Knowledge, Information and Experience
Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear.
A distinction is made between a “hard broom” and a “soft broom”. Soft brooms are for sweeping walls of cobwebs and spiders. Hard brooms are for sweeping dirt off sidewalks.
Etymology:
The word “broom” derives from the name of certain thorny shrubs (Genista and others) used for sweeping.
The first references of broom in 1453. Broom are one of the oldest invention of human.
Manufacture:
In 1797, the quality of brooms changed when Levi Dickenson, a farmer in Hadley, Massachusetts, made a broom for his wife, using the tassels of sorghum, a grain he was growing for the seeds. His wife spread good words around town, creating demand for Dickenson’s sorghum brooms. The sorghum brooms held up well, but ultimately, like all brooms, fell apart. Dickenson subsequently invented a machine that would make better brooms, and faster than he could. In 1810, the foot treadle broom machine was invented. This machine played an integral part in the Industrial Revolution.
In wider culture:
The Métis people of Canada have a broom dancing tradition. There are broom dancing exhibitions where people show off their broom dancing skills. The lively broom dance involves fast footwork and jumping.
“Jumping the broom” is an African-American wedding tradition that originated in marriages of slaves in the United States in the 19th century. Its revived popularity among African Americans is due to the 1976 novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family.
During World War II, American submarine crews would hoist a broom onto their boat’s fore-truck when returning to port to indicate that they had “swept” the seas clean of enemy shipping.
Literature:
In 1701 Jonathan Swift wrote a “Meditation Upon a Broomstick”, a parody of Robert Boyle’s Occasional Reflections upon Several Subjects.
Poets use the broom in metaphor-making. In Emily Dickinson’s poem Mother Nature, Nature “… sweeps with many colored brooms, and leaves the shreds behind …”
In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels and film adaptations, broomsticks are a common form of transport for wizards and witches in Britain. These are also used for the magical sport of Quidditch, in which players use their broomsticks to fly around a field and shoot goals.
Politics:
It is used as a symbol of the following political parties:
Aam Aadmi Party, India
All Progressives Congress, Nigeria
