The Origin of Everyday

Sunday

Steam was original motive power of the Industrial Revolution. Before that, industry was limited to the less controlable forces of wind and flowing water to drive machinery. Steam remained industry’s driving force until it was replaced by more efficient combustion and electric engines.

Monday

Unsurprisingly, the command “full steam ahead” came from the steam-powered era, and was an order to bring a ship’s boiler to maximum pressure and hence the boat’s maximum speed. It was first used in the US Civil War’s Battle of Mobile Bay.

Tuesday

“Blow off steam” and “let off steam” both mean to release strong emotions, and also come from the steam power era, when reducing steam pressure from an engine’s boiler reduced the risk of a rupture or explosion.

Wednesday

Though essential to early industry, steam-making boilers on land and sea were extremely dangerous, particularly before standardized practices for their manufacture, maintenance, and inspection. When 3 boilers exploded on the American riverboat Sultana in 1865, over 1,600 people died, more than on the Titanic. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a boiler was exploding nearly every day somewhere in the world, killing thousands of people each decade.

Thursday

Dietitians favor cooking food by steaming. Unlike many other cooking methods which cause some loss of the food’s vitamins – particularly vitamin C – steamed food retains most of those vitamins.

Friday

The “steampunk” literary genre is a form of retrofuturism, often involving modern technology powered by steam, thus existing in an era before they actually did, with Victorian fashions to match.

Saturday

Clean, well-maintained steam rooms have been found to have several health benefits, including improved circulation, cardiovascular health, and skin health, while reducing stress, inflammation, and congestion.

Sunday

Onions are old. Current evidence suggests they’ve been grown by humans for at least 7,000 years and are among the oldest known cultivated vegetables.

Monday

Onions make you cry because of a sulfur-based compound called syn-propanethial-S-oxide. That chemical is the final product of a chain reaction which starts when the bulb is cut or bitten into, and is thought to have evolved as a deterrent against hungry animals.

Tuesday

Ancient Egyptians worshipped onions, seeing eternal life within the continuous layers and circle-in-circle structure. Onions were placed on altars, pictured with pharaohs and priests, mentioned in funeral rites, and buried with mummies.

Wednesday

Onions come from an accomplished culinary family. Close relatives in the allium genus include chives, garlic, leeks, scallions, and shallots.

Thursday

Believed to be a source of courage and later a known antiseptic, onions have played a role in military campaigns. Alexander the Great fed them to his army in quantity, believing they brought vitality, and during the US Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant told federal authorities: “I will not move my army without onions!” He was answered with 3 traincars full of onions.

Friday

Onion layers are actually modified leaves sometimes called “scale leaves.” During growth, these leaves surrounding the onion’s center bulb become more nutrient-dense and succulent. As the nutrients are used up in the outer layers, these become the papery onion skin. The number of layers can depend on water and nutrient availability.

Saturday

Among natural varieties, an onion’s tearjerking power generally ranks with yellow onions at the top, then red, then white, then sweet. However, varieties like the “sunion” have been meticulously bred to be tasty yet tearless.

Sunday

“Audio” means “I hear.”

Monday

“Aurora Borealis” AKA the Northern Lights, means “Northern dawn.”

Tuesday

“Aqua vitae,” that potent boozy drink made from fermented fruit or wine, means “water of life.”

Wednesday

“Inter alia” means “among other things.”

Thursday

“Pro rata” means “in proportion.”

Friday

“Effigy” means “likeness.”

Saturday

“Pro tempore” means “for the time being” or “for now.”

Sunday

All tortoises are turtles, but not all turtles are tortoises. Tortoises are land creatures with legs made for walking, but non-tortoise turtles are water-dwellers with swimming legs (that can do some clumsy walking when needed).

Monday

You will never meet a person born in 1832, but you can meet a tortoise who likely was. Johnathan, a 194-year old giant tortoise, lives in the British territory of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, and was already an adult when given to Governor William Grey-Wilson in 1882. Twenty-eight governors later, Johnathan is still there, retaining his title as the longest-living land animal known to science.

Tuesday

Turtle shells are made up of over 50 bones and are so unique in nature that their evolution caused debate for centuries. However, more recent discoveries of “missing link” specimens show the gradual evolution of ribs and vertebrae to become longer and thicker until they became shells. One early turtle species only had a shell on the underside, suggesting these evolved before the top shell. Notably, another extinct turtle looked similar to modern turtles but was enormous; 14 feet long with a head that was a meter just by itself.

Wednesday

It’s fair to say turtles have a rough childhood. Only about 1 in 1,000 hatchlings survive to adulthood. Sea turtles which are born in nests in beach sand often must contend with seabirds, crabs, ants, raccoons, and predatory fish, often in just the few minutes between hatching and clumsily crawling into the waves.

Thursday

Turtles can’t leave their shells, and it can protect them to different degrees. Sea turtles cannot pull their head and limbs into their shells at all, while land turtles generally can. “Hinged-shell turtles,” including the common musk turtle and eastern box turtle, can actually seal themselves inside their shells for maximum protection.

Friday

Turtles may not be among nature’s famous hibernating animals, but they do a cold-blooded version called “brumation” during the winter months. They bury themselves in soil, move very little, slow their metabolism and live off of stored fat through the winter months.

Saturday

Aesop’s famous fable “The Tortoise and the Hare,” in which the slow and steady tortoise finishes the race before the faster-yet-easily-distracted hare has been recreated several times in recent history, and the tortoise continues to win!

Sunday

“Avant garde” or the derivation “vanguard” means “advance guard” referring to the first attackers in a military, but in common usage means a person or group at the forefront of art, fashion, or a particular movement.

Monday

“Faux pas” means “false step” and refers to a social blunder.

Tuesday

“Laissez faire” means “allow to do” and refers to a hands-off, unregulated approach to business, government, parenting, or any other endeavor which usually involves oversight.

Wednesday

“Cliché” began as a term for a metal printing plate used in a mass printing press, much like the English word “stereotype,” but which came to represent something familiar, common, and overused.

Thursday

“Hor d’oeuvre” means “outside of work” or “outside the main course” because it is an appetizer. It began as an architectural term for a small building on the outside of the main structure, like a gazebo.

Friday

“Au pair” means “on par” or “equal to”, referring to the equivalent status these caretakers should ideally feel with other family members.

Saturday

“Potpourri” means “rotten pot” and now refers to dried flowers and spices mixed together to smell good, but originally referred to a Spanish dish of various meats stewed together.

Sunday

The word “bus” is short for “omnibus,” which means “for everyone.”

Monday

The first public bus system began in the 1660s with horse-drawn carts in France, but was only available to nobility, so was-short lived. France again started a public bus system in the 1820s, and it was quickly followed by several US cities.

Tuesday

The growth of the school buses in the US was spurred by compulsory school attendance laws, since students needed a reliable way to get to their mandatory education. They were called “kid hacks” or “school wagons”.

Wednesday

Buses played a big role in the US Civil Rights movement. When the US Supreme Court found racial segregation in schools illegal, buses were used to transport students to now-desegragated schools. Rosa Parks famously spurred a boycott which forced desegregation on buses in Montgomery, Alabama, and “Freedom Riders” later rode buses to spotlight where segregation of interstate bus travel was still maintained.

Thursday

In the US, school buses replace about 17.3 million cars that would be needed for equivalent capacity, and buses are designed to be about 70 times safer for passengers than car travel.

Friday

The worlds longest bus route crosses about 3,920 miles across South America from the Pacific to the Atlantic from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Lima, Peru. This five-day cross-continental route is operated by the company Transacreana.

Saturday

There is more than one way to pay for a bus (or train) ride. Worldwide, the most popular is a flat fare paid on entry or a distance-based fare paid when you leave the bus.

Sunday

Dams are old. History’s oldest known dam, the Jawa Dam in present-day Jordan, was built about 2,400 years ago. The oldest known still-operational dam is the Lake Homs Dam (AKA Quatinah Barrage), built between 1319 and 1304 BC. Remarkably, it is one of many still-working dams, mostly in Spain, Japan, and India, now nearly 2 millennia old.

Monday

China boasts both the largest and most dams on Earth, over double that of #2 United States. Fully 45% of all the world’s dams are in China.

Tuesday

Massive government-built hydroelectric dams may dominate headlines and imagination, but about half of all dams worldwide are for irrigation projects. Hydroelectric dams are a distant second at about 17%. Also, the large majority of dams are privately owned, at least in the United States.

Wednesday

Dams occasionally collapse, sometimes with tragic consequences. The worst dam breaches have killed thousands, with one especially horrific 1975 collapse in China killing an estimated 171,000 and causing history’s third largest flood. However, the structure itself is not always to blame. Often the surrounding rock in which the dam is anchored simply cannot bear such extraordinary water pressure and gives way.

Thursday

Dams, dikes, and levees all restrain water, but aren’t the same. Dikes are wet on one side and “reclaim” land, keeping water off of land which would otherwise be underwater. A levee is also meant to be wet on just one side, but is more of a flood control device than one to reclaim wet land. Dams have water on both sides, but often with a much higher level on one side than the other.

Friday

Besides humans, only beavers build dams. With their felled-tree dam and “lodge” homes, they get a cozy, insulated, two-chamber, two-exit fortress against predators and also create a pond for still water, perfect for storing food in the unfrozen water at the bottom during winter months.

Saturday

There are four basic types of dams. Embankment dams and gravity dams, built of earth and rock vs. concrete, respectively, rely on the structure’s weight to restrain the water. Buttress dams are reinforced with separate downstream supports. Arch dams are curved and comparatively thin, as they transmit the weight of the water to surrounding rock walls.

Sunday

“Per curiam,” or “by the court as a whole” means a certain court decision is not signed by individual judges, such that it was unanimous (more or less) and typically shorter in length.

Monday

“A priori,” also a philosophical term, means “from what is before” and refers to conclusions derived from logical deduction and legal concepts, rather than empirical evidence and observation.

Tuesday

“Res ipsa loquitur” means “the thing speaks for itself” and is a principle that puts the presumption of negligence on the defendant by showing the accident or injury at issue does not normally happen without someone’s negligence.

Wednesday

“De novo” means “anew” and typically refers to a higher court reviewing the evidence and legal questions of a matter as if for the first time, without reference to a lower court’s conclusions.

Thursday

“In forma pauperis” means “in the form of a pauper” and permits a litigant to proceed without paying the usual court fees due to financial hardship.

Friday

“Certiorari” means “to be informed of / made certain” and is issued from a higher court to a lower one directing it to send the case materials for the higher court’s review. If a case is not granted this, the lower court’s decision stands.

Saturday

“In limine” means “at the threshold” and refers to a pre-trial motion seeking that certain evidence be ruled inadmissible at trial. The familiar yell of “objection” is the process for seeking the same result during trial.

Sunday

The first real battery was developed in 1800 by Alessandro Volta, for whom the volt is named. Made of stacked zinc and copper discs separated by brine-soaked fabric (“a salt in battery” wakka wakka), he later demonstrated the “Voltaic pile” to Napoleon and was made a count. Other devices to store electric charge had been developed before, but were essentially capacitors that discharged quickly as a shock, as opposed to the battery’s steady current from its internal chemical reaction.

Monday

Benjamin Franklin coined the term “battery” when he connected several of the above-mentioned early capacitors, known as “Leyden jars,” to amplify the shock they discharged. They reminded him of a battery of cannons working in unison.

Tuesday

Since electricity is really just the flow of electrons, a battery is fundamentally the pairing of one material with a lot of available electrons with another having far fewer. When installed in a device and connected through a circuit, the electrons flow from one material to the other, providing power for the device along the way. When all available electrons have travelled from one electrode to the other, the battery is spent until recharged. Common battery types include lead acid, nickel cadmium, nickel metal hydride, and lithium ion, to name just a few.

Wednesday

Battery-powered electric cars are far older than you might expect. The first appeared in the 1830s, a quarter century before the invention of batteries which could be recharged rather than wholly replaced when spent. In the early 1900s, fleets of up to 600 battery-powered taxis were running in New York, Boston, and Baltimore, and automotive pioneers like Henry Ford, Ferdinand Porsche, and Ransom Eli Olds (of Oldsmobile) dabbled in electric cars. When US President William McKinley was shot in 1901, an electric ambulance took him to the hospital. However, in those more rural times, gasoline was more easily transported than bulky batteries, and the electricity to recharge them was more available in bigger cities, curbing the appeal of electric cars beyond city-only fleets.

Thursday

The useful electrochemical power in batteries often comes from corrosive and toxic chemicals as well as rare metals which should be recycled at the end of a battery’s life. Car batteries contain sulfuric acid, which can badly burn the skin and should be treated with extreme caution.

Friday

Batteries are at the heart of the Clarendon Dry Pile, “the world’s longest science experiment,” which involves early dry pile batteries set up in 1840 at Oxford University to ring two small bells with a suspended clapper hanging between them. The bells have been “ringing” continuously for 185 years on the same batteries – about 10 billion times – though the clapper’s movement is so minute that the ringing is nearly inaudible. The secret to this power cell’s longevity can only be studied when it stops, or else the “experiment” would cease.

Saturday

These days, thousands of individual batteries are often connected at a single site to store power generated with renewable energy, typically solar and wind. As of now, the biggest of these is in California, where 120,000 batteries connected to an enormous (46,000 acre) solar array store far more power than a typical coal power plant generates.

Sunday

Olives were one of the world’s first domesticated crops, starting at least 6,000 years ago. There are over 1,000 varieties of olives, but only about 140 are regularly grown for human consumption.

Monday

The ancient Greeks were nuts about olives, which had practical and religious importance. The tree grew well in the Mediterranean climate, and Athenians believed the olive tree was a gift from Athena, their patron goddess. Like today, the Greeks grew most of their olives for oil, which was beloved at home and a profitable export. Beyond eating, Greeks also used the oil for hair care, skin care, perfumes, medicine, lamp fuel, religious rituals, general lubricant and even animal feed. Victorious Olympians wore an olive branch crown and that branch extended also became a symbol of peace.

Tuesday

On average, olive trees live between 300-600 years, but a 4,000 year old tree grows on the island of Crete, still producing olives. “Plato’s Olive Tree” which was situated where Plato’s Academy once stood in Athens was estimated to be 2,400 years old when it was hit by a bus and uprooted in 1975.

Wednesday

Being a symbol of peace, olive branches appear on many flags, including that of the United Nations, seven countries, four US states, and various global government offices and departments. It also adorns many coats of arms and seals.

Thursday

Olives are a fruit, but don’t eat one straight off the tree. A chemical called oleuropein makes fresh, raw olives so bitter that they are essentially inedible. Before they can be eaten, they must be cured to neutralize that bitter compound, often with salt, brine, or lye.

Friday

Olive oil is healthy for several reasons. Though most of its calories come from fat, Oleic acid is a monounsaturated fatty acid, the “good” kind, which has antioxidant and cancer-fighting properties. Another olive oil component, polyphenols, also seem to fight cancer as well as cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases.

Saturday

With the great number of varieties out there, you might think green and black olives are wholly different breeds, but in fact they are just different levels of ripe. Green olives are young and often underripe olives, while darker olives like purple and black have been allowed to ripen on the tree before being picked, cured, and eaten.