The Backstories of Everyday Ideas, Items, & Terms
Daily facts on weekly themes. Enjoy!
- Week of May 7, 2023
Bearly Interesting
Sunday
They may not look it, but bears are fast. With top speeds over 35 mph, bears can easily outrun even Usain Bolt and match horse running speeds.
Monday
The sleepy state many bears enter through the winter is technically torpor, a state similar to true hibernation but different in that the bear can still wake up quickly to respond to danger. In either case, it is a very deep sleep, and the bear lives off fat reserves and does not eat, drink, or pass waste while sleeping for months at a time.
Tuesday
The teddy bear was named for President Theodore Roosevelt following a 1902 Mississippi hunting trip when the president refused to shoot a black bear that other members of his hunting party had stunned and tied to a tree, believing such a kill would be utterly unsportsmanlike. The episode was featured in a cartoon showing the adult bear as a cub, and a Brooklyn couple sewed and started selling “Teddy’s bear” plush dolls in their penny shop after getting Roosevelt’s permission. After growing interest, they soon made a fortune selling the bears exclusively.
Tuesday
With males weighting an average of about 1,000 lbs., polar bears are the largest bear and largest land carnivore in the modern world. However, they would have been dwarfed by their extinct Ice Age ancestor the giant short-faced bear, which stood 12 feet tall, weighted over 1500 lbs, and (amazingly) ran 40 mph.
Thursday
One female polar bear was observed to swim for 9.67 days straight in the Beaufort Sea, covering over 400 miles.
Friday
Panda bears are usually a big draw for zoos, but at a steep cost. The Chinese government retains ownership of the pandas and typically charges one million US dollars annual “panda rent” to the institutions exhibiting and researching them.
Saturday
Although red pandas and koalas seem quite bear-like, they aren’t true bears. The unique red panda is the only member of its animal family, and koalas are actually marsupials, like kangaroos.
- Week of April 30, 2023
Facts are Forever
Sunday
Diamonds originated about 100 miles underground, formed from carbon hundreds of millions of years ago under the phenomenal heat and pressure of the earth’s mantle. The natural channels of volcanic pipes bring the diamonds closer to the surface for mining.
Monday
Though we often see clear diamonds on jewelry, natural diamonds come in almost all colors. The color comes from “impurities” within the carbon structure (trapped nitrogen makes yellow diamonds, for example), and in some cases the diamonds are even colored by radiation exposure.
Tuesday
The regular and uniform seeds of the carob tree were used for centuries as the standard for weighing gems before a 1908 international standardization. The Greek name for this tree is keration, which is where we get carat, the measurement of diamond weight. Diamonds smaller than one carat are measured in points, and there are 100 points to a carat.
Wednesday
The largest diamond ever found was discovered by a mine superintendent in 1905 in Pretoria, South Africa. It weighed 1.33 lbs., or 3,106 carats, and was dubbed the Cullinan after the mine’s owner. Cut into over 100 smaller diamonds, the three largest are now among the British royal stones, and the “Cullinan I” AKA “Star of Africa I” is the largest cut fine-quality diamond in the world.
Thursday
Only about 30% of diamonds mined are gem quality, so the remaining diamonds often find industrial uses because of their exceptional hardness, including cutting, sanding, boring, and coring.
Friday
Most diamond mines are obviously privately-owned, but Murfeesboro, Arkansas, hosts Crater of Diamonds State Park, the world’s only public diamond digging facility. Visitors may search a 37-acre field for diamonds they can keep. For inspiration, consider that the Uncle Sam Diamond, the largest diamond ever found in the US at 40+ carats, was found here.
Saturday
Money may not grown on trees, but diamonds might rain on other planets, research indicates. 1000 tonnes of diamonds a year may be created on Saturn alone.
- Week of April 23, 2023
Fasten-ating Facts
Sunday
Buttons were used for decoration since at least 5000 years ago, but only began being used for fastening clothing during the Middle Ages after the development of the button hole.
Monday
Snaps for clothing were first patented in Germany in 1885 and are known as “snaps” or “poppers” thanks to the sound they make when fastened.
Monday
A basic zipper design was patented in 1851 by the inventor of the sewing machine, but the zipper as we know it wasn’t patented until 1917. Though the US Army used them in gear and uniforms in WWI, zippers didn’t start to achieve their widespread status on clothing until mid-century. And if you’ve ever wondered what the seemingly-ubiquitous “YKK” on zippers stands for, it is Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha, or Yoshida Company, Ltd.
Tuesday
Velcro’s invention was inspired by a Swiss engineer’s 1941 walk in the woods, during which his dog got some burrs in his fur. Studying the burrs under a microscope, Georges de Mestral saw the tiny seed pods held strong thanks to hooks in their tips, and after many years he perfected the hook-and-loop design for clothing and shoe fasteners. “Velcro” derives from the French words for “velvet” and “hook.”
Wednesday
Shoelaces are old. A leather cord lacing system has been found on moccasin-style shoes dating back 5,500 years.
Thursday
In the men’s shirt market, cufflinks were somewhat of a transitional fastener between strings, which tied together men’s ruffled cuffs in the early 1500s, and buttons, which replaced cufflink holes on most mass-market dress shirts in the late 20th century. In they heyday of their popularity, they could be very ornate and show wealth and prestige, and are still found on tuxedo and other high-end dress shirts today.
Friday
The buckle was known to ancient Greece and Rome and used for fastening armor, but for much of its life was also an device to ornament or show wealth. Because of the fastener’s reliability, medieval Europe saw more than just the wealthy and elite adopt buckles as new manufacturing techniques made them more available.
Saturday
While the stretchy usefulness of natural rubber has been known for centuries, chemical experiments in the early 1800s improved rubber’s stability and durability. Soon after, elastic strips in clothing began growing in popularity. In 1959, DuPont chemists developed a product created from synthetic material, and spandex and the availability of stretchy clothing expanded (pun intended).
- Week of April 16, 2022
Everyday-us Latinus pt. 7
Sunday
“Sub rosa” means “under the rose” and means in confidence or secret. It relates to a story in Greek mythology where Harpcrates, the god of silence, was given a rose by Cupid so that he would not reveal certain indiscretions committed by Venus.
Monday
“R.I.P.” is “Requiescat In Pace”, which roughly translates to “May he/she begin to rest in peace.” It is originally more of a request to a higher power for the care of the deceased’s soul than a declaration that the body is at rest.
Tuesday
“Sui generis” means “of its own class” and means something unique.
Wednesday
“Tabula rasa” means “scraped tablet” or “clean slate” and often describes the human mind before being shaped by experience, leaning, and influence. It can also refer to a project which can go in any direction, being unfettered to preconceived notions.
Thursday
“In loco parentis” means in “in place of the parents” and refers to someone assuming duties usually reserved for a parent, typically regarding supervision or care.
Friday
“In vitro” means “in glass” and refers to anything in laboratory conditions (such as in glass test tubes) rather than in a human, animal, or natural setting.
Saturday
“Subpoena” means “under penalty” and refers to things you must produce in a legal matter with a penalty if you don’t. “Subpoena duces tecum” is typically for documents and tangible items, while “subpoena ad testificandium” is for your own testimony in a matter.
- Week of April 9, 2023
Facts That Really Measure Up
This week’s facts cover several fun, specialized, older, and lesser-used units of measurement.
Sunday
The British and Irish sometimes give human body weights in “stones.” One stone = 14 lbs., or 6.35 kg.
Monday
The length of a “league” varied widely in Europe, but was generally a distance of 3 miles in English-speaking nations. This unit famously appears in the title of the Jules Verne adventure novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” but the deepest known point anywhere in the world’s oceans (in the Mariana Trench) is “only” about 2.27 leagues down.
Tuesday
Horse heights are traditionally measured in “hands”, a unit based on the average width of the human hand and equal to 4 inches.
Wednesday
“Fathom” is a traditional unit for water depth, and is equal to 6 feet, or 1.83 meters.
Thursday
A “jiffy” is quick, but how quick depends on your field. For physicists, it is how long light takes to travel a millionth of a millionth of a millimeter. In 1 second, there are about 300 thousand billion billion jiffies. In electrical terms, it is one cycle of an alternating current. The US uses 60Hz, where a jiffy would be 1/60 of a second, or 1/50 in other parts of the world. In the computer world, a jiffy is 1/10 of a second. But in any event, if you’ve ever said you’ll be “back in a jiffy,” you were probably lying.
Friday
“Morgen” is German and Dutch for “morning”, so equaled the amount of land that one man behind one ox could till in the morning. This approximate unit was used in early New England and was an official unit in South Africa until the 1970s.
Saturday
A “bushel” is a unit of dry capacity equal to 32 dry quarts. Want more? There are four pecks in a bushel, and two bushels is called a “strike.”
- Week of April 2, 2023
These Facts Toot Their Own Horn
Sunday
Anatomically speaking, horns aren’t antlers and vice versa. Antlers fall off each year and regrow the next, but horns stay put (with the exception of the pronghorn) and grow throughout the animal’s life.
Monday
Before musical horns were metal, they were made of animal horns, hence the name.
Tuesday
Powder horns, where gunpowder was stored and kept dry for Colonial-era weapons, also came from animals, typically cattle.
Wednesday
Before they were more often metal or plastic, shoehorns were made from – you guessed it – animal horn.
Thursday
The term “horny” derived from “having the horn,” a slang term for an erection. Though it previously applied to just men, it now describes arousal in any gender.
Friday
“Greenhorn” is an inexperienced (and often naive) person, since the new horns of young oxen (and by another possible source, the color when an inexperienced jeweler used the wrong temperature to process a piece of horn jewelry).
Saturday
The familiar horned appearance of the Christian devil is largely influenced by the appearance of the Greek god Pan, which itself is informed by the Egyptian god Bes.
- Week of March 26, 2023
The Fairest Facts of Them All
Sunday
Reflective “mirrors” of polished obsidian go back about 8,000 years to Anatolia (modern-day Turkey), but the now-familiar mirror, first made of glass with a layer of silver applied to it, was first developed by German chemist Justus von Liebig in 1835.
Monday
The term “smoke and mirrors” to refer to illusion and manipulated appearances only goes back to the 1970s, when political reporter and author Jimmy Breslin described “blue smoke and mirrors” in the perception of political power when writing on the Watergate affair.
Tuesday
Centuries before they were a carnival staple, the original “hall of mirrors” was built in France’s Palace of Versailles. At a time when mirrors were extremely expensive, the 357 mirrors placed in that room were one way King Louis XIV showed off his wealth and opulence.
Wednesday
Race car driver Ray Harroun was the first to put a rear view mirror on his car in 1911, but he claimed that he got the idea from seeing one on a horse-drawn buggy years before. His adaptation spurred this addition on other vehicles, which was marketed as a “cop-spotter” decades before the invention of the radar detector.
Thursday
In Lewis Carroll’s time, a mirror was also called a “looking glass,” hence the title “Through the Looking Glass,” his sequel book to “Alice in Wonderland.”
Friday
There always seems to be a one-way mirror in Hollywood portrayals of a crime suspect being questioned by police (often while a “good cop, bad cop” routine is also playing out). One-way mirrors are like regular mirrors, but with an especially thin layer of reflective surface, and are also known as “half-silvered mirrors.” These mirrors would be far less effective at being “one way” if not for big differences in lighting between the sides. The room intended to be reflected is kept bright, the room intended to stay hidden is more dark, so that most of the light reflected in the first place only comes from one side, where the suspect is usually being grilled.
Saturday
Mirrors aren’t just for light. Acoustic mirrors, usually in the shape of a bowl or parabola, were used in the 20th century to focus and transmit the sound of approaching enemy aircraft before the development of radar. Similar sound-focusing devices, sometimes called “whispering dishes” can still be found at museums, playgrounds, and sporting events.
- Week of March 19, 2023
It’s Always Greener
Sunday
All grass is definitely not the same. There are over 10,000 different varieties in the grass family Poaceae, and other plant families with very grasslike members.
Monday
Though most people put grass and flowers in different mental categories, both are angiosperms and hence flowering plants. The tiny inflorescence lawn grass flowers likely won’t make in into your wedding bouquet, though.
Tuesday
Along with watching paint dry, watching grass grow makes the list of very slow-moving things your can watch. So how fast does grass actually grow? In typical conditions, about 1/10 of an inch per day.
Wednesday
Not surprisingly, grass is the major component of lawns, which are somewhat of a national preoccupation in the US. In fact, lawns are the biggest irrigated “crop” in the US, covering an area about the size of Texas at about 63,000 sq. miles.
Thursday
“GIGS” is short for grass is greener syndrome, or the feeling of dissatisfaction when comparing yourself to a circumstance or lifestyle your believe is better than your own. This is based on the old saying “The grass is always greener on the other side.”
Friday
Grassroots political and social movements start from the “ground up” at the community level instead of being “top down” from some existing hierarchy. The first known use of the term came from an Indiana senator in 1912 in describing President Roosevelt’s Progressive Party: “This party has come from the grassroots. It has grown from the soil of people’s hard necessities.”
Saturday
Bluegrass, a unique type of southern music originally employing the mandolin, banjo, fiddle, guitar, and standup bass, was named such after Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, the first (and very popular) band to pioneer this sound.
- Week of March 12, 2023
Random Acronym Week (RAW) #9
Sunday
NASDAQ = National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations
Monday
FLOTUS = First Lady of the United States
Tuesday
DARE = Drug Abuse Resistance Education
Wednesday
PIN = personal (or property) identification number
Thursday
ASAP = as soon as possible
Friday
MADD = Mothers Against Drunk Driving
Saturday
SUV = sports utility vehicle
- Week of March 5, 2023
These Facts Give You Wings
Sunday
The specialized wing structure that allows modern birds to fly is believed to have evolved from early theropods, the same dinosaur line that included T-Rex and velociraptor.
Monday
Those little wings pictured on angels and cherubs may be cute, but just wouldn’t be functional. A prehistoric bird similar in size to a modern human male needed a wingspan over 20 feet wide to fly, and even then likely just glided. Humans would need chest muscles far larger than a pro bodybuilder just to work those wings, not to mention lighter bones and other major anatomical adaptations.
Tuesday
The term “winging it” for improvising with little preparation comes from live theater. It referred to an unrehearsed actor who delivered his lines as prompted by an assistant in the sides or “wings” of the theater, unseen by the audience, or an actor who had just recently learned the lines while in the wings himself.
Wednesday
Likewise, the term “waiting in the wings” has theatrical origins. Someone waiting on these sides of the stage, just behind the curtain, is waiting for their opportune moment to enter.
Thursday
The term “wingman” for a supportive or protective person originates with combat airplane formations, where a wingman flies outside and just behind the lead plane for support and protection.
Friday
A mother hen famously shelters her chicks under her wing for protection, hence the very old idiom “to take under my/your/his/her wing” for protective tutelage.
Saturday
A bird cannot fly with certain feathers of it’s wings trimmed, so the allusion to restricting someone’s freedom by “clipping their wings” has been around since ancient Roman times.
- Week of February 26, 2023
Chew on These Facts
Sunday
Gum is old. In what is now Sweden, chewed gum made from birch bark has been discovered which dates to nearly 10,000 years ago.
Monday
Until the 1940s, nearly all chewing gum was made from the sap of a handful of South American tree species. This natural gum base, called chicle, was eventually replaced by synthetic gum base, which makes up the majority of modern gums.
Tuesday
Being so soft and pliable, gum can take a lot of different shapes when you buy it. Among them: gum in the shape of a ball (gumballs), sticks, ribbons, tabs, chunks, cubes, cylinders, and dragée gum, which are the familiar pillow-shaped coated pellets.
Wednesday
While swallowing gum is not ideal, you can forget that old myth about gum living in your intestines for seven years. The bulk of it simply gets pooped out in a day or two like any other indigestible.
Thursday
In the world of chewing gum flavors, mint is king. Spearmint and peppermint lead the pack (no pun intended) as the most popular flavors, and mint varieties have reigned for several generations, too.
Friday
The ideal recipe for bubble gum was discovered by an accountant for the Fleer gum company who liked to experiment with gum ingredients. Walter Diemer’s version not only had the best texture for bubble gum, but set the color standard for decades, since pink was the only food coloring his gum factory had when he hit upon the right recipe.
Saturday
After cigarette butts, used chewing gum is the most littered item in the world, and because most modern gum has synthetic gum base, is largely non-biodegradable. So dispose of your gum properly!
- Week of February 19, 2023
Grandad’s Maladies
This week we translate old-time names of medical conditions into modern ones.
Sunday
Consumption = tuberculosis
Monday
Saint Vitus Dance = Sydenham chorea
Tuesday
Lockjaw = tetanus
Wednesday
Dropsy = edema
Thursday
Grippe = influenza
Friday
Camp fever = typhus
Saturday
Dipsomania = alcoholism
- Week of February 12, 2023
Facts of Grave Importance
Sunday
Originally, “graveyard” and “cemetery” were not interchangeable terms. For centuries, the deceased members of congregations were buried in crypts under their church or plots around the church in areas known as graveyards. However, as these filled up and populations grew, separate tracts of burial land unconnected with any particular church known as cemeteries became common.
Monday
A gravely ill person may seem closer to the grave, but notably, “grave” the adjective comes from the Latin “gravis” meaning heavy, weighty, and important, while “grave” the noun derives from Germanic with its current meaning: holes dug for the deceased.
Tuesday
East-facing graves are common around the world, so that the dead can face the rising sun or for various religious reasons both ancient and more modern.
Wednesday
The Egyptian pyramids are among the worlds most enduring grave markers. They stand above tombs of pharaohs, but also included supplies for the afterlife and the journey to it, as well as pictures and information about life at the time of the pyramids’ building.
Thursday
Increasingly, burial plots are not full of bodies, but ashes. In the US, the 63.3% of people are expected to choose cremation by 2025, up from a mere 3.6% in 1960. The location of burial spots for ashes (if they are buried at all) is less regulated, and thus far more flexible.
Friday
In some places, traditional burials are simply impractical. New Orleans, for example, is located below sea level where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico, and hence floods frequently. Since coffins contain both bodies and air, they would often rise to the top of saturated soil, sometimes even floating around on floodwaters, creating an obvious (and gruesome) health hazard. Accordingly, New Orleans began to require either cremation or above-ground tombs for the deceased.
Saturday
The first use of the term “graveyard shift,” a work shift which typically begins at midnight, did not come from graveyards at all, but references to overnight shifts in mines. Besides both places being dark and spooky, there is no obvious connection.
- Week of February 5, 2023
Truly Ear-Relevant Facts
Sunday
The term “earworm” is about 1,000 years old in English, but originally referred to the earwig, which people inaccurately believed crawled into human ears. Later the term applied to a moth larvae that damaged ears of corn and other crops, but in the late 1950s Germans began describing catchy “ohrvurm” tunes instead of agricultural pests, and the term has been popular in English since the 1980s.
Monday
To “keep an ear to the ground” means to be keenly scouting for something. This practice is often associated with listening for approaching horses, but in fact has been used for centuries by cultures all around the world to detect all variety of animals, people and things.
Tuesday
Earrings go way back. They weren’t just worn by pirates and Shakespeare, but Otzi the Iceman, the oldest known mummy ever discovered, who was sporting them about 5,300 years ago.
Wednesday
Some of the most famous ears in all of Hollywood (and the 22nd century), those of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, were donated for permanent exhibit to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum by the actor’s family.
Thursday
Between the time hearing aids were invented in the 17th Century and electrified in the 20th, they were essentially just “ear trumpets,” designed to channel sound into the ear instead of amplifying it electrically. These large devices were sometimes made to be worn within hats, hairstyles, collars, beards, and in the case of royalty, inside of thrones.
Friday
Imagine if you could hear a friend calling to you from 2.5 miles away or more. An elephant could, but they don’t just listen with those massive ears. Packed with blood vessels, elephant ears also manage body heat and can cool by fanning, as well as asserting position when elephants spread their ears to show dominance. Notably, elephants also have very sensitive feet, and can talk with “seismic communication,” hearing other elephant noises and triangulating their location through ground vibrations.
Saturday
You don’t just hear the world thanks to your ears, you balance your way through it. The inner ear contains the fluid-filled semicircular canals, and as this fluid moves around, hair-like sensors send signals to the brain which help with orienting and balancing the body.
- Week of January 29, 2023
The Coolest Facts Around
Sunday
For this week’s first fact, let’s break the ice. This term for a conversation starter comes from special ships – ice breakers – that broke ice and permitted passage and progress, just like conversational ice breakers do for acquaintanceships.
Monday
For about the last 100 years, an unlikely thing has been described as happening “when hell freezes over.” Notably, however, one of literature’s most graphic descriptions of hell, Dante’s Inferno, has Satan himself encased in ice up to the waist.
Tuesday
The larger part of icebergs floating at sea can be found under the water, with only the small top sticking out. Hence referring to “the tip of the iceberg” to represent the much smaller part of the issue or story.
Wednesday
The saying “it doesn’t cut any ice” regarding someone or something which has little effect is surprisingly literal. Blunt ice skate blades leave little impression on the ice, but sharpened ones permit better skating and leave a cut.
Thursday
Because off the unique bonds between water molecules, water actually expands when it freezes into ice, making ice only 90% as dense as the same volume of water. For this reason, ice floats on water, and natural water bodies freeze from the top down, allowing aquatic life to continue to live near the liquid bottom.
Friday
The notion of putting ice in a specialized building to keep the food and drink inside cool may go back to 1780 BC, but immediately before mechanical refrigerators were used in most 20th century houses, blocks of ice were delivered to homes to place in ice boxes, which kept contents cool until that ice melted. Ice harvesters, collecting ice from frozen ponds and lakes with specialized tools, could be well paid for the heavy blocks, although the work was difficult and dangerous.
Saturday
We owe much of the shape of the modern earth to the last Ice Age, which ended about 11,700 years ago. During this chilly era, glaciers covered about 1/4 of the land, humans migrated far across the earth to populate new places, and retreating glaciers reshaped the land and carved out current fresh water bodies large and small, including the North America’s Great Lakes.
- Week of January 15, 2023
Train Your Mind Well
Sunday
Need to “let off (or blow off) some steam”? So did early locomotives when their boilers built up dangerous pressure, hence the safety valve and origin of this term.
Monday
Sidetracks are where trains get diverted off the main line for whatever reason, and also the origin of the term for a diversion from the goal among humans.
Tuesday
The term “Hell on Wheels” has railroad origins, and referred to the transient, moving towns that traveled with the westbound construction of the US railroad, attracting the business of the young railroad workers with saloons, gambling, and brothels.
Wednesday
While we now think of a “double header” as two consecutive baseball games, it previously referred to a two-engine train. That was not its first usage, though, since before that a double header was a type of firework.
Thursday
To be “railroaded” is to hastily forced into an agreement or pushed through a process. This may refer to the speed of this new form of travel, the way early railroads were hurriedly and doggedly completed or how they were sometimes completed with minimum concern for private claims to the land they were built on.
“The Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins” by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997).
Friday
Before bumpers were ever on cars, they were on trains, and “bumper to bumper” was not a traffic jam of cars but the recommended way to efficiently store train cars.
Saturday
About 150 years before modern DJs spun and scratched on record turntables, trains spun on the original turntables. These huge devices moved trains onto the right track, and are still in use today.
- Week of January 15, 2023
Loosen Yours and Consume More Facts
Sunday
Belts are old. The earliest known belt worn on a person was used in the Bronze Age, which was from about 1200-3300 BC.
Monday
In the US, the “Rust Belt” is an area which includes parts of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Wisconsin, and by some accounts Iowa, Kentucky, and Massachusetts. The abundance of iron ore, coal, and natural waterways for transport once made this region a powerful manufacturing center. However, beginning in the 1950s, foreign competition, increased mechanization that replaced workers, increased labor costs, and other causes led to a decline in the region’s industries and population. The name began when presidential candidate Walter Mondale claimed his opponent Ronald Reagan’s trade policies would turn this area into a “rust bowl” (a reference to the “Dust Bowl” of Great Depression times), but “Rust Belt” ended up sticking instead. The US has many other belts, after all, including the Corn Belt, Sun Belt, and Bible Belt.
Tuesday
Though the colors between them and symbolism vary among traditions, each martial art which uses a belt ranking system starts with white and ends with black (although there are degrees of black belt).
Wednesday
On a much larger scale, an asteroid belt circles our sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Although comprised of millions of space rocks of various sizes, the mass of all these combined would still be only 3% that of Earth’s moon.
Thursday
US federal government activities and politicking in the Washington DC metro area are often described as “Inside the Beltway” because this region is surrounded by interstate highways I-495 and I-95, which form a loop known as “The Capital Beltway.”
Friday
While lap-only seat belts were first invented for horse-drawn vehicles, it would be 51 years after the first Ford Model T arrived that the modern 3-point lap/body seat belt appeared in Volvos. By the time inventor Nils Bohlin died in 2002, his concept was estimated to have saved one million lives.
Saturday
Normally one method of keeping one’s pants up is sufficient, so taking a “belt and suspenders” approach to anything indicates extreme safety and caution.
- Week of January 8, 2023
This Week is the Site’s Blue Period
Sunday
The term “blue blood” has some unfortunate racist baggage. It is derived literally from “sangre azul,” a term previously used for the old aristocratic families of Castile whose veins were visible under pale skin because they had not mixed with the Moors, Jews, or other darker-complexion groups of middle-ages Spain.
Monday
A steadfastly loyal or dedicated person is “true blue” because the 17th-century fabric dyers of Coventry, England were known for using blue dye which didn’t fade with washing, staying “true” or “fast.” Over time, the saying “True as Coventry blue” was shortened to just “true blue.”
Tuesday
“Blue Monday,” which is the third Monday in January, is supposedly the saddest day of the year, since it is in the middle of the dark, cold winter, the holiday fun is over, but the holiday bills are starting to arrive.
Wednesday
All blue-eyed people are descended from a single individual who experienced a mutation that caused his or her descendants to have less melanin in their eyes, making them appear lighter. This person lived in Europe between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago.
Thursday
The blue whale is not just the largest creature to live on Earth now, but the largest ever known to have lived on Earth.
Friday
The phrase “between the devil and the deep blue sea” derives from translations from other phrases which also indicate choosing between two awful options, including “between damnation and drowning,” “between the devil and the Dead Sea,” “between the sledgehammer and the anvil,” and “a precipice in front, wolves behind.” By some accounts, “the devil” describes a the area “between the deck planking and the topmost plank of the ship’s side,” or a deck’s edge, still a dangerous place.
Saturday
99 years ago, the “Feather River Bulletin” of Quincy, California, declared “If we may call professions and office positions white collar jobs, we may call the trades blue collar jobs.” Blue denim, dungarees, and lighter gingham fabric had long been preferred among manual laborers for their durability, not to mention that darker colors didn’t show stains as readily and thus needed less washing.
- Week of January 1, 2022
Facts That Are Fit to Be Tied
Sunday
The convention of categorizing athletic players as “first string, second string, etc.” goes back to the medieval archer’s practice of carrying backup strings for their bow in case the first string broke.
Monday
Purse strings tighten or loosen the opening of a traditional pouch purse, so one who “controls the purse strings” has authority to dictate finances as they see fit.
Tuesday
Fabric merchants of old times marked flaws in their material for sale by tying a string to the imperfect spot. Hence to get something without condition is to receive it “no strings attached.”
Wednesday
A person who “pulls the strings” controls people or events, often unbeknownst to others. This term originates with marionette puppetry, where characters were controlled by hidden puppeteers holding the strings.
Thursday
Stringed instruments go back to at least 2,550BC, the date of the first known lyre found in 1929 in modern day Iraq.
Friday
String theory, in a very simplified sense, suggests that the various forces among subatomic particles could interact in a more theoretically cohesive way if the particles were conceptualized as vibrating strings instead of individual points.
Saturday
Unsurprisingly, strings are old. Man-made strings found in a cave in southeast France date back 90,000 years.
- Week of December 25, 2022
Everydayus Latin, pt. 6
Sunday
“Prima facia” means “at first appearance / view.”
Monday
“In absentia” means “while absent.”
Tuesday
“Que sera, sera” means “whatever will be, will be.”
Wednesday
“Post mortem” means “after death.”
Thursday
“Rigor mortis” means “the stiffness of death.”
Friday
“Sine qua non” means “that without, not,” but can be better understood as “the essential thing.”
Saturday
“In vino veritas” means “in wine there is truth.”
- Week of December 18, 2022
Going with the Grain
Sunday
The original breakfast cereal, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, came from an accidental discovery at a sanitarium. When brothers John Harvey Kellogg and Will Keith Kellogg found some wheat they’d cooked had gone stale, they nonetheless put the wheat through rollers hoping to make dough sheets. When they got flakes instead, they decided to toast them. This cereal was very popular at the Battle Creek, Michigan sanitarium they were managing at the time, and since it was neither spicy nor sweet, it did not risk arousing any “passions” which their Seventh Day Adventist religion attributed to such food. Various grains were experimented with, and eventually their corn cereal was mass produced starting in 1906. The green rooster mascot, still on the box today, is named Cornelius (“Corny”) and came about because a Welsh-speaking friend noted that her language’s word for rooster was “ceiliog,” which sounded like “Kellogg.”
Monday
Charles W. Post, previously a patient of the Battle Creek Sanitarium which the Kellogg brothers oversaw, started a competing cereal company, The Postum Cereal Company, Ltd., and produced a rival corn flake cereal called “Post Toasties.” Grape Nuts Cereal (still around today) soon followed, and through aggressive marketing and somewhat dubious health claims regarding his products, this other Battle Creek food company was a major industry player.
Tuesday
Tony the Tiger has been around since long before the cereal changed its name from “Sugar Frosted Flakes” as sugar content began to concern more consumers. It was previously revealed that Tony is Italian-American, has a mom Mama Tony, a wife Mrs. Tony, a son Tony Jr., and a young daughter Antoinette.
Wednesday
Grape Nuts cereal is made from wheat, barley, yeast, salt, and some added vitamins. The cereal never contained grapes nor nuts at any point in its 125-year history, so that now the product’s own website only has speculation as to why it was named so.
Thursday
The first face to appear on a Wheaties box was fictional “all-American boy” Jack Armstrong in 1934, who was replaced later that year by real-life baseball legend Lou Gehrig. Prior to focusing on athletes, The Lone Ranger, pioneer female pilot Elinor Smith, and other non-athletes appeared on Wheaties boxes, though it was not until the 1950s that individuals appeared on the front of the box instead of the back. Notably, Wheaties was also the first product promoted with a musical jingle in its radio commercial.
Friday
The first appearance of iconic cereal mascots Snap, Crackle, and Pop was a solo appearance by Snap in 1933. The other brothers soon joined him, all first appearing as elderly gnomes rather than the youthful elves of later makeovers. A brief appearance of a taller, brawnier, fourth elf named Pow (short for “Power”), appeared dressed in spacesuits during the space race of the 1950s, but was soon retired.
Saturday
We call it “cereal” after Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture and grain.
- Week of December 11, 2022
Facts That Really Have Teeth
Sunday
The term “to cut your teeth on ___” derives from the old description of when a baby first “cut his teeth,” or had them emerge through the gums.
Monday
Horse teeth grow their whole lives, and a trained eye can age the animal accordingly, hence the reference to older folks being “long in the tooth.”
Tuesday
To “lie through your teeth” means to lie unabashedly, often, and by some accounts, even while smiling kindly and showing your teeth.
Wednesday
Not everyone develops wisdom teeth, or “third molars,” but those that do often find they crowd other teeth or become impacted and fail to fully emerge or “erupt” into the jaw. One reason for this is that modern humans have smaller jaws than our distant ancestors, so there is less space for these somewhat vestigial teeth than there used to be.
Thursday
Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury was famously self-conscious of his prominent front teeth, but refused orthodontic treatment, believing they played a role in his remarkable vocal range and projection. In 2016, European scientists (and admitted fans) studied this question and found that Mercury’s singing voice likely came from not only his outstanding control of his vocal chords, but use of his vestibular folds, membranes found above the vocal chords and not usually used in voice at all.
Friday
A snake’s teeth will tell you just how it kills prey. Venomous snakes have long fangs which inject poison into prey, while the more common constrictors have smaller even teeth to latch onto prey while the rest of the muscular snake wraps around it to suffocate it.
Saturday
Cavities aren’t new, and neither are fillings. Archaeologists have found human remains from about 6,500 years ago with beeswax fillings and remains from 13,000 years ago with tar fillings.
- Week of December 4, 2022
Random Acronym Week (RAW!) #8
Sunday
IMAX = Image MAXimum
Monday
NORAD = North American Aerospace Defense Command
Tuesday
HUD = Housing and Urban Development
Wednesday
IRC = International Rescue Committee
Thursday
COP = Conference Of the Parties (to treaties, typically international ones like those relating to climate change
Friday
COLA = Cost of Living Adjustment
Saturday
SAG = Screen Actors Guild
- Week of November 26, 2022
A Metal for Medals
Sunday
Silver’s chemical symbol on the periodic table is not “Si” (which is silicon), but “Ag” after the Latin “argentum,” meaning “shiny” or “white.”
Monday
“Quicksilver” actually describes mercury, which is both silvery in color and the only metal which is liquid at room temperature, making it seem alive, or “quick.”
Tuesday
Silver gets the gold medal for being the most malleable and ductile metal, able to be drawn into a wire one atom (yes, atom) wide.
Wednesday
Since silver platters were traditionally serving dishes used in formal, wealthy settings, to have things “handed to you on a silver platter,” means to receive something without necessarily deserving or earning it in the first place.
Thursday
However, if that thing brought on a silver platter is a severed human head, this is refers to a harsh punishment based on a grisly Biblical story. In it, King Herod grants his stepdaughter Salome her wish of receiving the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter. John, Jesus’ cousin, had been speaking ill of the queen and was already imprisoned out of concern that he might spark rebellion.
Friday
There’s not much actual silver in the sky, but a “silver lining” refers to the light seen around the edge of dark clouds, and is a metaphor for a positive outcome born of a negative one.
Saturday
“Silver Surfer” is both a Marvel Comics character first introduced in 1966 and an amusing term for senior citizens who are proficient “surfing” the Internet.
- Week of November 20, 2022
Prey for Them
Among the many everyday terms originating from the ancient practice of falconry:
Sunday
The leash by which a falconer holds onto his bird is called a “jess,” and when the handler’s thumb pins down the jess to hold it secure, the bird is “under his thumb.”
Monday
Likewise, the jess can be wrapped around a little finger to secure the bird, the origin of this other term for full control.
Tuesday
“Haggard” describes a mature wild-caught hawk, which are also often thin and scruffy when caught at the end of a migration.
Wednesday
When a falconing bird is tethered and restrained, it is “bated,” so “waiting with bated breath” refers to holding your breath in anticipation.
Thursday
A leather “hat” or hood is sometimes put over the eyes of the bird to calm them. From this we get “hoodwinked,” since wink means to close the eyes quickly, for deceiving or tricking someone.
Friday
“Ruser,” from the Old French, describes when a hawk shakes its tail feathers. From this comes “rouse,” which means to awaken yourself or someone else.
Saturday
References to a “hawkeye” as having sharp vision are not kidding. Hawks can see five times better than people, spot small prey miles away, have a visual range of 280 degrees (people only have 200 degrees), and can see sharper colors and even ultraviolet light.
- Week of November 12, 2022
Through the Hourglass
Sunday
Around the world, sand is different colors because that is the color of the rock or other material the sand eroded from. For example, black sand beaches are often made from eroded basalt from lava, and white sand beaches are often pulverized coral.
Monday
Ostriches don’t really stick their heads in the sand to hide from danger or problems, but they do put their heads down to dig holes for their eggs and eat plants.
Tuesday
By one prominent soil classification system, sand, by definition, must have grains between 0.074 mm and 4.75 mm. Smaller particles are silt, larger grains are gravel.
Wednesday
Sand is an essential ingredient in construction, with about 50 billion tons of it used in building yearly. At least seven different types of sand are categorized for various building purposes, including concrete sand, fill sand, and manufactured sand.
Thursday
As plentiful as desert sand is, several factors make it undesirable for use in construction.
Friday
While there is spotty evidence that the world’s first sand-filled hourglasses were used by the ancient Romans and Greeks, it was more likely developed in Europe by the 8th century AD and certainly in widespread use on the continent six centuries later.
Saturday
Think you’ve made some impressive sand castles? The world record largest sand castle was made in Denmark in 2021, measured just under 70 feet tall and was made of 6,400 tons of sand.
- Week of November 6, 2022
In Good Company
Sunday
“Inc.” means incorporated, and “corp.” means corporation. A corporation is one type of business entity that is legally distinct from those who own it or work there.
Monday
“LLC” stands for “limited liability company,” which does not issue stock like a corporation, but is still separate from the people owning / running / working for it.
Tuesday
“DBA” stands for “doing business as.”
Wednesday
“LP” is a limited partnership…
Thursday
…and “LLP” is a limited liability partnership.
Friday
“PC” stands for professional corporation, and is a corporation which can be started by members of particular professions.
Saturday
“Co-op” is a cooperative, which is individuals, producers, or businesses working together for a common purpose, usually agreeing to certain principles of autonomy and democracy.
- Week of October 30, 2022
Continental Break-facts
Sunday
Asia’s name comes from ancient Greek, where the term was applied to what is now Anatolia after first just describing the east bank of the Aegean Sea. The term was later applied to lands further and further east, and Anatolia was differentiated by calling it “Asia Minor.”
Monday
The Romans called modern-day Tunisia, the part of Africa closest to them, “Africa terra”, or “land of the Afris,” after a tribe from northern Africa, near Carthage. As with Asia, the name applied to a small part of the continent was progressively applied to the whole, sped by middle-ages exploration of Africa.
Tuesday
America, both North and South, were most likely named for Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who himself was named for Hungary’s Saint Emeric. Vespucci’s explorations of the coasts of modern-day Venezuela and Brazil led him to propose these unknown lands were actually part of a new continent, which proved to be quite correct.
Wednesday
Antarctica, from the Greek “antarktike” means the opposite to the Arctic, with this continent being on the other side of the globe as the Arctic. “Arctic” comes from “Arktos,” or “bear” in Greek, since the bear constellations, Ursa Minor and Major, are seen in the Northern Hemisphere and point to the North Star.
Thursday
When English explorer Matthew Flinders first sailed around Australia, the maps printed after his journey called it “Terra Australis” (“Southern Land”), although “Australia,” which the navigator himself preferred, eventually won out as the common name.
Friday
Three prominent theories about Europe’s name:
-That it came from “erebu” an Akkadian word meaning “sunset,” since Europe was west, toward the sunset, from Mesopotamia where the word originated.
-That is is named for the Greek goddess Europa.
-That it comes from the Greek words for “wide” and “eye,” or “wide gazing” since Europe’s shoreline would have looked comparatively very wide to Greek mariners.
Saturday
Thousands of islands in the Pacific Ocean are part of what is called Oceania, a term which often includes Australia and the submerged continent of Zealandia. “Okeanos” was the name of the great water body which ancient Greeks believed surrounded the Earth.
- Week of October 23, 2022
Paint it Fact
Sunday
Curiously, the first known paint mixture predates any known paintings by thousands of years. Several seashells containing a painting mixture of ochre, charcoal, crushed bone and stone flakes were found in South Africa’s Blombos Cave, and may be up to 100,000 years old. Any paintings made from this stash likely washed or wore away since then.
Monday
The oldest known preserved paintings are in limestone caves in Indonesia and date back at least 40,000 years. The better-known European cave art appears to be several thousand years younger.
Tuesday
Ancient paint was made with a remarkable variety of pigments to get the various colors needed. The origin of these colors included fruits, flowers, blood, charcoal, insects, sap, plants, roots, and many types of natural minerals.
Wednesday
A big revolution in the history of paint was the use of oil-based paint, which could give paintings more vibrant color, luster, and depth, among other advantages. The first known oil painting was from 650 A.D. by Buddhist artists in what is now Afghanistan. Historically popular paining oils were linseed, walnut, poppy seed and safflower.
Thursday
The largest known paining in the world, completed in 2020, is over 17,000 square feet in size, and was sold to benefit charities.
Friday
In 1949, paint salesman Ed Seymour wanted a way to showcase an aluminum coating for radiators. His wife proposed a spray gun, like the kind used for deodorizers, and the spray paint can was born.
Saturday
The Mona Lisa is likely the most famous paining ever, and is considered priceless. It is insured for over $900 million in inflation-adjusted dollars, the most of any painting in history, and French law prevents its sale.
- Week of October 16, 2022
How Every Day Originates
Sunday
By one count, there are well over 100 different sun gods and goddesses from religions all over the world.
Monday
The Earth is actually farthest from the sun in the summer and closest the winter, but the summer sun rays hit at a steeper angle. Hence these summer rays reach us with more focused intensity, as well as longer days to experience the light and heat.
Tuesday
The casual observer may think the sun is fixed and unchanging, but periodic energy outbursts in the form of solar flares and coronal mass ejections can cause huge problems to Earth’s electrical and electronics infrastructure. Events like this make up part of what is known as “space weather.”
Wednesday
Thanks to Earth’s axial tilt, several cities in the farther latitudes don’t see the sun go down for about 2.5 months straight, while during the opposite time of year, it doesn’t come up for that long. Travel to the North or South Poles, “polar day” and “polar night” last for six months at a time.
Thursday
Humanity has about 5 billion years to find and colonize one or more other livable planets before our own sun consumes all its hydrogen fuel and burns out.
Friday
The massive asteroid that hit Earth 66 million years ago sent so much dust and debris into the atmosphere that the sun was largely blotted out for years. Fewer plants grew, which played a huge role in the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Saturday
If Earth was closer to the sun, it would likely be too hot for life to evolve, as on Mercury or Venus, where water boils away. If it were further, it would be to cold and water would freeze, like on the outer planets. For this reason, scientists coined the term “Goldilocks Zone” for the distance from a sun hospitable to liquid water and therefore life.
- Week of October 9, 2022
Heady Tales
Sunday
A “coin of the realm” means something valued within a given locale, but the term originally meant actual currency issued by the British monarch.
Monday
In the US, “two bits” means 25¢, though the US Mint has never produced a 12.5 cent coin. However, Brits have long called a low-value coin a “bit,” and in the US the term was applied to some early Mexican and Spanish coins in circulation which were valued at 1/8 peso, or about 12.5¢ at the time.
Tuesday
“A penny saved is a penny earned” is one of many wise maxims often credited to Benjamin Franklin, though he never actually said it. He came close with “A penny saved is two pence clear,” and “a penny saved is a penny got,” but these frugal notions weren’t original to Franklin; similar wisdom had been printed over a century before.
Wednesday
In both diameter and thickness, a dime is the smallest circulating American coin. Hence, people say that a very quick-maneuvering vehicle can “turn on a dime,” as can a person who changes their own position on a subject quickly. The same idea is invoked by the expression “stop on a dime.”
Thursday
The coin toss at the beginning of every NFL game (and overtime, if any) uses a special coin made just for the purpose, with particular coins made just for the Super Bowl.
Friday
Shortly after dimes were first minted in the US in 1796, “a dime a dozen” was often used as a sale price for everyday products and indicated a good bargain. By 1930, inflation had rendered a dime far less valuable, and this term was first used with a negative connotation of something so common it is nearly useless.
Saturday
Though now applied to many manufactured items, “mint condition” originally referred to a brand new coin fresh from the mint that made it.
- Week of October 2, 2022
Facts That Are Your Cup of Tea
Sunday
The origin story and Chinese name for tea are related. According to legend, 5,000 years ago Emperor Shen Nung was boiling water when a nearby wild tree leaf blew into it. Intrigued by the scent, he drank, and reported that it warmed every part of his body, as if the tea were investigating his insides. Hence he gave tea the name “ch’a”, which meant to check or investigate.
Monday
“Not for all the tea in China,” meaning not for any price, was a term first seen in the early 20th century term which recognized that China produced enormous quantities of tea, a fact still true today with the country leading global production by a large margin.
Tuesday
While China, with its billion-plus population, also consumes the most total tea, the biggest average per-person tea drinking nation is easily Turkey, consuming nearly 7 lbs. / person / year, far more than even tea-loving England.
Wednesday
A wonderful tea-related term largely unknown to Americans (at least this one), is “More tea, Vicar?” This is used in the UK as a humorous distraction after passing gas or belching.
Thursday
“Herbal tea” is not made from tea leaves, but instead fruit, flowers, nuts and/or seeds, so is really a different beverage properly called tisane. Like tea, this drink has ancient origins.
Friday
Tea leaf reading, also known as “tasseography.” among other names, was the popular art of reading fortunes from the pattern of loose tea leaves remaining in one’s cup after drinking. The decline of the art began in 1903 with the rise of the teabag, since this contained the leaves that were otherwise left on the bottom for reading.
Saturday
Despite coffee’s popularity in the Americas, three cups of tea are consumed for every one cup of coffee worldwide.
- Week of September 25, 2022
Sew Interesting
Sunday
Pins and needles all start out as long spools of wire which are then cut to size and processed, largely by machine, into the finished product. The process can take several days.
Monday
Sewing needles are a very essential, and very old, human invention. A 50,000 year old needle made of bird bone was found in one Siberian cave, likely made by a now-extinct species of humans.
Tuesday
Tattoos, and the needles which produce them, also go pretty far back. Iceman Otzi, found under a melting European glacier in 1991, had 61 tattoos on his body and was carbon-14 dated at 5,300 years old.
Wednesday
The common pin has the distinction of being the item which Adam Smith uses as an example of the efficiency of division of labor in manufacture.
Thursday
“Pins and needles” describes unrelated mental and physical sensations. It describes both nervous anticipation and the feeling of blood returning to a limb which had “fallen asleep.” The term has been in use since at least the 19th century.
Friday
The modern safety pin was invented by Walter Hunt as he toyed with some wire, pondering how he might pay off a debt of fifteen dollars to a friend. He sold the patent to that friend after receiving one in 1849.
Saturday
A “needler” is both one who makes needles or deals in and also one who annoys and antagonizes.
- Week of September 18, 2022
Batty About Factoids
Sunday
Bats are the only mammal on Earth which can sustain flight (though others can glide).
Monday
With over 1,000 known bat species, bats are the second largest taxonomic order after rodents, comprising about 20% of all classified mammal species globally.
Tuesday
Bats find insects prey by echolocation, the emitting of high-pitched sounds and listening to the echoes to spot nearby bugs it bounced off of. With this tactic, some bats can consume about 20 mosquitoes per minute.
Wednesday
Bat poop (guano) contains saltpeter, which is used to make gunpowder, and a Confederate kiln at one Texas bat cave churned out 100 lbs / day during the American Civil War.
Thursday
Vampire bats are the only mammals which can live on blood alone, which they lick from tiny cuts they make on mostly unfazed livestock. Contrary to the Dracula myth, however, all known species live in Central and South America, far from Transylvania.
Friday
Eating the weight of 7 garbage trucks worth of insects might seem like a tall order, but it is done every night by the 15 million bats living in Texas’ Bracken Bat Cave, the world’s largest concentration of the animal.
Saturday
The range in size of bats remarkable. The smallest species, Kitti’s Hog-Nosed Bat, have an adult weight of 2 grams and a length of about 1.2 inches, while the largest bat, the Giant Golden-Crowned Flying Fox, might be 11 inches long and weight 3 lbs. This would be comparable to adult humans in one part of the world being about 6 feet tall and 200 lbs, and people elsewhere being 55 feet tall and 1.36 million lbs.
- Week of September 11, 2022
Digital Acronym Week (DAM!) #6
Sunday
CAD = Computer Aided Drafting / Design
Monday
CGI = Computer Generated Imagery
Tuesday
TLD = Top Level Domain
Wednesday
ISP = Internet Service Provider
Thursday
DDoS = Distributed Denial of Service
Friday
MMORPG = Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game
Saturday
PVP = Player vs. Player
- Week of September 4, 2022
Focused on Facts
Sunday
The first eyeglasses are generally thought to have been created in 1285 and were made of quartz, since glass at that time was too flawed to be good for glasses.
Monday
Eyeglasses work by taking on some of the light ray management that the eye would do in a person with perfect vision. If you’re nearsighted, your glasses focus incoming light rays onto the retina of your eye so that faraway objects you see aren’t blurry. If you’re farsighted, eyeglasses spread the light over a wider area of the eye’s retina, bringing nearby objects into focus.
Tuesday
Sunglasses in the form of slits cut into walrus ivory have been used to reduce snow glare by Inuit people for 2,000 years.
Wednesday
The idea may seem obvious now, but eyeglasses went about 450 years before the development of frames with hooks that go behind the ears.
Thursday
In addition to accomplishments in science, writing, politics, diplomacy, and more, Benjamin Franklin was also the inventor of bifocals, which allow wearers to focus on objects both near and far.
Friday
Most modern “glasses” lenses are plastic, which tend not to shatter and are hence safer for the wearer.
Saturday
About 75% of adults need some form of vision correction.
- Week of August 28, 2022
Let’s Sleep On It
Sunday
The regular use of pillows goes back about 9,000 years, but the notion that they should be soft only goes back about 2,000. Before that pillows were made of stone, wood, ceramic, metal, and other hard materials. Among the reasons for the rigid pillows was a fear that such softness would steal bodily energy or appear as weakness.
Monday
You might not think the purpose of your pillow is to keep your head off the ground so that insects don’t crawl into your ears, nose, or mouth, but this was a reason early pillow adopters used them.
Tuesday
Between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Industrial Revolution, pillow use and evolution was greatly slowed in the Middle Ages. Henry VIII even banned the use of pillows for all but pregnant women.
Wednesday
One modern pillow and mattress staple material, memory foam, was actually developed by NASA to keep test pilots better cushioned during flight.
Thursday
The oldest discovered burial in all of Africa is that of a young child with its head on a pillow. It was about 80,000 years old, and researchers named him “Mtoto.”
Friday
There are well over a dozen types of stuffing options for the modern pillow shopper, including natural and synthetically-sourced material.
Saturday
Competitive pillow fighting is a real sport, involving two competitors trading blows with 2 lb. specialized pillows for 90 second rounds.
- Week of August 21, 2022
Drawing Factual Conclusions
Sunday
Pencils don’t contain lead and never have, but write with graphite, a pure carbon isotope (diamonds being another form of pure carbon). Graphite deposits have been mistaken for lead, however, and pre-pencil writing styluses were made of lead, perhaps explaining the misnomer.
Monday
Pencils work because the graphite’s carbon atoms are arranged in sheets, bonded strongly to other atoms to the side of each other, but only weakly to those sheets above and below. Accordingly, they “rub off” easily, such that pencil marks are sheets of carbon atoms.
Tuesday
Pencil-ready graphite is so delicate it must be encased in something to be usable, and before hollowed-out wooden tubes, early pencils were graphite wrapped in paper or string.
Wednesday
The uses of the pencil informed its naming. Pencil comes from “pencillum” or “fine brush” in Latin, and graphite comes from “graphien” or “to write” in Greek.
Thursday
The graphite pencil went about 200 years before it got that pink eraser attached. Before that, bread crumbs did the trick.
Friday
Famous natural philosopher and writer Henry David Thoreau was also part of the very successful John Thoreau & Company family pencil business, and himself developed many major innovations to pencil quality and manufacture.
Saturday
The letters and numbers on pencils, including that testing favorite yellow “No. 2”, indicate the formulation of that pencil’s graphite for blackness, hardness, and ability to sharpen to a fine point.
- Week of August 14, 2022
Everydayus Latin, pt. 5
Sunday
“Alias” means “otherwise called.”
Monday
“Cogito, ergo sum,” famously declared by Descartes, means “I think, therefore I am.”
Tuesday
“Antebellum” means “before the war.”
Wednesday
“Consensus” means “agreement / accord.”
Thursday
“Veto” means “I forbid.”
Friday
“Et al” means “and others.”
Saturday
“Innuendo” means “giving a nod to.”
- Week of August 7, 2022
The Corniest Facts Ever
Sunday
Globally, corn is among the most essential crops, with well over a billion tons grown annually. Corn currently supplies over 6% of human calories.
Monday
Baseball fans might have heard a routine fly ball hit to an outfielder called a “can of corn.” This refers to the old practice of grocery clerks pulling cans off high shelves with long hooks, then catching the falling item in their apron. This term applies to other simple routine actions as well.
Tuesday
The distribution of the US’s largest-acreage crop goes roughly 1/3 to people, beverage, and industrial markets, 1/3 to ethanol production, and 1/3 to livestock.
Wednesday
Corn’s ancestor is a plant called teosinte, which was methodically bred with other plants in southwestern Mexico to get modern corn. However, with just 5-10 kernels per ear and a taste like dried potato, you probably wouldn’t recognize this plant as an ancestor of modern corn.
Thursday
Corn, squash, and pole beans were often grown together and called the “three sisters” by native American tribes for centuries. These plants they had a remarkably complimentary relationship: Corn stalks supply the support for the beans to wrap around and grow up, the beans convert nitrogen in the air to a form usable to all plants, and squash’s big prickly leaves deter pests, keep the ground moist and provide mulch, for the group.
Friday
As a global staple crop, corn grows on every continent on Earth except Antarctica.
Saturday
In the US, the overwhelming majority of corn comes from the “Corn Belt”, which produces nearly 40% of the world’s supply and includes parts of the Midwest, Great Plains, and South. Iowa and Illinois tend to lead production annually, with nearly 1/3 of the land in those states dedicated to the crop.
- Week of July 31, 2022
The Air That We Breathe
Sunday
At about 78%, Nitrogen is easily the largest component of Earth’s atmosphere, colorless and odorless to people. Essential nitrogen-containing compounds, however, come from the food we eat.
Monday
Fortunately for most living things, oxygen in the form of O2 is the next most abundant gas in the atmosphere at about 21%. It is also colorless and odorless to us, but quite essential.
Tuesday
The next most abundant gas in the atmosphere is Argon at 0.93%. Compared to its gassy friends, Argon is quite aloof as one of the “noble gasses”, doing very little bonding or reacting as it floats around.
Wednesday
Among the most variable components of the atmosphere is water vapor, the amount of which in the air can vary widely with temperature and location. Warm air holds more moisture, so water vapor can compose 4-5% of the air in the tropics, but 0.2% in the Arctic.
Thursday
Carbon dioxide currently makes up about 0.4% of the atmosphere. This molecule is breathed in by plants and is essential in the carbon cycle, but is also produced by burning fossil fuels, and its heat-trapping nature now makes it a major cause of climate change.
Friday
What’s left after these bigger components are minute amounts of the trace gasses, among them helium, neon, methane, hydrogen, ozone, nitrous oxide, and krypton. Some trace gasses actually come from human activity.
Saturday
Most atmospheric gasses are at greatest concentrations closer to the ground, which explains why the air seems so “thin” at great altitudes. Helium and hydrogen, being so light, can reach great heights, however.
- Week of July 24, 2022
Thick, Shiny, Stylish Factoids
Sunday
To “let your hair down” means to be more uninhibited and honest, and traces back to the days when women kept their hair up except in the privacy of their own home or among intimate company.
Monday
Regardless of where it is bought, the vast majority of real human hair used in wigs and extensions comes from the East, especially India, China, and Eastern Europe.
Tuesday
A “hairpin turn” gets that name for its resemblance to a metal hairpin, so usually involves a very sharp 180 degree (or nearly so) turn.
Wednesday
The care of hair (and scalps) is huge business. Despite Covid, this global market was $80.81 billion USD in 2020, and does not include the sale of actual hair products, such as wigs, weaves, and extensions.
Thursday
“Bigwig” indicates importance because men of influence and rank used to wear large wigs.
Friday
Cats cough up hairballs because they clean themselves by licking their fur, and typically swallow some of that fur which is later vomited up.
Saturday
People with naturally blond hair tend to have the most total hairs on their head at about 150,000, redheads have the fewest at about 90,000, and folks with naturally brown or black hair are somewhere in between.
- Week of July 17, 2022
Remember Your Reductions
Sunday
abs = abdominal muscles
Monday
typo = typographical error
Tuesday
polio = poliomyelitis
Wednesday
fan = fanatic
Thursday
con = convict (as in “Ex-con”), confidence (as in “con-man” or “con game.”)
Friday
chaps = chapjaros
Saturday
recap = recapitulation
- Week of July 10. 2022
Facts That are Shells of Their Former Selves
Sunday
Seashells are the hard exoskeletons of otherwise soft invertebrate sea creatures.
Monday
A “shell game” involves putting an object under something that conceals it, like a cup or shell, then moving that and similar empty cups around, hoping the betting party will lose track of where the object is and thereby lose the game and wager. There is frequently deceit involved, and in the financial sense, this term often refers to asset-hiding schemes.
Tuesday
The idiom “to come out of his/her shell” means to become more outgoing social, and is a reference to a shelled animal like a snail or turtle who remains alone in there for protection.
Wednesday
A shell company, as the name implies, is typically a legally-created business entity, but one that does not do any sustained business operations or own significant assets long term. These are often created for tax purposes, concealing the identity of stakeholders or assets, fundraising or merger purposes, and sometimes illegal business.
Thursday
“She sells sea shells by the sea shore”is both a classic English tongue twister-turned-song and a training tool for those learning English and practicing the “s” sound.
Friday
Hermit crabs are among nature’s great shell recyclers. Vulnerable to predators and the baking sun without them, hermit crabs have elaborate methods of moving into new, size-appropriate shells as they grow, with smaller crabs moving into the old shells sometimes simultaneously.
Saturday
The shell in “shell shock” is military artillery shells, and the term refers to types of battle fatigue, with physical and mental conditions now more commonly described as PTSD. The term was first coined in World War I to describe the shape of many soldiers returning from battle.
- Week of July 3, 2022
Free At Last
Sunday
They used to say “The sun never sets on the British Empire,” and it shows in modern Independence Day celebrations, where over 50 counties annually celebrate gaining independence from the UK.
Monday
The most popular date to celebrate independence is January 1st. Brunei, Cameroon, Cuba, Czech Republic, Haiti, Samoa, and Sudan all celebrate their independence on this day.
Tuesday
However, the most common month for celebrations of independence is August, with 26 countries celebrating in this month.
Wednesday
Several nations celebrate several independence days during the year, since they gained autonomy from more than one country in their histories.
Thursday
Only two countries in the world do not celebrate a national day or independence day: Denmark and England.
Friday
The year 1991 was a big one for first independence days due to the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, although countries beyond Eastern Europe marked independence this year too.
Saturday
The most recent independence day is South Sudan, which became a country in 2011, and the oldest is Japan, which has a “Foundation Day” when the country united from the defeat of rival clans in 660 BCE.
- Week of June 26, 2022
Random Acronym Week (RAW!) #7
Sunday
PFD = personal flotation device, or, if you live in Alaska, permanent fund dividend, which residents get yearly from state oil revenues.
Monday
GOAT = Greatest of All Time
Tuesday
PPE = personal protective equipment
Wednesday
RV = recreational vehicle
Thursday
LCD = liquid crystal display, or lowest common denominator
Friday
RPG = role playing game, or rocket propelled grenade
Saturday
MIT = Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Week of June 19, 2022
Ashes to Ashes…
Sunday
Common dust is made up of many different components, including ash, smoke, dirt, sand, salt, pollen, bacteria, bits of textiles and paper, human and animal hair and skin particles, and even meteorite particles.
Monday
A surprising amount of dust rains down from space in the form of “micrometeorites,” on the scale of 14-50 tons per day. This is roughly 1-3 garbage trucks worth of space dust daily.
Tuesday
The massive Sahara Desert is the largest source of mineral dust in the world, with airborne Saharan dust regularly reaching Europe, the Amazon, Asia, the Caribbean and the Americas.
Wednesday
The old myth about household dust being mostly dead skin is not true. Most studies on indoor dust composition show that the largest part of household dust came from sources outside the house.
Thursday
You are, however, still a major source of dust. Your endlessly-regenerating skin layer sheds nearly a million dead cells daily.
Friday
Dust makes up that gross layer on top of your fan blades…and some of the largest structures in the universe. Nebulae, those clouds of gas and dust which often came from exploding stars and can eventually congeal into new ones, can be millions of light years in diameter.
Saturday
Unfortunately, dust can be bad news for those in certain occupations. Pneumococcus, the umbrella term for extensive dust-caused scarring in the lungs, affects people working in mining (“black lung”), drilling, textiles, agriculture, shipworking, sandblasting, and other dust-intensive jobs.
- Week of June 12, 2022
Let’s Ride
Sunday
The first bicycle had no pedals or chain. The “hobby horse” was propelled by pushing against the street with your shoes, like a skateboard.
Monday
To take back or soften what you already said is called “backpedaling.” However, only on a fixed gear bike would you go backward by pedaling so, since the modern freewheel only drives the wheel one direction: forward while pedaling forward.
Tuesday
There’s intriguing brain science in the fact that people almost never forget how to ride a bike. The coordination of movements involved becomes a “procedural memory,” which, it turns out, is a more permanent and deeper kind of memory than a factual “declarative memory” (and unfortunately for creators of fun fact websites).
Wednesday
The Tour de France is the most watched sporting event in the world, garnering over 3.5 billion viewers.
Thursday
Worldwide, the Netherlands has the most impressive bicycling resume. Seven out of every eight people age 15 or older own a bike, and an impressive 30% of all trips made in the country are on a bicycle.
Friday
The famous feminist quote “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” was itself inspired by an earlier quote about religion.
Saturday
A “peloton” is the name for a group of bicyclists riding in a pack to conserve energy.
- Week of June 5, 2022
Fine Feathered Facts
Sunday
Before it was a common term for accomplishment, a “feather in your cap” was a mark of achievement in several cultures. Among them, native Americans who wore a feather for each enemy slain, medieval knights given plumes for bravery, Hungarians marking a killed enemy Turk, or hunters showing game bird feathers.
Monday
Bird feathers are hollow so as to be very light for their strength, allowing (most) birds to fly…
Tuesday
…and this hollowness made feathers great writing instruments in the quill / feather pen days, and still among quill pen enthusiasts. That hollow center was a natural reservoir for ink.
Wednesday
Tarring and feathering has been a humiliating and painful punishment since at least 1189 when Richard the Lionheart decreed it for thieves caught aboard his ships. Old fashioned tar, however, was made with pine tree sap, and was not the petroleum-based tar of the modern era. When the traditional ingredients were in short supply, syrup and cattails have also been used.
Thursday
To “make feathers fly,” as in arguing, is a reference to birds (and especially chickens) losing feathers while fighting with each other. “Make/watch the fur fly” conveys the same meaning.
Friday
The term “horsefeathers” was coined just a few years before the famous Marx Brothers’ movie of that name, and means nonsense (and by some accounts refers to horse poop.)
Saturday
Just as showy plumage feathers are not used for flight, a bird might have seven different types of feathers on its body, each with a different function.
- Week of May 29, 2022
Wolf Down These Facts
Sunday
The story of “The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf,” that timeless cautionary tale to liars and false alarmists, actually goes back to Classical antiquity.
Monday
Fans of werewolves (or maybe Harry Potter) know they are sometimes called “lycanthropes.” This derives from the grizzly Greek mythological Legend of Lycaon, who angered the god Zeus by serving him a meal made with the remains of a human boy. Lycaon was punished when he and his sons were turned into wolves.
Tuesday
They’re called “werewolves” because of the obsolete Old English word “wer” meant “man,” so “werewolf” means “man wolf.”
Wednesday
Domesticated sheep are famously mild and docile, and wild wolves (who often eat livestock) are less so, so the image of a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” whether literally or as a metaphor for deceptive people, appears in both Aesop’s fables and the New Testament.
Thursday
The scientist who coined the term “alpha wolf” for the leader (or leading couple) of the pack later abandoned the term. What was called the alpha male and alpha female are the sole breeding pair in the pack, and did not necessarily get the job by fighting or physical dominance, as the name implies.
Friday
You might have heard of a defeated or embarrassed person said to “slink off with his tail between his legs.” Tail position communicates a lot in the animal world, especially with wolves, where down-pointing and tucked tail position is used by the lowest-ranking pack members.
Saturday
For all the human fear of wolves, fatal wolf attacks are exceedingly rare. In all of North America, for example, there have been only two documented deadly wolf attacks since 1970.
- Week of May 22, 2022
Stocking Up
Sunday
There are many individual stock markets throughout the world, but by volume and total value, the largest is the NewYork Stock Exchange.
Monday
Why are these large animals fighting on Wall Street? A “bull market” is one which is on the rise with stocks increasing in value, while a “bear market” is one of falling stock values, generally a loss of at least 20% below a recent peak. The traditional explanation of invoking these animals relates to how each strikes in battle: a bull thrusts horns upward at an opponent, while a bear swipes its mighty claws downward.
Tuesday
The Nasdaq is the world’s second largest stock market after the NYSE, was fully electronic since its creation in 1971, and tends to trade more tech-intensive and growth-focused stocks.
Wednesday
Business partners Charles Dow and Edward Jones created the Dow Jones in 1896. It is an index of thirty established and consistently-earning companies, traded on both the NYSE and Nasdaq, which serve as a proxy for the broader economy.
Thursday
Another common index is the “S & P 500,” which includes the largest 500 stocks from the NYSE and Nasdaq. S & P is for Standard and Poor’s, a company formed from the 1941 merger of Poor’s Publishing and the Standard Statistic’s Bureau, companies which had been publishing credit ratings, financial data, and market indicators. The McGraw-Hill Company later bought S&P in 1966.
Friday
A stock’s shortened “ticker symbol,” such as “MSFT” for Microsoft Corporation, is named for the pre-digital days when stock prices appeared on ticker tape, a practice which began in 1867.
Saturday
In a three-year period starting in October 1929, the US stock market lost nearly 90% of its value, leading to the Great Depression.
- Week of May 15, 2022
That’s So Metal
Sunday
“Top brass,” which now indicates the highest-level leaders in an organization, is based on the metal decorations used by officers in European militaries.
Monday
The Bronze Age, which lasted from about 3300-1200BC in the Fertile Crescent, was called that because earlier stone tools were replaced with bronze in many Middle Eastern civilizations. Copper had long been in use by that time, but the addition of tin to make the stronger alloy bronze brought these civilizations out of the “Stone Age” and was followed by the “Iron Age.”
Tuesday
In the classic film “The Wizard of Oz,” the Tin Man is first encountered when immobile with rust, and is thereafter afraid of watery things. However, tin does not rust. Only iron, or metals containing iron, rust.
Wednesday
Winston Churchill coined the term “Iron Curtain” to describe the post-WWII divide between more open democracies in western Europe and the more closed-off Soviet-controlled states.
Thursday
“Tin Pan Alley” refers to types dance music, ballads, and vaudeville songs that began in the late 19th century and were named for the “tin pan” sound of pianos as the musicians promoted the songs for the concentration of music publishers originally found on 28th Street between Broadway and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
Friday
Only one metal – mercury – also bears the name of a planet and a Roman god. Unfortunately for we mortals, that planet is uninhabitable and that metal is toxic.
Saturday
An accident with real metal played a major role in the birth of heavy metal music. At age 17, future Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi was working as an industrial welder. Assigned to an unfamiliar guillotine-type machine one day, he lost the tips of two fingers in an accident and nearly gave up playing guitar. However, he created his own prosthetics and changed his playing style to accommodate them. This became the deeper, darker sound associated with this pioneering band and the heavy metal genre as a whole.
- Week of May 8, 2022
It’s All Greek to Me, pt. V
Sunday
“Dinosaur” is derived from the Greek words for “thunder lizard.”
Monday
The name of the water-loving hippopotamus comes from the Greek words for “river horse.”
Tuesday
And “rhinoceros”, fittingly, is Greek for “nose horn.”
Wednesday
“Helium” comes from the Greek “helios” or “sun,” which is full of helium, and is the name of the sun god.
Thursday
“Acrobat” derives from the Greek works for “edge” and “to walk / tread.”
Friday
The three Charities (or Graces) in Greek mythology originated the word “charity.”
Saturday
“Cemetery” derives from the Greek word for “sleeping place.”
- Week of May 1, 2022
Piping Hot Factoids
Sunday
Plans unlikely to be realized are called “pipe dreams” in a reference to the dreams experienced by opium users, since this drug was often smoked with a pipe.
Monday
Saying “pipe down” to encourage quiet seems to trace back to an officer ordering that a pipe whistle be blown on old sailing ships to either have the crew go to sleep or go below deck after a disturbance.
Tuesday
In an apparent reference to multi-piped musical instruments such as bagpipes and organ, a person with a “set of pipes” has a strong speaking or singing voice.
Wednesday
Despite being traditionally associated with Scotland, the bagpipes were likely introduced to Scotland by the Romans, with roots in ancient Egypt before that.
Thursday
“Pied” in Old English meant multicolored, so in the legend of The Pied Piper, the musician was wearing an outfit of many colors.
Friday
The term “pay the piper,” meaning to finally face consequences, is related to this same legend. When the townspeople of Hamelin reneged on their promise to pay the piper who lured the rats out of their town, he took an awful revenge by luring their children away.
Saturday
Water pipes made of lead, as they had been for decades, are now known to be a serious health hazard. In the US, lead pipes are restricted by federal law and hundreds of millions of dollars have been set aside to replace old lead pipes.
- Week of April 24, 2022
Chip Chip Hooray
Sunday
At one time, there was a custom in the US and Canada in which someone seeking a fight would place a chip of wood on his shoulder and whoever knocked it off was agreeing to fight him. Hence the saying that an aggressive or antisocial person “has a chip on his shoulder.”
Monday
Among deep-fried potato products, what Americans call “chips” the British call “crisps,” and what the Brits call “chips” Americans call “fries.”
Tuesday
In the traditional set of blue, red, and white poker chips, blue are the highest value and the namesake for “blue chip” stocks, the well-known, well-established, and fiscally sound companies on the stock market.
Wednesday
Poker is the origin of several chip-related terms. To “chip in,” or help with a collective effort, comes from the ante in poker where all player contribute to the winnable pot. Likewise, “when the chips are down,” referring to a crucial moment when fortunes and personal circumstances can change quickly (and often already have changed for the worse in common usage), is a poker reference to when the hands are revealed to determine who won.
Thursday
Before most common-usage poker chips were plastic, they were clay, or later, a clay composite which added strength. Chips of clay composite or ceramic remain common in casinos. Further back in time, individual gambling houses might have used their own chips of bone, ivory, shellac, paper, or some other material before the chip designs and values were more standardized.
Friday
Describing “a chip off the old block,” for children who are similar to the parent, is a notably old term, with an apparent origin in the 15th century.
Saturday
That adventurous cartoon chipmunk duo is called Chip & Dale and the famous muscular male dance revue is Chippendale’s, but the original Chippendale (and apparent namesake) was London cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale, who designed intricate furniture that became popular in England and colonial America.
- Week of April 17, 2022
Digital Acronym Week #5
Sunday
FLOPS = Floating-Point Operation Per Second
Monday
QLED = Quantum Light-Emitting Diode
Tuesday
WLAN = Wireless Local Area Network
Wednesday
FIOS = Fiber Optic Service
Thursday
COBOL = Common Business Oriented Language
Friday
FORTRAN = Formula Translator
Saturday
GIS = Georgraphic Information System
- Week of April 10, 2022
Wheely Informative
Sunday
Regardless of engine size, all cylinders must be firing for a car to work efficiently and at full capacity. Accordingly, people said to be “not firing on all cylinders” are not thinking or performing at an expected capability.
Monday
Since a dime is the smallest American coin, to “stop on a dime” means to be able to stop so quickly you land on this tiny area, and can be applied to cars or other fast-stopping things.
Tuesday
To “burn rubber” means to accelerate so that your tires smoke and leave marks on the pavement. This idiom came into use in the mid-20th century and was a product of the automotive age, since it is hard to imagine an animal-pulled vehicle accelerating this quickly!
Wednesday
The term “four on the floor” refers to a vehicle with a four speed manual transmission near the driver’s seat, but also the very steady 4/4 beat popular in disco and later dance music.
Thursday
Unreliable cars are called “lemons” because that term was applied to any product of poor quality in the turn of the 20th century, but by the 1960s, with the help of a Volkswagen ad, the term was mostly reserved for sub-par vehicles. States now have “lemon laws” on the books requiring certain standards in used car warranties.
Friday
Putting the “pedal to the metal” is another mid-century car term for accelerating to the maximum. This term started in the 1950s when many cars had metal floorboards under the accelerator pedal.
Saturday
Until 1988, vehicle titles were printed on pink paper in California, which gave rise to the term “pink slips” for vehicle titles. “Racing for pink slips” is a familiar movie term indicating that the loser must sign over his or her car to the winner.
- Week of April 3, 2022
Sporty Starts
Sunday
The sport of baseball derived from cricket and the children’s game rounders, and references to a game played with sticks, balls, and bases go back to at least the 18th century. However, most of the basic rules of the modern game were established in 1845 in New York City by Alexander J. Cartwright. Among other things, he established that runners must be tagged out rather than the previous (and dangerous) method of hitting them with the ball.
Monday
Basketball began at Springfield College in Massachusetts over the winter of 1891-92. James Naismith, a teacher who had come to study under physical education pioneer Luther Halsey Gulick, wanted to honor a directive from his mentor to create a new game “that would be interesting, easy to learn, and easy to play in the winter and by artificial light.” The two square boxes Naismith asked the school janitor for were not to be found, but two peach baskets were, the original two nets.
Tuesday
Although football was derived from rugby and influenced by soccer, “father of American football” Walter Camp developed the rules to differentiate it from both sports, from his first conception of the game at Yale University in the 1880s and while personally developing the rule book until his death in 1925.
Wednesday
Bandy, hurling, and shinty, the games which are the most direct ancestors of modern ice hockey, were played in England, Ireland and Scotland since the 1400’s, though other “stick and ball” games were played among indigenous Americans, ancient Greeks, and Egyptians long before that. Bandy was likely played on ice without skates in the 1600s, then later with skates by the 1700s, and balls were later replaced by “cork-bungs” or barrel plugs, the precursor to the modern puck.
Thursday
“Jeu de paume,” a French game played since the 11th century, was the ancestor of modern tennis, which got the name from “tenez!” or “here it comes,” said to an opponent upon serving. Through the centuries, however, bare hands were replaced by a racquet, a rubber ball became the norm, the unique scoring system was standardized, and the courts went from grass to “hard” courts of concrete or acrylic.
Friday
Like many modern sports, golf also has roots in ancient games played all over the world, but the closest relative of modern golf came from 15th century eastern Scotland with players hitting pebbles with clubs. At one point, the game was banned for fear players would neglect their military training against the frequently-invading British. When the ban was lifted and royalty later adopted the game, its popularity blossomed, and by the 20th century standardized rules and governing bodies had been established worldwide.
Saturday
Bowling goes back over 7,000 years, with evidence of similar games going back to ancient Egypt and Polynesia. In the case of the latter, the standard lane length was 60 feet…the same as today. When played centuries ago in Germany, the game also had religious significance, and variations spread across Europe. Notably, this game, like golf (see above) had to be temporarily banned for distracting archers from their shooting practice, this time in England. English, Dutch, and German settlers helped bring the game to the U.S., where a tenth pin was added.
- Week of March 27, 2022
Random Acronym Week (RAW!) #6
Sunday
NATO = North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Monday
FAQ = Frequently Asked Questions
Tuesday
FOMO = Fear of Missing Out
Wednesday
BYOB = Bring Your Own Bottle/Booze/Beer
Thursday
UNICEF = United Nations Children’s Fund, originally United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund. (Consider donating below!)
Friday
OCD = Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Saturday
HIV/AIDS = Human Immunodeficiency Virus / Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
- Week of March 20, 2022
Howl At These Factoids
Sunday
Things which occur rarely are said to happen “once in a blue moon.” A blue moon is the second full moon in one calendar month, and it need not actually appear blue. It happens about every 2.5 years.
Monday
A “blood moon” often refers to the way the moon appears during a lunar eclipse, when it passes through Earth’s shadow. The light which illuminates the moon has filtered through our planet’s atmosphere, resulting in a red or brownish-looking moon.
Tuesday
When the moon is both full and closest in its orbit to the Earth, the result is often called a “supermoon,” which is a bit larger and brighter than other full moons.
Wednesday
The full, bright moon which occurs nearest the first day of autumn is sometimes called a “harvest moon” because it previously allowed farmers to harvest large fall crops into the night.
Thursday
Even though the Earth is much larger and more likely to be hit by meteors, many burn up in our atmosphere or otherwise have their craters erased by erosion, tectonics, or volcano action. The moon has no atmosphere, weather, active volcanoes or tectonics, so its surface is full of impact craters new and old.
Friday
It takes the moon about 29.5 days to go around the Earth once, and it takes about 365 days for the Earth to go around the sun. Since 29.5 x 12 = 354, our calendar months are longer than lunar months so as to fit 12 months more equally into a year.
Saturday
The visible phases of the moon go from right to left in the Northern Hemisphere, but left to right in the Southern Hemisphere.
- Week of March 13, 2022
Everyone Wants A Bigger Piece
Sunday
Apple pie is less American than you might think. A recipe appears in a British cookbook from 1390, and later was brought to the US by colonists from Europe. The apple tree isn’t even native to North America, but Asia.
Monday
Pi is the 16th letter of the Greek alphabet, but might be better known as the abbreviation for 3.14… This number, shown as a fraction as 22/7, is the ratio of circumference to diameter in a perfect circle.
Tuesday
The term “pie in the sky” which came to mean an idealistic but unlikely goal, was coined by labor activist Joe Hill in “The Preacher and The Slave,” a parody of the hymn “Sweet Bye and Bye.” The lyrics “work and pray, live on hay/You’ll get pie in the sky when you die” were intended to criticize religious leaders who sang of rewards in the afterlife but did little to improve workers’ lives in this one.
Wednesday
A pie to the face has been a slapstick staple for over a century, and it started with silent movies. Comedian Ben Turpin got the first known on-screen face pie in 1909’s “Mister Flip.”
Thursday
To “eat humble pie” indicates that you must admit your error. However, the origin of this term seems to come indirectly from “umble pie,” which was a pie filled with animal organs and entrails, especially those of deer.
Friday
Pies are old. There is evidence that ancient Egyptians made the first pies about 6,000 years ago. These original pies were made with barley, oats, rye, or wheat and filled with honey.
Saturday
The term “easy as pie” began in Australia in the 1920’s, and the term seems to be influenced by “pai,” the Maori word for “good.”
- Week of March 6, 2022
These Factoids are Shoe-Ins
Sunday
Brothers Adolph and Rudolph Dassler ran a successful shoe factory in Germany for 24 years before feuding and going their separate ways. Adidas became the brand named for ADolph DASsler, and Rudolph first named his shoes “Ruda” (RUdolph DAssler) but soon changed the name to “Puma”. The brothers are long dead, but their companies still compete to this day.
Monday
Speaking of brothers in the shoe business, Vans shoes are named for company co-founders Paul and Jim Van Doren.
Tuesday
The shoe Reebok is named after an African antelope, though spelled rhebok in the animal name.
Wednesday
Nike is the Greek winged goddess of victory. Notably, neither this name nor the iconic “swoosh” logo initially appealed to founder Phil Knight.
Thursday
Converse shoes were named after founder Marquis Mills Converse. The company has been a Nike subsidiary since 2003.
Friday
ASICS is an acronym from Latin, “Anima Sana In Corpore Sano” or “A Sound Mind in a Sound Body.”
Saturday
Chickens inspired the name “New Balance,” which founder William J. Riley watched in his yard and believed exhibited perfect balance as a result of their three-clawed foot. The three support points on the early shoe’s insole derived from this chicken foot revelation.
- Week of February 27, 2022
Any Way You Slice It
Sunday
A “breadbasket” region is one with particularly fertile soil and growing conditions for staple grain.
Monday
The term “bread and butter” has been used for centuries to describe someone’s dependable income and livelihood, but before that, the term described the necessities of life.
Tuesday
Bread is old. There is evidence of breadmaking going back to the neolithic period, about 10,000 years ago.
Wednesday
Bread is also popular. It is estimated that 60% of the world’s population eats bread every day, and at least two countries (Bulgaria and Turkey) eat an average of over 200 lbs./person annually.
Thursday
The fairytale of Hansel and Gretel mentioned the first trail of breadcrumbs used to find your way back where you came, though this is now a modern internet term.
Friday
To “break bread” with one or more people typically means not simply eating but sharing some fellowship through your shared meal. Notably, in biblical times when this phrase started, the much-harder bread would have been divided by breaking more than tearing, as with modern softer bread.
Saturday
As old as bread is, the first mention of any baker selling it pre-sliced is not until 1928. By the 1930’s however, automatic bread slicing machines became common in industry. Since then, “the greatest thing since sliced bread” has been somewhat of a”spoof marketing slogan,” as one author put it.
- Week of February 20, 2022
You Crack Me Up
Sunday
“Crackpot” derives from the term “cracked” for faulty and “pot” as short for brain, head, or skull. Notably, there is a town in England called “Crackpot,” but it was named from Norse words and is not related to the current meaning.
Monday
Crack cocaine, which is powder cocaine processed into a smokeable crystal form, has that name from the crackling sound heard during the heating and smoking of the stuff.
Tuesday
A disappointing thing is “not all its cracked up to be” because in an older meaning, the word “crack” means banter, news, or gossip. In other words, it’s not all it’s talked up to be.
Wednesday
One of history’s most famous fractures, on the Liberty Bell, is largely deliberate. When a small crack appeared in the bell, metalworkers employed “stop drilling” in 1846 and intentionally widened it to prevent further cracking and preserve the bell’s original tone. When yet another crack appeared, the bell was permanently retired from ringing.
Thursday
The term “cracker” was first applied in 1801 to a batch of long-lasting biscuits popular amongst seamen that was accidentally burnt, causing baker Josiah Bent to hear their characteristic cracking noises and apply the name.
Friday
“The Nutcracker” is a holiday staple ballet that many dance companies draw reliable income from, but it was originally unsuccessful in 1892. Tchaikovsky’s music from the ballet had better success on its own, however, and even he found the ballet’s first performance dull.
Saturday
Before the name was attached to the popcorn and peanut snack, the term “cracker jack” referred to things of high quality.
- Week of February 13, 2022
Everydayus Latin, pt. 4
Sunday
“Ad nauseum” means “to the point of nausea” and is usually applied to something over-repeated.
Monday
“Terra firma” means “solid ground,” often referring to something certain.
Tuesday
“Pro forma” means “for form,” or for appearance’s sake, but is also a modern accounting term.
Wednesday
“Ad hominem” is short for “argumentum ad hominem” and indicates a personal attack on an individual, instead of debating the merits of their idea or argument.
Thursday
“Alter ego,” unsurprisingly, means “the other I.”
Friday
“Anno domini,” often abbreviated as “A.D.” and written after dates since the year 0 on the modern Christian calendar, means “the year of the lord.”
Saturday
“Cirriculum vitae,” often shortened to “C.V.” means “the course of one’s life,” thought it usually describes a resume or professional qualifications.
- Week of February 6, 2022
How Sweet It Is
Sunday
Sugar comes from sugar cane or sugar beet juice, and from there is processed into its many varieties.
Monday
Brown sugar is brown from molasses, either left in or added to white sugar in varying amounts. White sugar is separated from molasses in processing.
Tuesday
Fifth century Indians learned to crystalize sugarcane juice and called that sugar “khanda,” the Sanskrit word from which we get “candy.”
Wednesday
Over one-third of the added sugar in the American diet comes from soda, energy, and sports drinks, while only 5-7% comes from candy.
Thursday
Chemically speaking, sugars end in “-ose,” like sucrose, fructose, glucose, etc., or -saccharide, such as monosaccharide or disaccharide.
Friday
Americans now consume a mind-boggling 11 million metric tons of sugar annually, more than any other nation by far.
Saturday
Sugar was not so sweet for its historical workers. Unfortunately, slavery and forced labor played a big role in early sugar production, and African slaves and sugar were part of the infamous “triangle trade” between Africa, the Caribbean, and New England.
- Week of January 30, 2022
Flash Bang
Sunday
Lightning occurs because during a storm, static electricity is created between water droplets in warm air meeting ice crystals in cold air. Updrafts carry positively-charged particles upwards to the top of clouds while downdrafts carry negatively charged particles downward. Eventually, there must be a release of this building static imbalance, and lightning accomplishes this by striking between clouds or between clouds and the ground.
Monday
Thunder occurs because lightning is so hot, heating the air around it to about 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit – five times hotter than the sun. This intense heat causes a rapid air pressure increase, which radiates outward from the lightning strike and causes the audio effect we know as thunder.
Tuesday
Although both are produced by the same event, lightning is seen before thunder is heard because light travels much faster than sound, about 300,000,000 meters/sec vs. 343 meters/sec.
Wednesday
A recent volcano eruption in the South Pacific led to over 400,000 recorded nearby lightning strikes, since lots of static electricity builds up among the ash and particles sent airborne after such eruptions.
Thursday
The term “steal my thunder” has a unique origin story. In 1704, British playwright John Dennis developed a new method to crate a thunder sound for his play. The play was unsuccessful and cut short, but the theater re-used the thunder technique for a run of Macbeth. The bitter playwright exclaimed something to the effect of “Damn them! They will not let my play run, but they steal my thunder!”
Friday
Amazingly, about 90% of lightning strike victims survive, but survivors often suffer from lingering disabilities as a result of the massive shock’s effect on the brain and body.
Saturday
You might not see lightning everyday, but it’s happening somewhere. Worldwide, the frequency of lightning strikes is about 44 per second, or 1.4 billion strikes per year.
- Week if January 23, 2022
Suck it Up
Sunday
“The straw that broke the camel’s back” is a metaphor for the final annoyance, demand, or slight that someone is willing to calmly tolerate. Camels often carry loads, and this term derives from an old fable about a shortsighted camel owner who had so overburdened his animal that he found out even one more straw was too much. “The last straw” and “the final straw” derive from this also.
Monday
Just as a scarecrow is an insubstantial being fabricated from straw, a “straw man” argument is created to be easily attacked, and a “straw man” in a transaction is a token or stand-in person or entity put in place for other’s purposes.
Tuesday
The practice of “drawing straws” is when straws are chosen from the hand of someone who conceals their lengths in his or her fist. The person who chooses the shortest straw typically must do an unpleasant task.
Wednesday
A “straw poll” is an informal poll to quickly gauge positions on a topic. The origin of this seems to come from looking at straw to determine which way the wind is blowing.
Thursday
The term “grasping at straws” for a hopeless final effort comes from an old proverb that a “drowning man will catch at straws,” or the thin reeds growing at the side of a river, in a futile attempt to save himself.
Friday
Drinking straws are a very old idea. Several meter-long metal tubes in a Russian museum are now believed to be beer drinking straws about 5,000 years old.
Saturday
Since clay and straw are traditional ingredients of bricks, the term “to make bricks without straw” refers to doing the impossible or without the necessary resources. There is also a Biblical story where Pharoah makes the Israelites gather their own straw for his brickmaking, rather that supply it to them, and without reducing their daily quota.
- Week of January 16, 2022
Those Letters After Your Name
Sunday
PhD = Doctor of Philosophy
Monday
JD = Juris Doctor (law degree)
Tuesday
MD = Doctor of Medicine, from Latin Medicinae Doctor
Wednesday
MBA = Masters of Business Administration
Thursday
DDS = Doctor of Dental Surgery
Friday
LCSW = Licensed Clinical Social Worker
Saturday
RN = Registered Nurse
- Week of January 9, 2022
Weightier Matters
Sunday
Since lead is a very heavy metal, the term “get the lead out,” originally ended with “…of your shoes” or “…of your pants” and means that you should speed up whatever you’re doing. And of course, “Get the Led Out” is a favorite title of classic rock radio stations for the time they play some Led Zeppelin songs.
Monday
In some cases, however, getting the lead out is a public health issue. Until the 1970s, both gasoline and residential paint sold in the US contained lead, and both products were known to cause serious health problems to those exposed to them, including children.
Tuesday
Lead has long been a standard material in bullets, since it is heavy and can deliver a lot of damage to targets. However, lead bullets can also give off a powdery residue when fired and fragment easily upon impact, leading to some health concerns among indoor firing ranges, wildlife advocates, and game meat enthusiasts.
Wednesday
A habitually speedy or aggressive driver is called a “leadfoot” because their foot is so heavy on the accelerator.
Thursday
While you wouldn’t want lead in your body, you’d want it around your body when dealing with radiation. From lead aprons near X-ray machines to lead walls in fallout shelters, this heavy metal is well known to block radiation.
Friday
The band Led Zeppelin was referencing the dense metal, but removed the “a” so nobody would confuse it with “lead” as in leader. (For the rest of the band name story, see the week of 4/4/2021.)
Saturday
Lead’s chemical symbol is “Pb” instead of “Ld” or the like because its Latin name is plumbum.
- Week of January 2, 2021
Do Treble Yourself
Among the many common terms with musical roots:
Sunday
To be “low key” means to be restrained or mellow, a term which seems to have musical origins, since lower musical keys have lower and more muted tones. Charles Dickens was among the first to use this term.
Monday
Conversely, “keyed up” means anxious, usually in anticipation. To “key up” an instrument is to tune it to a certain key.
Tuesday
To “play it by ear” is to improvise in a given situation, as opposed to following known rules. This began as a reference to people who can play music without referring to printed material, or without formal training.
Wednesday
“To pull out all the stops,” or to give something all your attention and effort, is originally referred to the workings of a pipe organ. Each pipe has a stop which can prevent pressurized air from going into that chamber, and coordinating these stops changes the sound of the music as desired. However, when all the stops are pulled out, the instrument plays at full volume and capacity.
Thursday
The expression “swan song” for a comes from a long-debunked myth that swans live silent lives until just before dying, when they a sing a singularly beautiful, melancholy song. Though even many ancient Romans knew better, this idea was used by Chaucer and Shakespeare, and the phrase remains common to describe a final performance.
Friday
“Toot (or blow) your own horn,” a term indicating praise of one’s self, has roots back to the practice of announcing the arrival of an important person with trumpets.
Saturday
To “march to the beat of a different drummer” is to have different principles and attitudes than those around you, and derives from Walden by Henry David Thoreau, where he writes “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.”
- Week of December 26, 2021
Be A Good Sport, pt. II
Sunday
Likely the only NFL team named for gothic poetry, the Baltimore Ravens get their name from former resident Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.”
Monday
The creation of the New Orleans Saints’ franchise was approved on All Saints’ Day, and “When the Saints Go Marching In” is a song long associated with the city’s jazz heritage. It also helped that the name was also a favorite in a local newspaper’s “name the team” contest.
Tuesday
The digging of a skyscraper foundation in 1970s Nashville unearthed a saber-toothed tiger’s leg bone and fang, a very rare find. Decades later, this unique discovery inspired the naming of the city’s NHL hockey team, the Predators.
Wednesday
Hurricanes Fran and Bertha, having hit North Carolina in 1996, inspired the naming of the NHL’s newly-moved Carolina Hurricanes before the team’s first 1997 game in their new location.
Thursday
The first Catholic Spanish mission in California was in San Diego, so their MLB team is the Padres, which means “priest” or “father” in Spanish.
Friday
“Trolley dodgers” was an early 20th-century nickname for the New York pedestrians who dodged streetcars as they walked the city. Also the name of this New York baseball team, the “Dodgers” stayed with them when they moved to LA in 1957.
Saturday
There are pace horses that race, and there are pace cars in auto racing, and Indiana has a rich history of both kinds, hence the NBA team being named the Pacers.
- Week of December 19, 2021
Digital Acronym Week #4