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That's interesting, you don't often see this kind of word in english; more so in other languages. In a way you could say the word is adscititious to the language in and of itself

What's the Word: ADSCITITIOUS pronunciation: [ad-sih-TISH-əs] Part of speech: adjective Origin: Latin, 17th century Meaning: 1. Forming an addition or supplement; not integral or intrinsic. Examples: "When the dense fog stranded hundreds of travelers, the resort struggled to feed the adscititious crowd." "The Sunday papers used to come with more than a half-dozen adscititious magazines and promotional flyers." About Adscititious “Adscititious” is based on the Latin “adscitus,” meaning “admitted.” Did you Know? The word “adscititious” has a two-part definition: “forming an addition or supplement” and also “not integral.” While both parts make up the definition, they can be at odds with each other — something that is not integral can be seen as unneeded. However, supplements are usually helpful additions, and sometimes even necessary. Consider the nutritional supplement folic acid. This might fit both sides of the definition of adscititious; it’s not integral to most adult diets, but it’s extremely important to supplement as a prenatal vitamin.

Fact of the Day - SPUD WRENCH Did you know... Wrenches get the best nicknames out of virtually any tool. Casual home improvement projects don’t usually call for a spud wrench, a tool that turns fasteners on one end and features a long, tapered spike on the other. It’s a curious design, albeit one that still occupies the equipment collection of specialty workers. In the tradition of many other wrenches—the monkey wrench, the Allen wrench, and the Crescent wrench—it also sports a strange name. So why is it called a “spud wrench”? And what exactly is it used for? The Origin of Spud Wrench The Oxford English Dictionary’s first citation for the term spud wrench in print occurred in 1939 (though we were able to actually date a reference back to 1906). Per the OED, a book with the high-octane title of Steam and Hot Water Fitting described the spud wrench as “another handy tool … made to fit the spuds of the different sizes of the union radiator valves and traps.” In this instance, spud appears to refer to a plumbing component, hence the need for a specialty wrench. Another OED citation, this one coming in 1960, provides a different perspective with some regrettable language. The wrench “is so called because the handle is formed into a long, heavy pin (or spud) that is thrust through and used by the erection men for matching up holes in connections to be fastened together.” In one case, the spud is a part. In the latter, it’s the handle itself—a piercing tool used by “erection men” to line up holes in steelwork so that a bolt or other securing hardware can be threaded through. But the OED omits any etymology for the term. One possible explanation comes with the slang term for food. Spud was used to describe a potato as far back as the 1800s. The tool used to uproot the potato was also known as a spud. The most likely explanation is that a spud wrench may have reminded someone of such a tool, though its purpose was to align holes, not to be used for farming work. Why People Reach for a Spud Wrench The spud wrench grew popular with the growth of high-rise construction in the 20th century when workers had to secure iron or steel beams and girders and needed a tool that could perform several functions at once. The tool became known as an ironworker’s spud wrench for this reason, though it also had applications in automotive assembly. The appeal was in the versatility: Line up two holes with the tapered end, then flip it to use the wrench to secure a bolt. But the wrench isn’t relegated strictly to steelwork. As the OED noted, plumbers use a spud wrench to loosen specific components (bolts, collars) in older toilets, which connect the toilet with the refill water tank. This version of the spud wrench, however, is considerably different in design than the construction spud wrench, with two adjustable heads meant to circumvent the tight space of plumbing fasteners. Spud wrenches are still part of the ironworker’s tool belt. They’re emblematic enough of the trade that in 2003, a gathering of workers involved a spud wrench tossing competition in which players scored points by landing the wrench’s spiked end on a bull’s eye 25 feet away. Tossing, dropping, or otherwise mishandling a heavy tool of impalement can have consequences. In 1979, a Missourian worker named Al Shaw was sitting on a beam when a spud wrench fell 125 feet, plunging into his back. It missed his spinal column by just 2 inches. Source: Why Is It Called a “Spud Wrench”?

What's the Word: NOCUOUS pronunciation: [NAHK-yoo-əs] Part of speech: adjective Origin: Latin, mid-17th century Meaning: 1. Noxious, harmful, or poisonous. Examples: "The lab techs wore close-fitting face masks to protect them from the nocuous liquids they were mixing." "Removing the nocuous plants growing behind the garden was a complicated job." About Nocuous “Nocuous” is based on the Latin “nocuus,” an adjective based on the verb “nocere,” meaning “to hurt.” Did you Know? The definition for “nocuous” in the Oxford English Dictionary includes the words “poisonous” and “venomous.” But talk to a veterinarian or park ranger, and they’ll tell you that those two words are not synonyms. A poison is a toxin that enters the body by inhalation, swallowing, or absorption through the skin (think: poison ivy). Venom is a toxin that enters the body through injection: snake bites, bee stings, spider bites, etc. So, while both venom and poison are nocuous in that they are harmful, they are not synonymous with each other.

Fact of the Day - DEFECTIVE CARS Did you know... Having your engine burst into flames after driving off the car lot is a sour experience. But where did the association with lemons come from? Shopping for a car, new or used, can be a nerve-wracking experience. If you buy new, you risk sticker shock and dealer add-ons. Purchase used cars and you’re never quite sure if your new vehicle will turn into a headache 10 miles down the road. In the latter case, we sometimes refer to defective cars as “lemons.” States even refer to their consumer protection bills against crummy cars as “lemon laws.” But why do we associate a death trap with a tangy fruit? The Connection Between Cars and Lemons According to Green’s Dictionary of Slang, using lemon to denote a fraudulent or worthless purchase dates back to 1909; its use in reference to cars specifically goes back to 1923, when one used car dealer profiled in The Oakland Tribune is said to have “congratulated himself upon having rid himself of a lemon finally.” Lemon as a noun or adjective has often been associated with something unpleasant or unpalatable—as some people find the tartness of the lemon to be—or something that’s turned sour. The car-lemon connection may have been cemented with an ad Volkswagen ran in the 1960s. Like most of their minimalist advertising from the period, it consisted of a photo of a car and a stark caption: “lemon.” The copy goes on to say that Volkswagen’s quality inspectors had caught several flaws with this particular car, ensuring it didn’t arrive to a dealership with those blemishes intact. “We pluck the lemons,” the ad concluded. “You get the plums.” The Origin of Lemon Laws It wasn’t until 1975, though, that consumers had federal lemon protection. The Magnuson Moss Federal Trade Commission Improvements Act guaranteed consumers wouldn’t be stuck with a faulty consumer product, including cars, or suffer unreasonable warranty terms. The law applies to consumer items of all types, though cars were of particular concern as they’re often the most expensive item prone to mechanical failure a person can buy. It quickly became known as “the lemon law,” though it really refers more to the warranty of the vehicle than the vehicle itself. In New York, for example, state law says that a new car must conform to the manufacturer’s warranty and that, if repair cannot be made within a reasonable number of attempts, the purchaser is due a refund. The lemon laws can vary by state and by vehicle condition, so it’s important to know which rules apply. It’s also crucial to get an inspection and pull a motor vehicle history report when buying used and to pay attention to what a dealer’s window sticker might say about a vehicle being sold with a guarantee or as-is. There is one situation where having a lemon can pay off—sort of. According to analysts at iSeeCars, who examined used car prices against the MSRP of a new car, one color had the lowest depreciation at 4.5 percent, far lower than the average of 15 percent. That color? Yellow. Source: Why Do We Call Defective Cars “Lemons”?

What's the Word: SERRIED pronunciation: [SAIR-eed] Part of speech: adjective Origin: French, mid-17th century Meaning: 1. (Of rows of people or things) Standing close together. Examples: "The doors opened to reveal the elevator was already full of serried passengers." "I wanted to stay for the last band of the night, but the crowd was so serried, I could barely breathe." About Serried The adjective “serried” is based on the related verb “serry” (meaning “press close”), a loanword from the French “serré,” meaning “tight,” “cramped,” or “locked.” Did you Know? One of the places most famously full of serried travelers is the Tokyo subway system, which moves 9 million people every day. During off-hours, Tokyo’s subways are rarely crowded, but as rush hour begins, a Tokyo train has a more tightly serried population than most spots on Earth. The crowds are so heavy that the subway authority employs white-gloved attendants (known as “passenger pushers”) to squeeze riders into cars in a serried formation in order to allow the doors to close.

Fact of the day - STONE TOOLS Did you know... Humans are often thought of as the smartest animals, and one of the perks of our top-notch brains (with a little help from our opposable thumbs) is supposedly that we’re the only species that can use tools. That’s what we used to think, anyway. More recently, research has shown that our tool-use ability is not as unique as we once believed. Take, for instance, the capuchin monkey. Research published in 2019 showed that these pint-sized creatures, native to Central and South America — and sometimes known as “organ grinder” monkeys — have been using stone tools to process food for more than 3,000 years. Archaeologists analyzing a site in Brazil’s Serra da Capivara National Park discovered that the monkeys had used rounded quartzite stones to smash open cashew husks against tree roots or stone “anvils.” After digging through layers of sediment in four phases of excavation, the scientists found stone tools that had been used by the capuchins dating back around 3,000 years. The researchers also found signs that the monkeys’ tool use had changed over time — the creatures first used smaller stone tools, and then around 560 years ago, switched to larger ones, which may have meant they were eating harder foods, according to National Geographic. This evolution could have occurred due to different groups of capuchins moving into the area, or a change in the local plants. Either way, the study marked the first time such an evolution in tool use had been seen in a nonhuman species. Scientists suspect that further exploration of this site, and others like it, could give an unprecedented look at humanity’s own tool-use evolution, which began millions of years ago. Furthermore, primates — the taxonomic order to which humans also belong — aren’t the only ones gifted with brains capable of using tools. Elephants, dolphins, and a variety of birds are only a few of the other species that use tools — whether sticks, rocks, or tree limbs — to survive and thrive on planet Earth. Orangutans know how to make instruments. When it comes to primitive tools, instruments don’t usually count — that is, unless you’re an orangutan. In 2009, scientists revealed that orangutans use folded leaves to make sounds that may trick predators into thinking they’re bigger than they actually are. These musical noises, called “kiss squeaks,” were even used by wild orangutans who sensed the human researchers as a threat. This discovery is the first known nonhuman instrument and nonhuman tool used for communication. It’s also not even the extent of the orangutans’ impressive, tool-making abilities. A 2018 study revealed that orangutans were better at making tools than human children up to age 8. This growing body of scholarship only shows that complex intelligence is not a trait exclusively enjoyed by Homo sapiens. Source: Monkeys have been using stone tools for thousands of years.

What's the Word: PENTIMENTO pronunciation: [pen-tə-MEN-toh] Part of speech: noun Origin: Italian, 19th century Meaning: 1. A visible trace of earlier painting beneath a layer or layers of paint on a canvas. Examples: "Beneath the image of the bull in the center of the painting, there was a pentimento of a ship’s mast." "Robyn left a pentimento of the image he had painted over peeking out from beneath his painting." About Pentimento The Italian “pentimento” means “to repent,” or “to make a correction or update.” In English, it describes the visible memory of a previous image beneath a more recent painting as an artifact of artistic correction or update to the previous work of art. Did you Know? Often, a pentimento (“pentimenti” is the plural form) is the product of correction in a painting. In some cases, a painting may be entirely painted over with a new work, leaving behind the ghost of the original image as a pentimento. However, pentimenti may reveal aspects of the artist’s process. Works by most of the great masters rarely contain these remnants, but Caravaggio and Rembrandt tended to paint more experimentally, with less prior planning. They more frequently made changes on canvas as they worked, sometimes leaving pentimenti.

Fact of the Day - THE TOOTH FAIRY Did you know... While the Tooth Fairy herself may be surprisingly modern, the bits of folklore that went into her creation are hundreds of years old. The Tooth Fairy is a familiar figure to millions of children around the world. The mythical character is most popular in English-speaking countries, with kids knowing that if they put a lost baby tooth under their pillow at night, the elusive Tooth Fairy will sneak in and replace it with money. Although not as big of a deal as a visit from the other two major fictional gift-givers—Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny—a visit from the Tooth Fairy is still highly anticipated. But compared to jolly St. Nick and the egg-bearing bunny, both of whom have roots that date back hundreds of years, the Tooth Fairy is a relatively modern invention. Here’s the strange—and surprisingly rodent-filled—origin story of the winged figure. The Tooth Fairy Takes Flight The Tooth Fairy has been swapping milk teeth for money for generations. But it wasn’t until the 1970s that the history behind the folklore started being uncovered. In 1972, Rosemary Wells, a professor at Chicago’s Northwestern University Dental School, was asked by a student about the history of the Tooth Fairy. “I thought I’d simply go to the library, get the information and bring it back,” she explained in a 1992 interview. But Wells couldn’t find anything about the mythological fairy and so decided to conduct her own investigation. After years of research, she became the foremost Tooth Fairy expert—her business card even identified her as the “Tooth Fairy consultant.” While the myth of the Tooth Fairy may seem like a tale as old as time, the story’s first mention in print is surprisingly recent. In a September 1908 issue of the Chicago Daily Tribune, the Household Hints column featured a tip from reader Lillian Brown: “Many a refractory child will allow a loose tooth to be removed if he knows about the tooth fairy. If he takes his little tooth and puts it under the pillow when he goes to bed the tooth fairy will come in the night and take it away, and in its place will leave some little gift.” Tales of the Tooth Fairy were likely being shared orally around the time Brown wrote in with her tip, but the figure doesn’t pop up again in print until 1927, in Esther Watkins Arnold’s short children’s play The Tooth Fairy. The myth then continued to spread its wings throughout the 20th century—particularly after World War II. Folklorist Tad Tuleja suggests three reasons for the Tooth Fairy’s rise in popularity during the mid-20th century. Firstly, people experienced greater prosperity after the war, which meant many parents could now afford to give their kids a little bit of money. It was also around this time that the traditional family set up became more child-orientated; this led to parents being more likely to soothe their children’s small anxieties (for instance, over losing a tooth). Finally, there was the popularity and influence of fairy-filled Disney films—from the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella (1950) to Tinkerbelle in Peter Pan (1953). There’s usually a general consensus about what mythical characters look like—for instance, Santa is typically bearded, rotund, and red-suited—but the lines are a little more blurred with the Tooth Fairy. In 1984, Wells conducted a survey and found that 74 percent of participants believed the Tooth Fairy was female, while 12 percent thought the figure was male (the remaining 8 percent thought they could be either gender). Some children don’t even picture the Tooth Fairy as a humanoid being at all: Wells documented one kid who imagined a Tooth Fairy Dragon. In today’s culture, the Tooth Fairy is most often depicted as a small female fairy, but there are also some more creative modern interpretations, such as half-hummingbird Toothiana from Rise of the Guardians (2012). It All Started with a Mouse Although the Tooth Fairy is typically anthropomorphic, the myth may have originated from older Continental European stories of a Tooth Mouse. To this day, in many counties, the tooth-for-money swap is said to be performed by a small rodent rather than a winged fairy. It’s thought this mouse-based myth may have been blended together with the numerous children’s tales about fairies to produce the Tooth Fairy that we know today. In France, baby teeth are collected by La Petite Souris (The Little Mouse), who can be traced back to Madame d’Aulnoy’s 1697 fairy tale La bonne petite souris (The Little Good Mouse). The story features a fairy who can turn into a mouse and who knocks out an evil king’s teeth (but doesn’t exchange them for money). This tale was translated into English in 1890—less than two decades before the Tooth Fairy first appeared in print. In Spain, the tooth-collecting mouse is El Ratoncito Pérez (Pérez the Little Mouse), who first appeared in Fernán Caballero’s Cuentos, oraciones, adivinanzas y refranes populares (1877). But Pérez didn’t become the Tooth Mouse until 1894, when Luis Coloma was asked to write a story for Alfonso XIII, the child King of Spain who had just lost his first milk tooth. Rather than cash, Pérez left a present fit for a king—the Order of the Golden Fleece—under the fictional monarch’s pillow. The story was first published in English in 1914, when tales of the Tooth Fairy were starting to take root. Stories of a Tooth Mouse weren’t the first time that myths and rituals had been created around childhood tooth loss, though. In the Old Norse poem Grímnismál, it’s said that Álfheimr—the Land of the Elves—was a “tooth gift” for the god Freyr. In New Guinea and Senegal, it was tradition to bury baby teeth, while in South Korea kids would throw their pearly whites onto the roof. But the ritual of offering teeth to a mouse is the most prevalent and enduring practice (although it’s now rivaled by the Tooth Fairy), having been documented in cultures around the world. Along with various countries in Europe, folklore about a Tooth Mouse ranges from Ukraine and South Africa to numerous Latin American countries. Children don’t always receive money; in some countries the tooth is offered in a sympathetic magic exchange, with the belief being that it’ll make their adult gnashers grow in as strongly as a rodent’s teeth. Source: The Strange Origins of the Tooth Fairy

Fact of the Day - BIRDS Did you know.... South America is known for its stunning avian diversity, with colorful toucans, ubiquitous parrots, and an untold number of other feathered friends. (Seriously, there are new species being discovered every year.) But no country in South America — or the world, for that matter — compares to Colombia. With around 1,900 bird species within its borders, the country hosts nearly 20% of all avian species in the world, which is more than any other nation. Although some of the most common varieties — like sparrows, tanagers, and finches — may be recognizable to birders in more northern climates, the critically endangered blue-billed curassow (Crax alberti) and the rare Cauca guan (Penelope perspicax) are just a few of the dozens of species endemic to Colombia. And the country takes its natural wonders seriously. As one of the most biodiverse nations in the world, with the Amazon taking up 35% of the country’s landmass, Colombia committed to declaring 30% of its land a protected area by 2030 — and got it done eight years early. A 2023 study also found that Colombia takes an unusual approach to conserving its natural areas by adding biodiversity protection as a secondary goal of many other policy initiatives, such as ones addressing poverty and civil strife. That doesn’t mean Colombia is immune to threats of deforestation and climate change, but the country is working hard to protect its bounty — which includes 10% of the world’s total species. Colombia is home to a world-famous river known as the “liquid rainbow.” Some of the world’s rivers are known for historical reasons (Italy’s Rubicon) or their proximity to major centers of power (London’s Thames), but one of the most amazing rivers in the world lies in the backwoods of Colombia. In fact, it was so well hidden that the river was only discovered by non-Indigenous people a little more than 50 years ago. Called Caño Cristales, or the “Crystal Channel,” the river is located in central Colombia’s Sierra de La Macarena National Natural Park and is known for its vibrant display of colors, earning it the nickname “liquid rainbow.” The river gets its mixture of yellows, greens, blues, blacks, and especially reds from the reproductive process of aquatic plants (Macarenia clavigera) that live in the riverbed. Because water levels are affected by the country’s wet and dry seasons, the best time to glimpse this river is from May until November. Source: Colombia has more bird species than any other country.

Fact of the Day - MONKEY BREAD Did you know... The beloved pastry has a whimsical—yet undoubtedly odd—name. Monkey bread—a sticky pull-apart pastry that’s typically made from canned biscuit dough—is a sugary, cinnamony treat. Perhaps it’s a traditional part of your family’s Christmas feasts. Or maybe grandma was known for whipping it up for special brunches. Despite its seemingly silly name, monkey bread has nothing to do with actual monkeys. So why is this sweet pastry named after primates? Let’s dig into the history of monkey bread, starting from the very beginning. Monkey Bread’s Hungarian Roots Before it became a centerpiece on Americans’ tables, this dish was known as something else entirely. Food historians trace its roots to aranygaluska, a Hungarian dessert that translates to “golden dumpling.” This pull-apart sweet bread was brought to the U.S. by Hungarian Jewish immigrants in the late 19th century. Aranygaluska was a bakery staple in immigrant communities, especially in California, for several decades. In the 1970s, Betty Crocker even featured it in a cookbook; the book labeled the sweet dish as “Hungarian Coffee Cake.” Eventually, the dish became known as “monkey bread”—a name that has stuck around to this day. And thanks to actress and first lady Nancy Reagan (a big fan of the treat), monkey bread made it to the White House Christmas table, cementing its status as a classic. The pastry has continued to evolve; now, there are seemingly countless recipes floating around the internet for traditional monkey bread, other sweet versions, and even savory spins on the dish. The Many Theories Behind Monkey Bread’s Name There’s no clear answer as to how monkey bread got its name. But, like most good mysteries, there are several theories at play. The most common explanation is that it’s named after the way it’s eaten: with your fingers, pulling apart the sticky pieces of dough one by one, much like a monkey might eat something. Some also trace it back to 20th-century slang. In the 1940s, monkey food was Southern slang for casual snacks you could pick at. That, combined with jumble bread—another old-timey term for breads made from small pieces of dough—could have led to monkey bread. Another theory credits silent film star ZaSu Pitts, who reportedly used the term in a 1945 cooking column after bringing the recipe home from Nashville. Pitts was known for her lavish Hollywood parties; and apparently, her monkey bread was a hit. In the end, monkey bread might just be one of those names that stuck, literally and figuratively. Like the dessert itself, it’s a little weird and oddly delightful. Source: Why Is It Called “Monkey Bread”?

Fact of the Day - WORST ANIMAL DADDIES Did you know... These dads won’t be getting any Father’s Day cards this June. In addition to getting your dad a card or new tie this Father’s Day, be sure to thank him for not trying to eat you when you were young. Devouring babies may sound savage and strange, but when it comes to certain species, kids becoming a meal for their fathers is just par for the course. Lions You may already know that a male lion that recently became head of his pride will usually kill all the cubs sired by the previous leader. But while that makes lions terrible step-dads, it doesn’t make them terrible fathers. What makes lions bad dads is a combination of greed and laziness. Papa lions spend most of their day lying in the shade, waiting for one of their mates to bring home dinner. The female does the majority of the hunting and pretty much all of the parenting; the male’s job is to protect his territory from other prides and scavengers like hyenas. Once the mama brings home her kill, the male lion is always the first one to eat and he often leaves only scraps for the rest of the pride—including any of his recently weaned children. Grizzly Bears It’s rare for any animal-kingdom father to eat his own young when he isn’t desperate for food, but the male grizzly bear will do just that. These creatures are extremely protective of their territories—which can range all the way up to 1500 miles—and are opportunistic hunters, willing to kill and eat anything that happens to enter their home turf. Even cubs, whether they’ve sired them or not. Males may also kill cubs to force their mother to go into estrus so he can breed with her. Bass There are a lot of bad aquatic fathers. In fact, even those that are highly protective of their spawn, like male bass, are still prone to eating their own children. In the case of the bass, this occurs after most of the newborns have swum away and a few stragglers remain. Suddenly daddy stops protecting his kids from predators and becomes a predator himself, swallowing up all of the stragglers as a reward to himself for helping the strong ones stay alive. Sand Goby Similarly, the male sand goby is relentless about guarding his eggs from predators, but even if he has plenty of extra food available, he will still eat about a third of his brood. Research into how he decides which eggs to keep and which to eat reveals that size matters: male gobies tend to eat the largest eggs. In many species, large babies mean a higher chance for survival—and thus, they are the most protected members of the family—but the sand goby knows that the largest eggs take longest to hatch. Pops snacks on the eggs that would take the longest to develop so he can get out of there and back to mating as soon as possible. Assassin Bug With a name like “assassin bug” you’d hardly expect this insect to be sweet, but filial cannibalism is still pretty gruesome. The male assassin bug is tasked with protecting his eggs until they hatch. His tactic mostly involves eating the eggs on the outside edges of the brood, which are otherwise most likely to fall victim to parasitic wasps. This defensive strategy is so hardwired that the bugs do it even in laboratory settings completely devoid of any potential parasites. Scientists believe this is because eating the eggs doesn’t only protect the insects against possible parasites, but also provides the male assassin bug with ample nutrients when his guard duty leaves him unable to forage. Interestingly, assassin bugs do have a bit of a soft spot—the males are some of the only insects that are willing to adopt broods from other fathers. (They don’t eat any extra eggs when their kids are adopted.) Source: 5 of the Worst Fathers In the Animal Kingdom

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Fact of the Day - DAKOTAS AND CAROLINAS Did you know.... We have an even 50 states thanks to these geographic decisions. If the colony of Carolina and the Dakota Territory hadn’t decided to split themselves up a few hundred years ago, we’d have only 48 states right now. But why did these particular places become geographic variants of each other? Here are the answers. Why Is there a North and South Carolina? John White’s painting of an Indigenous village at the time of the English settlers’ arrival at Roanoke Island, in present-day North Carolina, 1585. | Print Collector/GettyImages Though French officials had attempted to establish forts along the coast, permanent European settlement of the Carolinas began with Juan Ponce de León claiming most of the present-day southeastern U.S. for Spain in 1513 and calling it La Florida. Indigenous peoples resisted the Spanish incursion for decades and Spain eventually abandoned its efforts to settle the region. In 1585, Sir Walter Raleigh convinced a group of English settlers to establish a colony on Roanoke Island, but by 1590, their fort had been abandoned and the people had mysteriously disappeared. Then, England’s Attorney General Sir Robert Heath managed the Carolina territory for King Charles I of England. Heath made no attempts at colonizing the area and, following the king’s execution in 1649, Heath fled to France. Heath’s heirs would eventually try to reassert their claim to the territory, but King Charles II ruled the claim invalid and gave ownership to a group of eight noblemen known as the Lords Proprietors. The Lords—helmed primarily by Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, who was influenced and assisted by the philosopher John Locke—retained control of the area from 1663 to 1729, with members of the eight-man group being replaced as necessary with other lords. A 1676 map of Carolina prior to the split. | Geographicus Rare Antique Maps, Wikimedia Commons // Public Domain The Lords Proprietors set up a framework for governance and settlement of Carolina and dispatched an expedition of colonists. Mostly, though, they fought constantly and were unable to make decisions that made sense for the economic development of the enormous territory. None of the original eight lords ever set foot in North America. They hired and fired a laundry list of governors, noted in their papers: “John Jenkins was deposed,” “Thomas Miller was overthrown and jailed by ... ‘armed rebels,’ ” “Thomas Eastchurch was forbidden to enter the colony,” and “Seth Sothel was accused ... of numerous crimes for which he was tried, convicted, and banished.” On top of all that, wars broke out with the Tuscarora and Yamasee tribes. The lords, realizing that this strategy wasn't working, appointed a governor to oversee the entire territory and a deputy governor to handle the northern half in 1710. Two years later Carolina was permanently divided into north and south territories. The English Crown eventually took back South Carolina from the Lords Proprietors and made it a royal colony; the Crown also convinced the reluctant Lords to sell back their shares of North Carolina, and it was made a royal colony in 1729. Both retained this status until they ratified the U.S. Constitution in 1788 (South Carolina) and 1789 (North Carolina). The Origins of North and South Dakota A flotilla of covered wagons and military equipment accompanies George Armstrong Custer’s 1874 expedition to the Black Hills. | Historical/GettyImages Most of the land that would become North and South Dakota was acquired by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. After Minnesota was admitted to the Union in 1858 and the federal government and Sioux officials signed the Yankton Treaty the same year, the remaining land and ceded territory was organized into the Dakota Territory. But it wasn’t until the 1874 discovery of gold in the Black Hills, the sacred land of the Sioux, did prospectors and the military really begin invading the area. (Ironically, Dakota means “friend” or “ally” in the Dakota language.) Railroads followed the gold rush; settlers poured into the upper Great Plains. Until 1883, Yankton in the far southeastern corner served as the capital of the whole territory, but northern settlers refused to recognize the remote town as the center of governance. They declared their own capital, Bismarck, in 1872. This caused enough tension to require a split down the 46th parallel into two territories—but there were other factors in play. President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, and the Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives resisted giving the Dakotas statehood, since the overwhelmingly Republican states would likely elect Republicans to Congress. The situation changed when Republican Benjamin Harrison was elected president and Republicans gained majorities in both houses of Congress, paving the way for a statehood bill to pass. On November 2, 1889, North and South Dakota were admitted to the union, becoming the 39th and 40th states, respectively. Source: Why Are There Two Dakotas and Two Carolinas?

Fact of the Day - COSMIC LATTE Did you know..... We tend to think of space as cold and dark, but that’s only because most stars are light-years away from the pale blue dot we call home. The universe is actually quite bright on the whole, and its color has been given an appropriately celestial name: “cosmic latte.” In 2002, astronomers at Johns Hopkins University determined the shade after studying the light emitted by 200,000 different galaxies. They held a contest to give the result — a kind of creamy beige — its evocative moniker. (Other entries in the contest included “univeige” and “skyvory.”) As with just about everything in the universe, however, the color isn’t fixed: It’s become less blue and more red over the last 10 billion years, likely as a result of redder stars becoming more prevalent. In another 10 billion years, we may even need to rename the color entirely. NASA didn’t really spend millions of dollars developing a pen that could write in space. The second half of this oft-cited myth contrasts NASA’s supposed approach with that of the Soviet Union, who are said to have simply given their cosmonauts pencils. American astronauts did likewise, though NASA wasn’t always thrilled about it — pencils are flammable, and their tips breaking off could lead to damage on sensitive equipment. The so-called space pens actually came from the Fisher Pen Company, which offered its AG-7 “Anti-Gravity” pen to NASA in 1965. None of the investment money came from the government, however, and astronauts and cosmonauts alike ended up using the writing tools at a cost of $2.39 per pen. Source: According to astronomers at Johns Hopkins, the color of the universe is “cosmic latte.”

Fact of the Day - DRAGONFLIES Did you know... On a statistical level, some of the world’s most fearsome predators aren’t actually that fearsome. Wolves succeed in about only 20% of their attempts to catch prey, whereas lions enjoy a success rate of around 30% when working as a pack. Those numbers, though respectable, pale in comparison to the success rate of the mighty dragonfly, which catches about 95% of the prey it pursues — making it the world’s most successful hunter. These insects do all their hunting in midair, of course, making the feat even more impressive; they mainly prey on small insects such as mosquitoes, flies, or butterflies. Scientists attribute this prowess to dragonflies’ nearly 360-degree field of vision, their individually controlled wings, and their brains’ unique ability to coordinate these instantaneous actions. Other surprisingly adept hunters include the harbor porpoise, whose success rate hovers at around 90% (allowing them to chow down on more than 500 small fish per hour), and African wild dogs, which capture their prey more than 60% of the time — though they often lose them to larger predators such as lions and hyenas. One dragonfly species’ migration has been called “the most extraordinary journey in nature.” The more you learn about dragonflies, the more astonished you’ll be by these tiny creatures. Consider the globe skimmer, for instance, which more than lives up to its name: The “winged wanderer,” as it’s often referred to, completes the longest migration of any insect, an 11,000-mile journey between India and Africa that Discover Magazine called “the most extraordinary journey in nature” — in part because it takes several generations to complete, meaning no single dragonfly can complete it itself. At just a few centimeters long, globe skimmers can fly for 90 hours straight — albeit with a fair bit of assistance from wind, which is why the journey can only be undertaken at certain times of year. To keep their energy up, they eat small insects and aerial plankton. Their exact route has yet to be plotted, however, because globe skimmers are literally too small for any existing tracking devices. Source: Dragonflies are the world’s most successful hunters.

What's the Word: BUNBURYING pronunciation: [BUN-bər-ee-ing] Part of speech: verb Origin: British English, 19th century Meaning: 1. (Humorous) Avoiding one's duties and responsibilities by claiming to have appointments to see a fictitious person. Examples: "My boss had a habit of Bunburying out of his obligation to meet the CEO each time she visited our office." "As a student, I tried Bunburying my way out of an exam, but my teacher didn’t believe me." About Bunburying “Bunburying” is a verb based on the character of Bunbury in Oscar Wilde’s 1895 play “The Importance of Being Earnest.” Did you Know? English author Oscar Wilde coined the term “Bunburying” in his play “The Importance of Being Earnest,” as a verb that evoked a character named Bunbury. Though Bunbury is discussed in the play, he never appears onstage — Bunbury is a fictitious character whom another character references to create excuses that get him out of situations he wishes to leave. As a humorous verb, “Bunburying” means inventing a made-up appointment with a fictitious person in order to avoid one’s responsibilities.

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Fact of the Day - MICKEYS Did you know.... Animal-based names are surprisingly common when it comes to units of measurement. In addition to horsepower (which usually measures the output of engines or motors) and hogsheads (today mostly used for alcohol), there’s also the mickey — a semi-official means of measuring the speed of a computer mouse. Named after a certain Disney character who’s probably the world’s most famous rodent, it’s specifically used to describe the smallest measurable movement the device can take. In real terms, that equals 1/200 of an inch, or 0.1 millimeter. Both the sensitivity (mickeys per inch) and speed (mickeys per second) of a computer mouse are measured this way by computer scientists. Had the original name for the device stuck, it’s unlikely this measurement system would have come about. The mouse was briefly known as a “bug” when it was invented at the Stanford Research Institute to make computers more user-friendly, though that seems to have been a working title that no one was especially fond of. (That version of the device was also extremely primitive compared to the mice of today — it even had a wooden shell.) As for how the mouse got its current name, no one can quite remember, except that that’s what it looked like. A lot of people didn’t think the mouse would take off. In perhaps one of the most infamous articles ever published about computers, the San Francisco Examiner’s John C. Dvorak wrote in 1984, “The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a ‘mouse.’ There is no evidence that people want to use these things.” Written as a review of Apple’s landmark personal computer, which had launched earlier that year, Dvorak’s not-so-prescient article wasn’t exactly a hot take at the time. The relatively small number of people who used computers regularly back then were just fine using the keyboard for everything, and Dvorak was hardly alone in asserting that he didn’t want to use a mouse. His predictive abilities didn’t seem to improve with time, alas, as he also wrote that Apple should “pull the plug” on the iPhone prior to its 2007 release. Source: The speed of a computer mouse is measured in “mickeys,” named after Mickey Mouse.

Fact of the Day - SWISS ARMY KNIFE Did you know... The tool favored by MacGyver has a multi-pronged history. Anyone with a deep love for gadgets is familiar with a Swiss Army knife. The multipurpose pocket tool appears able to tackle any task, from sawing through rope to uncorking a bottle of champagne to trimming your eyebrows. It even became a metaphor for a person or device that can seemingly do it all. But is it really from Switzerland? And was it ever really deployed in the Swiss Army? The Origins of the Swiss Army Knife In the 1800s, the Swiss Army had a problem. The military observed a need for a small, portable tool that could serve a number of different purposes in the field, from maintaining a rifle to opening rations. Carrying a cumbersome tool set was impractical. Ideally, they needed an all-in-one tool that would be unobtrusive. But no one in Switzerland had the resources to craft one. The idea itself wasn’t new. Multipurpose tools had been in existence for decades and even received a mention in Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick, which described a knife that doubled as a corkscrew and tweezers. Later, in 1880, a man named John Holler marketed an outlandish knife design with over 100 uses, with arms that extended out to deploy cigar cutters or mini-shovels. Holler’s knife, which was made in Germany, was never intended to be useful, exactly. It was meant to grab attention and solidify his company’s reputation for fine cutlery. According to Smithsonian, elaborate knives like these were more about demonstrating culters’ skill. They would go on “tour,” appearing at festivals, fairs, and other public gatherings—but deploying them on the field was impossible. Aside from practicality, outsourcing the knife to another country rubbed some Swiss the wrong way. Swiss knifemaker Karl Elsener believed they should keep their knife business domestic. Elsener manufactured surgical knives at his factory in Ibach-Schwyz; crafting a multi-pronged tool was well within his capability. His multipurpose knife was delivered to the Swiss army in 1891. There was room for improvement. “It had a large blade, a can opener, a screwdriver and a reamer all on one side,” Elsener’s great-grandson, Carl, told The New York Times in 1991. “On the other side was nothing. It was very strong but a little heavy so my great-grandfather decided to make a more elegant knife for officers which had a corkscrew and a second blade.” This second, improved knife was given to the Swiss Army in 1897. But there was still the problem of meeting production demands. Elsener got around those limitations by forming a group, the Association of Swiss Master Cutlers, that permitted other knifemakers to share in filling military orders. Elsener and another company, Wenger, would later split production duties for many years. The Swiss Army Moniker Elsener’s company was dubbed Victorinox—a blend of his mother Victoria’s name and inox, another name for the stainless steel used to make the tool. But Elsener didn’t call it a “Swiss Army Knife”—he dubbed it the Original Swiss Officer’s and Sports Knife. The knife came by its more familiar name leading up to World War II, when American soldiers who couldn’t pronounce German took to calling it a “Swiss Army Knife.” The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first printed use of the term in English in 1935. Like a lot of wartime tools, foods, and accessories, returning veterans brought plenty of Swiss Army knives back with them. They subsequently wound up in utility drawers and in the pockets of Boy Scouts. The knife was also fairly easily identifiable by the symbol on its body—a white cross on a red shield. Civilian models sported a red handle so they would be more visible in the snow. While the knives may seem like a gimmick, they’ve proven surprisingly useful. In 1990, a physician named Charles Plotkin was on a plane when a passenger began choking. Plotkin used another passenger’s Swiss Army knife to cut a hole in the man’s neck, permitting air passage. (Plotkin should have been carrying a specialized Swiss Army Knife that came with a tracheotomy blade.) Victorinox estimates roughly 500 million Swiss Army knives have been manufactured since 1891. That includes non-terrestrial sales: NASA has issued Swiss Army knives to astronauts since the 1970s. You never know when you might need a fish scaler, even in outer space. Source: Why Is It Called a “Swiss Army Knife”?

What's the Word: DOLORIFUGE pronunciation: [də-LOR-ə-fyooj] Part of speech: noun Origin: Latin, late 19th century Meaning: 1. Something which mitigates or removes grief. Examples: "After his team lost the World Series, the star pitcher took up mountain climbing as a dolorifuge." "After I suffered my first breakup, my mom introduced me to the dolorifuge of ice cream and bad TV." About Dolorifuge “Dolorifuge” is formed by combining the Latin “dolor,” meaning “pain,” with the English suffix “-fuge,” related to the Latin “-fugus,” describing a noun that removes or dispels something. Did you Know? Virtually every person suffers a broken heart at some point in life, and it’s important to take time to grieve these feelings. One way to do that is to turn to a dolorifuge — a fresh source of pleasure that distracts from grief. What makes a dolorifuge successful is how much it engages the sufferer and provides them a break from their woes. Many find physical activity, exercise, and mental challenges a powerful salve for a broken heart, while others find a dolorifuge in socializing, and still others recharge by staying home and engaging in comfort activities such as reading books or playing video games.

What's the Word: CALLITHUMP pronunciation: [KAL-ə-thəmp] Part of speech: noun Origin: American English, 19th century Meaning: 1. (U.S.) A somewhat riotous parade, accompanied with the blowing of tin horns and other discordant noises. Examples: "The high school football team’s victory parade was the biggest callithump our town had all year." "The avant garde music on the radio sounded more like a callithump than a symphony." About Callithump “Callithump” was likely coined in American English by combining a nonsense sound with the English word “thump,” meaning “a blow,” or “to hit hard.” Did you Know? The noun “callithump,” describing a noisy and riotous parade, was formed by merging the nonsense word “calli” with the existing word “thump,” meaning “to wallop.” One example of a callithump is a cacophonous mock-salute to or parade for newlyweds, such as the tradition of tying metal cans to the back of the couple’s car. A callithump can be organized, as in the Midwestern U.S. tradition of a callithump parade (a costumed children’s event with prizes) often held on the Fourth of July, but there is historical context of a callithump (also “calathump,” “cowthump,” and other variations) as an unplanned, chaotic, even riotous event.

Fact of the Day - FINGERNAILS Did you know... The human body contains a panoply of biological wonders. The human eye can detect around 1 million colors, and the nose can discern a trillion distinct scents. The brain is the most complex form of consciousness in the animal kingdom, and it takes the coordination of 200 muscles just to move our bipedal bodies around. Amid all these incredible capabilities, our nails get little scientific attention. Yet they are a rarity in nature — in fact, only primates have them, thanks to the evolution of their dexterous fingers. Embedded in your nails are other tiny mysteries, including the light-colored half-moon shape at the bottom of the nail plate. Though few of us stop to think about the purpose of this mark, its existence is a vital part of our nails and also serves as an indicator of our overall health. Here’s a closer look at this curious feature of our fingernails. The Scientific Name Is Latin for “Little Moon” The crescent-shaped mark at the base of the nail is known scientifically as the lunula, which is Latin for “little moon.” Although it has its own specific name, the lunula is only the visible part of a larger structure known as the nail matrix. That structure is one of the four major parts of the fingernail, along with the nail plate, nail bed, and the skin surrounding the nail (including the cuticle). Arguably, the matrix, which contains nerves, lymph, and blood vessels, is the most important of the four as it produces the cells that eventually harden into nail plates. Although the lunula can be many colors (more on that later), it typically appears white because it’s made of layers of newly formed cells that haven’t fully hardened and become transparent yet. (The rest of the nail is a pinkish color because the transparent plate allows the blood underneath to show through.) Sometimes lunulae will be easily visible and other times they can be obscured — usually because they’re hidden under the cuticle, though in some cases an obscured lunula could be a sign of a medical condition such as diabetes or heart disease. The Color Can Be an Indicator of Health The lunula, and the fingernail more generally, is a remarkable glimpse into our overall health. Typically, a healthy person will have white lunulae, but if the area is a different color it could be indicative of a potentially serious health condition. According to Healthline, the lunula can appear in various colors including blue, brown, black, red, and yellow, and can be an indicator of diabetes (pale blue), heart failure (red), renal failure (brown), or other serious conditions. This is why doctors will often examine your nails when you go in for an annual physical. It’s a Visible Part of Nail Growth The nail matrix serves another important function: regenerating the nail. Although it may not seem like it, our nails are always growing. They grow out from the base of the nail at a rate of roughly 1 nanometer (one-billionth of a meter) every second, which averages to about 3.47 millimeters per month. (If you’ve ever noticed that you tend to trim your fingernails more frequently than your toenails, that’s because a toe’s nail matrix produces only 1.62 millimeters of nail per month on average.) Nails grow from the nail matrix (which includes the lunula), where special cells create multiple layers of keratin, the same protein that makes up hair. The typical nail has roughly 196 layers of these cells. So the lunula is essentially the visible portion of the growth zone, where new cells are actively produced right before your eyes. Source: Why Do We Have Half-Moons on Our Fingernails?

What's the Word: SUPERJACENT pronunciation: [soo-pər-JEY-sənt] Part of speech: adjective Origin: Latin, 16th century Meaning: 1. (Technical) Lying over or above something else; overlying. Examples: "I spread a superjacent layer of topsoil in the garden to protect my seedlings." "You can find the seasonal items on the superjacent shelf." About Superjacent “Superjacent” is a loanword from Latin, formed by joining the prefix “super-” (meaning “over”) with “jacere,” meaning “to lie.” Did you Know? The earth we stand on is not simply composed of soil. Encircling Earth’s crust is an appropriately named layer called “bedrock,” and superjacent to that is another layer called “parent rock.” Above these layers of rock are three more superjacent layers that make up what most people think of as “earth” or “ground.” These include two types of soil: subsoil, which sits upon the rock layer, and topsoil, which sits above subsoil. Superjacent to all of these is what’s known as “humus,” or “the organic layer,” a dark dirt made up of decaying leaf litter and other decomposing matter, making it the most nutrient-rich part of all the soil layers.

Fact of the Day - RADIUM Did you know... Radium is, quite famously, not good for you. Its effects on the body are deleterious, not that anyone realized this when Marie Curie discovered the alkaline earth metal in 1898 — a scientific breakthrough that led to her winning the 1911 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Before long, the dangerously false belief that radium had health benefits began to spread: It was added to everything from toothpaste and hair gel to food and drinks, with glow-in-the-dark paints made from radium still sold into the 1970s. It was marketed as being good for any “common ailment,” with radioactive water sold in small jars that shops claimed would “aid nature” and act as a natural “vitalizer.” Of course, none of this was true — exposure to even a small amount of radium can eventually prove fatal. Curie had no way of knowing this at the time, just as she didn’t have the slightest inkling that her notebooks would remain radioactive for more than 1,500 years after her death. She was known to store such elements out in the open and even walk around her lab with them in her pockets, as she enjoyed how they “looked like faint, fairy lights.” Marie Curie also won a second Nobel Prize. Marie Curie wasn’t just the first woman to win a Nobel Prize — she was also the first person to win two and remains the only person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields. Her first award came eight years before her Nobel Prize in chemistry, when she and her husband Pierre Curie won the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics for their work in radioactivity. More than two decades later, their daughter Irène Joliot-Curie won the 1935 Nobel Prize in chemistry along with her husband Frédéric Joliot for synthesizing new radioactive elements. Source: Radium was added to food and drinks because it was thought to have health benefits.

What's the Word: DUUMVIRATE pronunciation: [doo-UHM-vər-it] Part of speech: noun Origin: Latin, 17th century Meaning: 1. A coalition of two people having joint authority or influence. Examples: "After the founder brought her husband into the company, the pair operated as an equal duumvirate." "Northern Ireland is a modern duumvirate ruled by the first minister and deputy first minister, who share identical powers." About Duumvirate “Duumvirate” is based on the Latin “duumvirātus,” formed by combining “duumviri” (meaning “of two men”) and the suffix “-ātus,” describing possession of a feature. Did you Know? A duumvirate is a circumstance in which two people hold joint authority or power. Numerous countries have governing duumvirates (also called “diarchies”). While “duumvirate” often describes political systems, the term can also be used to describe any situation led by two equals. For example, a company run by a partnership between its CEO and its president is a duumvirate.

Fact of the Day - SHIPWRECKS Did you know... These are the five deepest shipwrecks ever discovered, including the USS ‘Samuel B. Roberts,’ which went to the depths of the Philippine Trench during the Second World War. In October 1944, during the Battle off Samar—one of four major actions during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in World War II’s Pacific theatre—the USS Samuel B. Roberts found itself in dire straits. The destroyer escort had only a fraction of the guns and torpedoes carried by the naval warships it accompanied. It stood no chance against the Imperial Japanese naval force, which was desperate to fight off a U.S. invasion of the Philippines at Leyte Gulf. After firing every round of ammunition, smoke shell, and illumination round on board to provide a protective smoke screen for the destroyers, the Sammy B was sunk by a Japanese battleship and disappeared into the depths of the Philippine Trench, dragging around 90 of its 224 crew members with it. Nearly 80 years later, American adventurer Victor Vescovo piloted his deep-sea submersible Limiting Factor in the Philippine Trench and managed to locate the wreck of the Sammy B. The ship, which had broken in two during its long descent to the seafloor, confirmed details about the Battle off Samar that had previously been known only from eyewitness accounts, such as punctures in the stern showing exactly where Japanese shells had fatally struck. The vessel’s final stand “was just an extraordinary act of heroism,” Vescovo told the BBC following the 2022 discovery. “Those men—on both sides—were fighting to the death.” Under Pressure Equally impressive is the depth at which the Sammy B settled. It lies at a staggering 22,621 feet—or 4.28 miles—below sea level, where the temperature remains around 32°F and the pressure rises to 5 tons per square inch. Located in one of the deepest sections of one of the deepest trenches in the world, it should come as little surprise that the Sammy B currently holds the title of the deepest shipwreck ever discovered. It broke the record held by the USS Johnston, a U.S. naval destroyer that sank during the same battle as the Sammy B and in the same deep-sea trench. An expedition team led by Microsoft co-founder and explorer Paul Allen discovered the wreck in 2019, and another expedition led by Vescovo confirmed its identity in 2021. While the Sammy B remains No. 1 for the time being, it’s possible that other shipwrecks from the Second World War reached even greater depths after going under, including the still-unlocated escort carrier USS Gambier Bay and destroyer USS Hoel. 5 of the Deepest Shipwrecks Ever Found Warships aren’t the only thing that have come to rest at incredible ocean depths. A list of the five deepest wrecks ever found also includes passenger and merchant ships, and all were sunk during World War II. Ship: USS Samuel B. Roberts Depth: 22,621 feet Location: Philippine Trench Date of Sinking: October 25, 1944 Ship: USS Johnston Depth: 21,180 feet Location: Philippine Trench Date of Sinking: October 25, 1944, during the Battle off Samar Ship: SS Rio Grande Depth: 18,904 feet Location: Southern Atlantic Ocean near Brazil Date of Sinking: January 4, 1944 Ship: USS Indianapolis Depth: 18,044 feet Location: Philippine Sea Date of Sinking: July 30, 1945 Ship: SS City of Cairo Depth: Roughly 17,000 feet Location: Southern Atlantic Ocean near St. Helena Date of Sinking: November 6, 1942 Source: What Is the Deepest Shipwreck Ever Found?

What's the Word: GOURMANDIZE pronunciation: [GOOR-mən-dahyz] Part of speech: verb Origin: French, 17th century Meaning: 1. Eat good food, especially to excess. Examples: "Some people travel to see the sights, but Mark loves to gourmandize in other countries." "For my birthday, I invited my friends over to gourmandize and play board games." About Gourmandize “Gourmandize” is a loanword from French. Did you Know? To understand “gourmandize” as a verb, it’s important to understand the difference between the nouns “gourmet” and “gourmand.” A gourmet is usually someone knowledgeable about food and drink with a sensitive and cultured palate, while a gourmand is simply an enthusiastic eater and drinker. In its earliest forms in both French and English, “gourmand” described a glutton, but over time the term has eased to describe someone who is enthusiastic about food without necessarily being knowledgeable about it. As such, “to gourmandize” is to consume food with the enthusiasm and gusto of a gourmand.

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Fact of the day - CELSIUS SCALE Did you know... On Christmas Day 1741, Anders Celsius, a professor at Uppsala University in Sweden, took the world’s first temperature measurement using degrees Celsius — well, kind of. His scale had one big difference compared to the system we use today: It was backward. Instead of 0 degrees marking the freezing point of water, it instead marked the boiling point, while 100 degrees marked the freezing point. The reason for this arrangement may have been in part to avoid using negative numbers when taking temperature readings. After all, it’s pretty cold in Sweden a majority of the year, and air temperature never gets hot enough to boil water (thank goodness). Celsius’ scale, then known as the centigrade (or “100-step”) scale, remained this way for the rest of his life, but in 1745 — one year after his death — scientist Carl Linnaeus (of taxonomy fame) ordered a thermometer with the scale adjusted to our modern orientation. Several other scientists also independently reversed the scale. Yet it wasn’t until some two centuries later, in 1948, that the International Bureau of Weights and Measures decided to rename “centigrade” to Celsius, in part to fall in line with the other major temperature scales named after their creators, such as Daniel Fahrenheit and William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin. Although the Swedish scientist didn’t invent, or even use, the precise scale that now bears his name, his groundbreaking work is still worthy of the accolade. Before Celsius, a couple dozen thermometers were in use throughout the world, and many of them were frustratingly inaccurate and inconsistent (some were based on the melting point of butter, or the internal temperature of certain animals). Celsius’ greatest contribution was devising a system that could accurately capture temperature under a variety of conditions, and his name now graces weather maps around the world (excluding the U.S., of course). There was once such a thing as a decimal time. Today’s second is derived from a sexagesimal system created by the ancient Babylonians, who defined the time unit as one-sixtieth of a minute. Fast-forward to the tail end of the 18th century, and the French Revolution was in a metric frenzy. In 1795, France adopted the gram for weight, the meter for distance, and centigrade (later renamed Celsius) for temperature. However, some of France’s decimal ideas didn’t quite stand the test of, er, time. By national decree in 1793, the French First Republic attempted to create a decimal system for time. This split the day into 10 hours, with each hour lasting 100 minutes, and each minute lasting 100 seconds (and so on). Because there are 86,400 normal seconds in a day, the decimal second was around 13% shorter. Although it was easy to convert among seconds, minutes, and hours, France’s decimal time proved unpopular — after all, many people had perfectly good clocks with 24 hours on them — and the idea was abolished two years later. Since then, a couple of other temporal decimal proposals have been put forward, including watchmaker Swatch’s attempt to redefine the day as 1,000 “.beats” (yes, the period was included) in 1998 in response to the internet’s growing popularity. However, ancient Babylon’s perception of time is likely too ingrained in human culture to change any time soon. Source: The Celsius scale was originally backward.

What's the Word: SINGULTUS pronunciation: [sing-GUHL-təs] Part of speech: noun Origin: Latin, 18th century Meaning: 1. Hiccups. Examples: "I get singultus every time I drink sparkling wine." "We tried startling Elsie, but her singultus persisted until she held her breath for a full minute." About Singultus “Singultus” is a loanword from Latin, describing speech interrupted by sobs. Did you Know? Nearly all mammals experience singultus — the medical name for hiccups — but scientists aren’t quite sure of the cause. What we do know is that singultus is a two-stage event, beginning when the diaphragm contracts suddenly to create a gasp of air, which is immediately followed by a sudden closure of the opening between the vocal cords that allows breath in. Thus, hiccups sound a lot like sobs, as is suggested by the condition’s Latin name, “singultus.” Scientists believe hiccups don’t really serve a purpose anymore, but are the product of evolutionary history dating back to when our ancestors had gills that needed to be pulled closed in a hurry.

Fact of the Day - ACTUALLY PINK Did you know.... The Addams Family was filmed in black and white, and it’s difficult to imagine it any other way — not only because it premiered in 1964, when color television was still something of a novelty, but because the aesthetic perfectly suits the show’s gothic vibes. It was hardly dour on set, however, as the iconic living room where most of the action takes place was actually pink. A resurfaced photo of the set shows just how garish many of the colors were — including bright pink walls and rugs — which in hindsight makes perfect sense: As long as nothing looked out of place in the final black-and-white rendering, its real-life hue didn’t make much of a difference. Several of the set’s props were repurposed from another MGM production, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, which was released a few short months prior to The Addams Family. The characters of the latter made their first appearances in a series of single-panel New Yorker comics by series creator Charles Addams, the first of which debuted in 1938. None of the characters had names in the original comic, however. Most of them, including Morticia and Wednesday, received their monikers when Addams licensed a doll collection based on the cartoon in 1962. And speaking of names, Wednesday’s middle name is — naturally — Friday. Lurch and Thing were played by the same actor. In addition to his roles in Star Trek and I Dream of Jeannie, Ted Cassidy is best known for his performance as Lurch in The Addams Family. He reprised his role as the hulking butler in several iterations of the franchise, including the 1973 animated series and the 1977 television movie Halloween With the New Addams Family, as well as in episodes of the 1960s Batman TV series and The New Scooby-Doo Movies. But Lurch wasn’t his only contribution to the show, as the disembodied hand known as Thing belonged to Cassidy as well — something many fans didn’t realize at the time, as the character is credited as “Itself” in the credits. Cassidy had a separate contract for playing Thing and portrayed the character with his right hand, though he occasionally switched to his left to see if anyone would notice. Audiences probably didn’t, just as they likely couldn’t tell when assistant director Jack Voglin portrayed Thing in scenes featuring both of Cassidy’s characters. Source: The living room set of the “Addams Family” TV show was actually pink.

What's the Word: COSSET pronunciation: [KOS-it] Part of speech: verb Origin: Anglo-Norman French, 16th century Meaning: 1. Care for and protect in an overindulgent way. Examples: "It’s rewarding to cosset one’s pets and receive unconditional love in return." "Not wishing to cosset my daughter, I asked her to handle her college registration on her own." About Cosset “Cosset” is likely related to the Anglo-Norman French “coscet,” meaning “cottager.” Did you Know? In its first use, “cosset” was a noun that referred to a lamb raised by hand, before eventually shifting to suggest a spoiled child. It took about a century before “cosset” became a verb meaning “to treat like a cosset by petting, caring for, and indulging” — or overindulging. Today, cosseted animals are enormously popular on social media, where videos of pampered cats, spoiled dogs, and even tame raccoons are enjoyed by millions of viewers.

Fact of the Day - UNCLE Did you know.... One theory says it comes from an Irish word; another says we have the ancient Romans to thank. But the joke is on those theories, because the real story is more complicated than that. Perhaps you’ve been forced to say it while getting noogies from a bully on the playground. Or maybe you’ve heard it used in a movie where one character roughing up another insists that they “say ‘uncle’,” or admit defeat, before they’re set free. But why uncle—why not aunt or mom or some other authority figure? Where did this bizarre saying come from? Uncle Meaning and Origin Theories According to the Oxford English Dictionary, say uncle is a uniquely North American phrase that first popped up in the written record in 1891 in an article from the Iowa Daily Citizen, and it had taken on the meaning “admit defeat” by 1912, when the Modesto News declared “This Time it is ‘Martie’ Graves and Don Johns who made them say ‘Uncle’.” There are a number of theories about where the phrase came from; one mentioned in the OED posits that we might get this sense of uncle from the Irish word anacol, which means “protection” or “quarter.” But, as David Wilton at Word Origins notes, “This idea was first put forward in the journal American Speech in 1976, but it is speculation with essentially no evidence to support it … there [are no] recorded instances of say anacol or anything similar that would lend credence to the idea of a folk etymology.” Yet another theory says that we get it from the days of the Roman Empire. Supposedly, young children of that era who were attacked by bullies wouldn’t be set free until they said “Patrue, mi Patruissimo,” or “Uncle, my best Uncle,” because at that time, the brother of one’s father was accorded almost the same level of status and power as one’s dad—therefore, declaring the bully to be your “Best Uncle” was tantamount to granting him a title of respect. Joking Around It seems more likely that we have a joke to thank for why we say “uncle” to give up. The joke from the OED’s first citation reads in full: “A gentleman was boasting that his parrot would repeat anything he told him. For example, he told him several times, before some friends, to say ‘Uncle,’ but the parrot would not repeat it. In anger he seized the bird, and half-twisting his neck, said: ‘Say “uncle,” you beggar!’ and threw him into the fowl pen, in which he had ten prize fowls. Shortly afterward, thinking he had killed the parrot, he went to the pen. To his surprise he found nine of the fowls dead on the floor with their necks wrung, and the parrot standing on the tenth twisting his neck and screaming: ‘Say “uncle,” you beggar! say “uncle.” ’ ” As Michael Quinion at World Wide Words writes, later versions of the joke have the man’s niece persuading him to buy her a parrot—and that’s why the bird is saying “uncle.” But in a way, we do have Ireland to thank, because according to Wilton, the joke seems to have first appeared in a Dublin newspaper in June 1891. From there, it made its way into a London newspaper and then to the Iowa Daily Citizen, at which point say uncle spread across the country and became part of North American vernacular: “The original joke may have gotten its start in Ireland,” Wilton says, “but it had nothing to do with anacol and did not develop into a stock phrase until it had crossed the ocean.” Source: Why Do We Say “Uncle” When Admitting Defeat?

I check any day I'm not too tired from work

Fact of the Day - NOT IN THE U.S. Did you know.... The world’s largest fast-food chain has an estimated 45,000 locations, none of which are located in the United States. It’s called Mixue Ice Cream & Tea, and the popular chain more than doubled its total number of stores in just three years (between 2022 and 2025). Around 90% of Mixue locations are in China, with the rest scattered across 11 other countries in the Eastern Hemisphere, including Thailand, Singapore, Japan, and Australia. Mixue was founded in 1997 by a student named Zhang Hongchao. It started off as a tiny, lone stall selling frozen treats in China’s Henan province before its formal establishment as a company in 1999. The number of Mixue franchises snowballed after that — a fitting trajectory, given the mascot is a snowman named Snow King. Today, Mixue sells ice cream, bubble tea, and iced beverages at an affordable cost. The company’s 45,000 locations (as of March 2025) surpass all other global fast-food brands, even including giants such as McDonald’s, which has 43,477 locations worldwide. Mixue’s rapid expansion is partially due to a strategy that prioritizes smaller stores in well-trafficked areas, which ensures low overhead costs and plenty of foot traffic. While analysts believe Mixue may one day expand into the U.S. and Europe, the company is focused on Asian and Oceanic markets for the time being. There are no Taco Bells in Mexico. Although the chain was inspired by Mexican cuisine, you won’t find any Taco Bells in Mexico itself. This isn’t for lack of effort, as Taco Bell has tried to break into the market on two separate occasions. The first attempt was in 1992, when the company opened a food cart in Mexico City. But locals were confused by the inauthentic names of menu items and also taken aback by the comparatively high prices. Taco Bell tried again in 2007 — a choice Mexican writer Carlos Monsiváis decried to the Associated Press as “like bringing ice to the Arctic.” That time, Taco Bell marketed itself as an American fast-food chain rather than pretending to sell Mexican fare. It opened a location in Monterrey, Mexico, that sold items such as french fries and ice cream, but that, too, failed to take off. Source: The biggest fast-food chain in the world doesn’t have any U.S. locations.

I check everyday!

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Fact of the Day - STRIKEOUT Did you know... The use of the letter ‘K’ as shorthand for ‘strikeout’ dates back to the earliest days of America’s favorite pastime. When it comes to baseball, the use of the letter K to represent a strikeout is one of the most elegant and concise practices in the sport—especially for headline writers. It should come as no surprise, then, that the originator of the abbreviation was the forefather of the modern sportswriter, Henry Chadwick. The British-born, Brooklyn-based writer for the Long Island Star and The New York Clipper in the mid-19th century is credited with the invention of the box score, one of his many contributions to the game that earned him posthumous election into the Hall of Fame. Baseball in America developed before television, radio, or even widespread photography, which made newspaper reports of the game crucial to the spread of the sport’s popularity. Chadwick wasn’t the first person to record the runs scored per inning, but Baseball Magazine declared one of his 1859 game summaries as “The First Baseball Box Score Ever Published,” and he became known as the founder of the modern scoring system. Many of the shorthands he developed over the following decades are still part of the modern baseball lexicon, including the K. Although these days score cards use lines to indicate base hits, Chadwick used an HR for home run, a D for double, and so on. As for making an out at the plate, Chadwick needed an abbreviation for what was known at the time as having “struck three times.” He is usually credited with coining the term strike-out. In terms of the box office, though, he went with K because the letter S was already taken. But also because he often used the phrase, the batter was struck, and the last letter in struck is the letter K. Beyond that, a backwards letter K has taken on other connotations in the world of baseball. Fans also recognize it as a way of indicating that a batter struck out without taking a swing with the third strike. The MLB officially credits Chadwick with popularizing its usage, which may account for why he was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1938, and why he was the only journalist in it for decades. Source: Why Does ‘K’ Stand for ‘Strikeout’ in Baseball?

Fact of the Day - SLOGAN Did you know... Much like the durable gems it refers to, the advertising slogan “A Diamond Is Forever” has endured the test of time. The line was first penned in 1947 and cemented a connection between diamond rings and romance, though it was, ironically, conceived of by a woman who never married, opting instead to prioritize her career and spend time with her dogs. Mary Frances Gerety was a copywriter at the N.W. Ayer & Son advertising agency, where she was assigned to De Beers, a company that controlled the global supply of rough diamonds. At the time, diamonds weren’t as widely associated with love as they are today — before World War II, only an estimated 10% of proposals featured a diamond engagement ring. Many women tended to prefer more practical engagement gifts, such as a car or washing machine. It was up to Gerety to change that perception by convincing couples that diamond rings weren’t just a luxury, but an essential part of a marriage proposal. While working late on an ad campaign for the company, Gerety realized she’d forgotten to come up with a memorable slogan. According to The New York Times, Gerety later recalled, “Dear God, send me a line,” and jotted down the now-iconic phrase before heading to bed. When she awoke the next morning, she thought the slogan was passable but nothing special. But those four simple words, “A Diamond Is Forever,” proved to be hugely successful. U.S. diamond sales skyrocketed from $23 million in 1939 to an astounding $2.1 billion by 1979. Gerety’s creation was later named the top slogan of the 20th century by Ad Age. “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” was first performed by Carol Channing. The song “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” was popularized by Marilyn Monroe in the 1953 film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes — a musical performance later ranked as the 12th best in film history by the American Film Institute. But the song was originally sung by actress and comedian Carol Channing, who debuted it on the stage four years earlier. Channing starred as Lorelei Lee in the original 1949 Broadway production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The show featured music by Jule Styne — who also scored Gypsy and Funny Girl — and lyrics by Leo Robin, who won an Oscar for the 1938 song “Thanks for the Memory” from the Bob Hope film The Big Broadcast of 1938. Together, the pair composed “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” which was made famous by Channing during a nearly two-year Broadway run. Channing performed her signature song once again in the 1974 Broadway show Lorelei — a spinoff of the original 1949 musical. Source: The woman who coined the slogan “A Diamond Is Forever” never married.

Fact of the Day - ODD GRAMMAR RULE Did you know... You know this rule, even if you don’t know you know it. The English language is full of all sorts of quirks that can be infuriating to non-native speakers. (Imagine learning as an adult that cough, enough, and though all make different sounds.) To those of us who speak English as our first tongue, these nonsensical grammar conventions come as second nature—and some rules are so innate that they rarely get taught in school. Take this example: This passage tweeted by editor Matthew Anderson comes from the book The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase. It outlines the rules of adjective order when preceding a noun. According to the text, the order goes “opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun,” and any change made to that organization will make you “sound like a maniac.” For instance, big black dog is a perfectly acceptable phrase, but saying “black big dog” just sounds awkward. At least that’s the case for native English speakers—people learning English as a second language are tasked with committing that seemingly arbitrary sequence to memory. If they don’t, they risk getting confused stares when asking for “the green lovely rectangular French old silver whittling little knife.” That’s not the only English rule we know without knowing we know it. Here are a few more, from why the phrasing is my brother’s car and not the car of my brother to why we say “abso-freakin’-lutely” instead of “absolute-freakin’-ly.” Source: The Odd Grammar Rule Most English Speakers Know But Are Rarely Taught

Fact of the Day - GOLD RUSH Did you know..... Although the 1848 California gold rush was the largest in American history, it wasn’t the first. That distinction belongs in the state of North Carolina, where in 1799, Conrad Reed, the 12-year-old son of a Hessian Revolutionary War deserter named John Reed, found a 17-pound gold nugget in Little Meadow Creek outside Charlotte. At first — not knowing what his son had stumbled across — the elder Reed used the rock as a doorstop for his home’s front door. It wasn’t until 1802, when he took the rock to a local jeweler, that he began to grasp the enormity of his son’s discovery (although he sold the nugget for far less than it was actually worth). By 1803, Reed had established the first gold mining operation in the U.S. As local papers reported on his business, nearby farmers began hunting for gold on their own properties by searching shallow riverbeds, a practice known as “placer mining.” When these shallow-lying deposits dried up in the 1820s, companies ditched the gold pans and began excavating lode mines, which required many more workers. Until 1828, North Carolina was the only gold-producing state in the Union, and its gold rush reached its peak in the 1830s and 1840s, when the industry employed nearly 30,000 people. The state’s gold-hued fortunes changed once the first reports of wealth out West arrived in the Carolinas, but Reed never saw the end of his state’s gold-rush boom time, dying a rich man in 1845 with his mine raking in millions. The California gold rush began only one week before the U.S. gained control of the territory. When James Marshall, a worker on John Sutter’s sawmill, discovered gold there on January 24, 1848, the California territory was technically still a possession of Mexico. But at the conclusion of the Mexican-American War, Mexico officially ceded the land to the U.S. — one week after Marshall’s discovery, on February 2, 1848. Mexican officials had no knowledge of the momentous discovery made in California when they signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago, which brought the war to an end. California papers didn’t even report on the discovery until mid-March, and the East Coast of the U.S. remained unaware until months later. The discovery brought a tidal wave of migration to the territory — so much so that it went from Mexican control to a U.S. state in just two years. While good news for the U.S. government and a handful of rags-to-riches prospectors, the discovery of gold in the West was devastating for Native Americans as well as the majority of miners hoping to strike it big, only to be subjected to back-breaking work with little to show for it. Source: The first U.S. gold rush was started by a 12-year-old boy.

What's the Word: EVINCE pronunciation: [ih-VINS] Part of speech: verb Origin: Latin, 17th century Meaning: 1. Reveal the presence of (a quality or feeling). 2. Be evidence of; indicate. Examples: "Sharon said nothing, but evinced her elation by the look on her face." "I evinced my cluelessness about blackjack through my losses." About Evince “Evince” comes from the Latin “evincere,” which means “overcome, defeat.” Did you Know? In its original form, “evince” did not mean “to demonstrate” or “to reveal,” but rather “to overpower” or “to conquer” — it shares a Latin root with another word, “evict,” meaning “recover property by legal process.” But in modern language, no battle or conquering is required when proving one’s feelings. It’s enough to evince feelings by simply sharing thoughts and emotions as evidence.

Fact of the Day - FATIGUE VS. TIRED Did you know.... Confused about whether you‘re tired or truly fatigued? Here's how to spot the difference and what it might mean for your health. “I’m tired” is something we’ve all said before, whether after a long workday or when we first wake up. But what if the feeling is more than that? While fatigue and tiredness often get tossed around like they mean the same thing, they’re pretty different. They may feel similar, but understanding the difference can greatly impact your well-being. What Is Tiredness? According to WebMD, tiredness is usually a short-term lack of energy that often improves with sleep or rest. UnityPoint Health notes that feeling tired is far more common than experiencing fatigue. Research shows just how widespread it is: The CDC found that 13.5 percent of adults aged 18 and older reported feeling very tired or exhausted most days or every day over three months in 2022. On top of that, women reported higher rates of feeling tired than men. What Is Fatigue? Fatigue is more extreme. A fatigued individual undergoes consistent mental or physical exhaustion to the point where the feeling impacts their lives. For example, they may be constantly unable to concentrate during work or school hours. They may even feel apathetic towards things they typically enjoy or lose motivation to do activities. Three common types of fatigue—physiologic, secondary, and chronic—are categorized by how long they typically last and their causes. Physiologic fatigue results from the patient’s lifestyle, such as poor sleep or mental strain, and usually improves when their habits are adjusted. Secondary fatigue is caused by another medical condition, including cancer, heart disease, and depression, and typically lasts one to six months. Someone with secondary fatigue will typically gain their energy back after medical treatment. Chronic fatigue lasts longer than six months and treatment usually focuses on symptom relief. (A related condition, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome or ME/CFS, is a serious illness with digestive and cognitive symptoms in addition to extreme fatigue). Common causes of feeling fatigued and tired often overlap, which explains why people confuse the definitions. The UK’s National Health Service shares that people can experience fatigue or tiredness because of several factors, including poor dietary choices, insomnia, exercising too much or too little, and depression. If you’re feeling fatigued or tired and can’t figure out why, it’s a good idea to check in with a doctor. Source: Fatigued vs. Tired: What‘s the Difference?

What's the Word: CACOETHE pronunciation: [ka-kə-WEE-theez] Part of speech: noun Origin: Latin, 17th century Meaning: 1. An urge to do something inadvisable. Examples: "My brother admits to feeling a nagging cacoethes to pull pranks whenever our whole family gets together." "I’m glad I followed the cacoethes to invest my money, since the return was enormous despite the risk." About Cacoethe “Cacoethes” is a loanword from Latin, where “cacoethes” is based on the ancient Greek “κακοήθης” (“kakoḗthēs,” meaning “ill-disposed”). Did you Know? Surely the first person who felt pulled to jump out of a plane with a parachute was driven by some kind of cacoethes, but skydiving has surprisingly old roots. The extreme practice predates airplanes by over 100 years, and the idea goes back even further. Leonardo da Vinci developed blueprints for a parachute in 1485, and the first person to successfully descend from a great height by parachute was Frenchman André-Jacques Garnerin, who leapt from a hot-air balloon with a parachute in 1797. While skydiving still seems to be a flight of cacoethes, it has become a widely appreciated practice (with well-tested safety guidelines).

Fact of the Day - MENOPAUSE Did you know.... The wide-ranging symptoms and timing of menopause have caused some confusion. Like Mercury retrograde, menopause is blamed for a constellation of unpleasant or inexplicable events. Women in their forties or even younger hold menopause responsible when they experience a wide array of physical symptoms, like irregular periods, aches and pains, mood swings, weight gain, insomnia, fatigue, and bursts of hunger—but they may be misattributing these annoyances. It turns out that many women don’t know when menopause actually starts. According to a February 2025 poll of 1068 women by The Ohio State University, 61 percent of respondents believed they’ll hit menopause in their forties. And while some will, the National Institute on Aging reports the average age of menopause onset is actually 52, though it can be hard to tell where the dividing line is. Perimenopause vs. Menopause Some women may mistake perimenopause symptoms for menopause itself. The medical definition of perimenopause is when your period is irregular by at least seven days for a minimum of 10 months—so when that happens (and if you’re keeping track), you know you’ve started perimenopause. Menopause itself, defined as the point in a woman’s life when her period permanently stops, hasn’t actually started until 12 full months have passed without menstruation occurring. Perimenopause (peri- means “near” or “around”) is the phase when your body begins to prepare for menopause. Your hormone levels start to fluctuate, causing mood swings, hot flashes, problems sleeping, and irregular periods. It usually begins when you’re in your mid-forties and lasts for eight to 10 years before menopause starts in your early fifties, according to the Cleveland Clinic. That being said, the age when menopause starts can really fluctuate from person to person. A study from the Turkish Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology found that health, socioeconomic, and hereditary factors can affect its timing. Some of those factors include your mother’s age when she hit menopause, the age you got your first period, how long you were in your mother’s womb, whether you used birth control pills, the stability of your cycle before perimenopause, how many children you have, your weight, use of cigarettes and alcohol, the amount of physical activity you get, education level, socioeconomic status, if you’ve had an ovary removed, the amount of lead in your blood, how much fat you eat, and more. Menopause: Still a Medical Mystery Ultimately, we may never be able to pinpoint an exact age that perimenopause and menopause begin, thanks to all of those factors. Plus, women’s healthcare—especially menopause—remains under-researched even though menopause affects 100 percent of 50 percent of the population. According to findings from Harvard Medical School, 99 percent of preclinical models of aging don’t take the effects of menopause into account, meaning that these guidelines for treating age-related conditions don’t reflect reality. That’s partially because scientists lack the proper lab animals for menopause studies, such as female animals and those that have given birth. Most studies use male animals, and historical research overwhelmingly favors men. Additionally, menopause is quite rare in the animal world—only a few mammals, including chimpanzees and killer whales, are known to go through it. Source: When Does Menopause Actually Start?

What's the Word: TITTLE pronunciation: [TIT-əl] Part of speech: noun Origin: Middle English, 12th century Meaning: 1. A tiny amount or part of something. 2. A small written or printed stroke or dot, indicating omitted letters in a word. Examples: "The cake looked delicious, but I could only eat a tittle of a slice." "Even a tittle of bicycle grease can permanently stain a garment." About Tittle Tittle is based on the Middle English "titel," from the Latin "titulus," meaning "a small mark." Did you Know? Originally, "tittle" referred to any tiny typographical mark over a letter — for example, accents or the dots of the lowercase letters "i" and "j." These marks are tiny, and that tininess is reflected in the modern usage of "tittle" as a minuscule measure. In some cases, tittles were used to indicate the omission of letters, predating the modern use of apostrophes for that purpose.

Fact of the Day - ZIPPERS Did you know... Though they’re now commonly found on everything from jackets to couch cushions, zippers were actually originally intended for shoes. The history of this versatile mechanism can be traced to 1893, when inventor Whitcomb Judson was granted a patent for a rudimentary zipper that he called the “clasp-locker,” an alternative to lengthy shoelaces. The patent described it as “a series of clasps securable to the flaps of the shoes” which automatically engaged or disengaged with a movable hand device. Judson displayed his creation at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, though it was met with minimal interest. Despite several refinements to the product, this zipper ultimately never caught on due to its sharp hooks and the resulting frequency of torn fabric. Swedish inventor Gideon Sundback later improved upon Judson’s design, creating a more reliable version with two rows of metal teeth pulled together by a slider. These hookless fasteners were designed to be used on “shoes, corsets, and other articles of wear,” according to the 1917 patent. The invention caught the eye of New York City tailor Robert Ewig, who sewed them onto money belts. These belts were rather popular among U.S. sailors, whose uniforms lacked pockets, and in 1918, the Navy bought 10,000 fasteners to incorporate into flight suits. In 1923, the BFGoodrich Company added Sundback’s fasteners to rubber boots and coined the word “zipper,” an onomatopoeia based on the sound they made. A design student was paid $35 to create Nike’s “Swoosh” logo. In 1971, Carolyn Davidson was a graphic design student at Portland State University in Oregon. One day, a man named Phil Knight overheard her lamenting to a classmate about her inability to afford art supplies. Knight approached the student with an offer to design a logo for his new shoe company, Blue Ribbon Sports — later renamed Nike. Davidson created the now-iconic “Swoosh” and charged Knight $35 (roughly $275 today) for her work. The following year, Nike debuted its first shoe, which featured Davidson’s logo. In 1983, Knight invited Davidson to the Nike offices, where she was awarded a gold ring and 500 shares of stock as an additional thanks. But because of six subsequent stock splits, those 500 shares equal 32,000 shares today — upward of $2.3 million in value. Source: The first zippers were for shoes.

Fact of the Day - DUFFLE BAG Did you know.... The practical tote packs in a lot of history. Whether you’re going away for a weekend or smuggling illicit goods in and out of the country, at some point, you’ve probably grabbed a duffel bag. These cylindrical totes are typically made of heavy-duty canvas or some other durable material and make for a more portable packing solution than conventional luggage. But why is it known as a duffel bag? The History of Duffel Bags The history of duffel bags begins with duffel, a thick woolen cloth named after the town that produced it in Antwerp, Belgium, circa the 15th century. The material was used for a variety of goods that needed to stand up to wear, making it an easy choice for storage, clothing, and work applications. There were duffel coats, duffel blankets, duffel parkas, and, eventually, duffel bags. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, duffel came into English from Dutch in the 1600s, and the first printed use of duffel bag dates to 1768, when a newspaper called the Public Advertiser printed an ad featuring “an old green duffil [sic] bag.” Early on, duffle bags were more like a duffel pouch tied at the top, and it’s likely they were often used by sailors. It was easy to see the appeal of a bag that could be filled to the brim when needed or easily collapsed and tucked away when it wasn’t, so it’s no surprise that in the late 1800s, the duffel was adopted by militaries in the U.S. and abroad as part of a serviceman’s assigned gear. Duffels would eventually evolve from their early laundry bag aesthetic to a bag that was oblong, zippered, and able to stand freely by World War II. The term duffel bag began to gain popularity in the early 20th century, a trend that continued when soldiers returned home and brought their duffel bags with them. Usage of the term began to tick up in the 1950s and increased each decade as more people considered it synonymous with a rugged and practical solution to transporting clothes and goods. (The word also sometimes referred to the contents of a bag rather than the bag itself. If, for example, you left your bag open and the clothes inside spilled on the floor, someone might say that you “dropped your duffel.”) Come the 1980s, it was common to see mentions of duffel bags in the press—but not for back-to-school sales. Cocaine dealers often utilized the bags to heft their valuable kilos. In 1985, the bags were confirmed not to be animal-proof: Some cocaine that was tossed out of a drug-smuggling plane over Georgia was discovered by a bear and ingested, a tale that loosely inspired the 2023 movie Cocaine Bear. What’s the Difference Between a Duffel Bag and a Gym Bag? Some people use duffel bag and gym bag interchangeably, but they’re not quite the same. While duffels are usually made from heavy materials, gym bags are often made with lighter synthetics for easier air movement. A gym bag may also have pockets for shoes or supplements. Duffels are typically larger than gym bags, which carry lighter workout clothes. Duffel Bag vs. Ditty Bag A duffel bag may also be confused for a ditty bag, but as with a gym bag, there are significant differences. A ditty bag—which dates to the 1860s—is a smaller tote that was originally meant for a sailor’s smaller possessions, like grooming or sewing supplies. And in the 20th century, volunteers called care packages sent to troops in Vietnam “ditty bags.” These days, you might use one in your purse or while traveling to keep smaller items in one spot rather than floating around loose in your bag. If you’re unsure about what category your bag falls into, you should consider whether your bag is cylindrical, sturdy, and able to be slung across the shoulders. If it checks those boxes, you can probably declare it a duffel. And if it’s well made, it’s possible it could last for quite a long time. In 1944, an American soldier named William Kadar lost his duffel while stationed during World War II. In 2013, it was returned to him after being found in France, hardly worse for wear. Source: Why Is It Called a “Duffel Bag”?

What's the Word: GRANIVOROUS pronunciation: [grə-NIV-ə-rəs] Part of speech: adjective Origin: Latin, 17th century Meaning: 1. (Of an animal) Feeding on grain. Examples: "Granivorous animals such as rabbits and birds are drawn to our garden to feed on the sunflowers and black-eyed susans." "I love watching squirrels play, so I lured the granivorous animals to my yard with a variety of seeds and grain." About Granivorous Granivorous comes from Latin, where "grānivorus" means "to eat grain." Did you Know? A granivorous animal eats seeds and grains from plants. Squirrels, mice, chipmunks, and even deer are granivorous mammals, but many birds, including blackbirds, woodpeckers, and parrots, are also granivorous — as are insects such as ants, crickets, and weevils. While they need to eat to survive, granivorous creatures are the culprits of seed predation — the practice of eating seeds directly out of living plants, which leaves them damaged and unable to reproduce.