The Origin of Everyday

Sunday

Like much of the southwestern US, modern Los Angeles was formerly part of Mexico. “Los Angeles” just means “the angels,” greatly shortened from the original name “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula,” or “The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of Porziuncola.”

Monday

Take all the pictures you want, but if you want that famous “Hollywood” sign or the “Walk of Fame” in your movie or commercial, then pay up. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce collects licensing fees for this, which in turn help pay for upkeep and maintenance of the iconic sign and walkway. That sign originally said “Hollywoodland,” promoting a housing development by that name.

Tuesday

Los Angeles is famously smoggy, and geography plays a big role. The city sits in a basin surrounded by mountain ranges while the California sun heats the big town’s trapped exhaust into an often-brown haze. For this reason, L.A. has a long-standing exemption from the air quality requirements under the US Clean Air Act.

Wednesday

There are about 11 miles of abandoned tunnels beneath LA consisting of former electric streetcar lines, horse tunnels, and passages between government buildings. They were used for the transport of bootleg liquor and other crime during Prohibition and also proved a quick escape route if the speakeasies were raided.

Thursday

Chicago was home to the most filmmakers and production companies in the early 20th century, but the industry moved to Los Angeles to take advantage of its reliably good weather and to get further from Thomas Edison, who exerted unusual (and often litigious) control over film production in the eastern US.

Friday

No major US city has a higher proportion of Hispanics than Los Angeles, an ethnic majority there.

Saturday

Los Angeles holds distinctions in the intellectual and athletic realms. It has the most museums per capita of any city, and as of 2028 it will tie with Paris and London for most summer Olympics hosted at three.

Sunday

For much of wheeled vehicles’ history, they were stopped by simply stopping whatever was moving them, such as by halting the horse pulling your carriage. However, the 19th century brought greater use of simple mechanical brakes, such as wooden blocks pushed against wheels to slow them, to better control carriages on downhills or keep them stopped when they’re meant to be.

Monday

The adoption of improved brake designs followed the increasing speed and weight of cars and trucks. The disc brakes on cars today which replaced the less effective drum brakes of the pre-WWII era were actually invented in 1898, but made of poor materials and so not largely adopted. Disc brakes are now common on bikes too.

Tuesday

Stopping a vehicle used to be a lot more exercise, when all the power to engage the brakes came from the driver’s leg. Now, modern power brakes cleverly use vacuum pressure to multiply your push on the brake pedal and stop a car with far less work than your granddad had to use.

Wednesday

Airplanes can slow by a few methods. Spoilers are flaps on the wings designed to produce drag, which you may have seen extend upward when an airplane lands. Reverse thrusters do just what you’d expect, slowing the craft by pushing it backward instead of forward. Once landed, disc brakes on the wheels complete the braking triad that stops a plane under normal conditions.

Thursday

Ships usually stop by utilizing the natural resistance of water to slow them steadily, though a powered ship can put the propeller in full reverse to “crash stop.” Anchors are not generally dropped for routine stopping, just stabilizing while the ship is not underway.

Friday

Parachutes help skydivers fall to Earth at safe speeds, but also slow other things. Drag chutes, aka drogue chutes or braking parachutes, have been used to slow and stabilize jets, landing spacecraft, racecars, and other speedy vehicles.

Saturday

Almost all modern cars come with anti-lock brakes. These prevent brakes from locking once engaged, causing the car to skid and/or become unsteerable. These have proven to be a safety success story, with studies indicating anti-lock brakes reduce fatal accidents by 12-22%, depending on the vehicle.

These are just some of the metals your body needs for good health and what they do in there.

Sunday

Copper is involved in your body’s energy production, neurotransmitter synthesis, bone, organ, and connective tissue maintenance, iron metabolism and red blood cell production, and immune system function, among other things.

Monday

Chromium assists in both regulating blood sugar and helping your body get energy from that blood sugar.

Tuesday

Zinc is needed for wound healing, fetal development, bone growth, fighting germs, insulin, testosterone, and sperm production, as well as tasting and smelling.

Wednesday

Manganese plays a role in blood clotting, bone formation, reproduction, immunity, metabolism, blood sugar regulation, brain and nerve function.

Thursday

Molybdenum, as a part of helpful enzymes, helps your body metabolize protein and break down potentially harmful substances.

Friday

Potassium is important for nerve and muscle function, nutrient and waste transport into and out of cells, and sodium regulation.

Saturday

Magnesium helps keep your heartbeat steady, bones strong, muscles contracting, blood sugar regulated, and about 300 other important functions in your body.

Sunday

Agafia Lykov has lived mostly alone in a cabin in Siberia, 150 miles from the closest settlement, since her father died in 1988. She was the last survivor of her family of six who originally fled to the remote spot in 1936 to escape Soviet religious persecution. When the cabin was spotted by chance by a survey team in 1978, none of the children had seen other humans before, and the family was unaware of World War II, the moon landing, or any other world events of the last 40 years.

Monday

North Korea was called “The Hermit Kingdom” before the current era, but the extremely tight restrictions that the Communist government keeps on all information from and about the outside world, and also visitors from it, keep the moniker apt.

Tuesday

Japan was the first nation to recognize and name a significant portion of the population who did not want to leave their homes (or even bedrooms) and attend school or interact with the outside world at all, often for years on end. “Hikikomori” means “pulling inward.”

Wednesday

In 2013, after decades of mysterious thefts of food and supplies, several dedicated Maine State Police officers finally captured Christopher Knight, dubbed “The North Pond Hermit” by local legend. Then 47, he had been living alone in the woods since age 20. He was wearing the same glasses as in his 1984 yearbook photo, and his last recalled exchange with another human was a “Hi” to a passing hiker sometime in the 1990s. He had not left civilization for any particular legal, philosophical, or creative reason, and when one interviewer prodded him for any hermit wisdom gleaned from his decades of solitude, he recommended getting enough sleep.

Thursday

Many “uncontacted” indigenous tribes live in the Amazon rainforest near the Peru/Brazil border. Advocates say the tribes are aware of “the outside world,” but largely want to be left alone. Unfortunately, many have suffered at the hands of illegal loggers and other criminal groups in the area.

Friday

Hermit crabs are neither. Far from solitary creatures, they live in large colonies of 100 or more in the wild. Also, as discussed in Week of 1/7/2024, they are not “true crabs,” since they lack their own natural shell (hence their borrowing of seashells) and have 3 pair of walking legs, not four.

Saturday

Imagine if your concrete garden gnome were instead a human fake hermit under a long-term contract. Among wealthy 18th century estate owners in the British Isles, a bizarre trend arose of hiring men to act and live as “ornamental hermits” in shacks or caves within the estate’s vast gardens. These men were often discouraged from washing and encouraged to be melancholy and introspective, among other duties.

Sunday

“Affidavit” means “he has stated on oath.”

Monday

“Ad infinitum” means “to infinity” or “forever.”

Tuesday

“In utero” means “in the womb / uterus.”

Wednesday

“Fac simile” means “make similar.”

Thursday

“Modus operandi” means “way of operating.”

Friday

“Excelsior” means “ever upward” and was also the personal motto of comic art legend Stan Lee.

Saturday

“Nolo contende” means “no contest” or “I don’t wish to contend.” A criminal defendant can plea this to accept the penalty, but without admitting guilt.

Sunday

Bottles are old. The first ceramic bottles go back 5,500 years to ancient Mesopotamia, but the first glass bottles started about 1500 BC in the same general area. About 1,000 years later, glass blowing began there too.

Monday

The oldest message in a bottle found was at sea for 131 years, 233 days old when discovered in January 2018 in Australia. It was one of many bottles dropped by German ships between 1864 and 1933 as part of research into currents and shipping lanes, and the note asked the finder to return it to the German Sea Observatory or closest German embassy with info on where it was found.

Tuesday

Unfortunately, not all bottles in the ocean are quite as historic and desirable, since plastic bottles are the third most common form of trash found in the ocean.

Wednesday

The idea of a genie (“jinn”) in a lamp or bottle goes back thousands of years to “Arabian Nights,” but the saying “the genie is out of the bottle,” referring to a thing which cannot be undone, only became common in the 1960s.

Thursday

The dent in the bottom of wine bottles is called a “punt” and goes back to when the bottles were made by glassblowers rather than modern machines. Bottoms were pushed in to keep the bottles upright and may have added strength, but today remain as a vestige of the old tradition.

Friday

These days, when a bottle is recycled, it is typically melted down and made into a new bottle. However, thorough cleaning, relabeling, and reuse of the same bottle used to be the norm, and still is in many countries.

Saturday

In the decades between widespread use of the wine bottle cork and an effective corkscrew, the cork had to stick out of the bottle to be grasped for removal. Before the cork, bottles were sealed with oily rags, among other things.

Sunday

When Napoleon offered a cash prize for a way to preserve nutritious food for his often-hungry troops, fellow Frenchman Nicholas Appert developed a way to reliably do so in sealed glass bottles. That same year, 1810, Englishman Peter Durand got a patent from the king for similar preservation methods, but focused on tin-coated iron cans, filled with food and then soldered shut. Within 2 years, the world’s first canning factory opened in England.

Monday

Remarkably, it was almost 50 years between the spread of canned food and the invention of the can opener. In the meantime, can opening methods were rather inelegant, including using a hammer and chisel.

Tuesday

The next big innovation in can opening was the pull-tab (AKA “ring tab”) opening in the 1960s, which did not require a separate tool. About 20 years later, the familiar push-in, fold back tab arrived, both invented by engineer and inventor Ermal Fraze.

Wednesday

Steel is the main component of most cans for food, while aluminum constitutes most beverage cans. You’ve likely heard of “tin cans,” but tin is typically only a coating in steel cans, not a main component.

Thursday

With 100 billion produced each year, it is easy to take the aluminum can for granted, but it is quite an impressive item. Weighing just 1/2 ounce with walls the thickness of a human hair, it can contain up to six atmospheres of pressure and support over 100 lbs empty.

Friday

Aluminum cans are a recycling success story. The metal does not degrade with each recycling cycle, so cans both typically contain the most recycled content and are themselves are the most recycled drink container. This is good, because obtaining virgin aluminum from mined bauxite is an energy-intensive process.

Saturday

The energetic Can Can Dance, also known as “The French Cancan” started in 1820s Paris and grew in the 1850s, proving both controversial and popular on account of the bold exhibit of the high-kicking female dancers’ legs and undergarments.

We all know about kings, queens, princes and princesses, but here are some of the less famous ranking European titles outside the royalty:

Sunday

Duke / Duchess = The highest rank of hereditary nobility/peerage and first below prince or princess, often a hereditary head of a small state or principality.

Monday

Marquis / Marquise = The next ranking level of nobility, originally tasked with guarding the kingdom’s “marches” or frontiers, so the name derives from “lord of the march.”

Tuesday

Count AKA Earl / Countess = The next noble rank, this title is derived from “county” for being the head figure in a particular county.

Wednesday

Viscount / Viscountess = The next rank beneath count / earl / countess, with duties delegated by the count/ess.

Thursday

Baron / Baroness = This next rank traded his or her loyalty for inheritable lands bestowed by his higher-up, so was the “tenant-in-chief” of his land.

Friday

Lord = The owner or authority of a particular manor.

Saturday

Knight / Lady (Dame) = A non-hereditary title bestowed by a British sovereign for special achievement.

Sunday

Most nations fund their government by taxing citizens’ personal income, but over a dozen countries have no personal income tax at all. They simply raise money other ways, like business or sales taxes. In the US, nine states have no state-level income tax.

Monday

The world’s highest personal income tax rate is Denmark at 56%, though most countries that tax at this level have extensive social security, welfare, and social “safety net” programs.

Tuesday

Businesses often have operations in out-of-the-way places because these “tax haven” countries have low or even no corporate taxes. Many of these nations are small islands, often in the Caribbean.

Wednesday

A “sin tax” is one generally placed on alcohol, tobacco, gambling, vaping, or something else considered harmful to the individual or society. From the government’s perspective, these taxes have a double benefit: income from those who still chose these activites while reducing their overall demand, especially among younger consumers.

Thursday

The issue of fair taxation plays a major role in world history, and has caused not just local rebellions but contributed to major revolutions (American and French) and the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215.

Friday

Infamous Chicago gangster Al Capone was, by some estimates, connected to over 200 murders during his his Prohibition-era reign, but he ultimately went to prison for an 11-year sentence for evading federal taxes on his gambling income.

Saturday

In the US, procrastination in filing income taxes is a national habit. Nearly 1/3 of US taxpayers file in the two weeks before the April deadline, and another 11% file with extensions after the deadline. Offsetting this slightly, however, are the 12% who file in the first week that the IRS accepts returns.