object today that most of us never stop to think about its history. In (0) FACT, this simple invention is more than four thousand years old. Ancient drawings that the Egyptians and the Chinese already used umbrellas, although the first ones were designed to protect people the sun, not from the rain.
In Europe, umbrellas became popular much later. For a long time, they were considered a fashionable for women, and men who carried them were often laughed at in the street. Everything changed in the eighteenth century, when a British man called Jonas Hanway started to walk London with an umbrella every day, rain or shine.
Little by little, other men began to do the , and within a few decades the umbrella had become a normal part of British life. Today, it is hard to imagine a rainy city without : millions of umbrellas are sold every year all over the world.