Fact of the Day

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - SLANG TERMS

Did you know.... We’ve used the term rat to refer to an informer since approximately 1910. Stool pigeon, which dates back to the 1840s, is also a popular choice, and these days, you might hear the term whistleblower, which dates back to 1970. But Eric Partridge’s A Dictionary of the Underworld, published first in 1949 with a second edition in 1961, shows that in the Cant language of the underworld—which first appeared in Britain in the 16th century and the United States in the 18th—criminals have many more names for snitches. Here are some of them. 

 

1. Abaddon
This term dates to the 1800s and meant “a thief who informs on his fellow rogues.” It came from the Hebrew word abaddon, meaning “a destroyer.”

 

2. and 3. Bark and Belch

Similar to the phrases to squeak and to squeal, bark, as defined by the 1889 glossary Police!, meant “to inform (to the police).” It was obsolete by 1930. Belch, meanwhile, meant “to inform on one’s accomplice in a crime” to “to inform on the location of a gambling den,” as in this example Partridge cited from around 1898: “The girl had been ‘picked up’ by the police and had then ‘belched’ on the place from which she had escaped.”

 

4. Beefer
In the 1899 glossary Tramping with Tramps, Josiah Flynt wrote that a beefer is “one who squeals on, or gives away, a tramp or criminal.” By the 1930s, the word—which was American in origin—had moved from tramps to become slang for police and journalists, according to Partridge.

 

5. Bleat

Lambs aren’t the only ones who do this. When informants bleat, they give information to the police. Partridge cited November 8, 1836’s The Individual: “Ven I’m corned, I can gammon a gentry cove, Come the fawney-rig, the figging-lay, and never vish to bleat.” The term was obsolete in Britain by 1890, but as of 1920 was a slang term in the U.S.

 

6. Blobber
According to Henry Leverage’s “Dictionary of the Underworld” from Flynn’s magazine, blobber was an American term for an informer from early 1925.

 

7. Blue
A verb meaning “to blew it; to inform (to the police),” according to the H. Brandon’s 1839 book Poverty, Mendicity and Crime, and J.C. Hotten’s The Slang Dictionary from 1859. It was common slang by 1890, as noted in Farmer & Henley’s Slang and its Analogues.

 

8. and 9. Cabbage Hat and Cocked Hat

Cabbage hat and cocked hat were terms for an informer dating to around 1910 that were rhyming on rat, according to D.W. Mauer and Sidney J. Baker’s “‘Australian’ Rhyming Argot in the American Underworld,” which appeared in American Speech in October 1944.

 

10. Crysler
A punny reference (of American origin) to Chrysler cars that meant “a squealer; a traitor; a coward,” according to Leverage’s “Dictionary of the Underworld.”

 

Click the link below  to read more slang terms.

 

Source: Old-Timey Slang Terms for Informants

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - LOUIS WAIN

Did you know.... Louis Wain was an artist with a nearly singular focus: cats. He sketched, painted, and even animated these furry companions throughout the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries, at a time when cats were considered nothing more than a way to keep rodents at bay. His work was incredibly popular in his native England and abroad for decades, enduring even after he was committed to an asylum in 1924. Here’s what you need to know about the artist whose influence can be seen everywhere from Felix the Cat to the mountain of cat memes on the internet.

 

1. Louis Wain didn’t always draw just cats ...
Wain, who was born in 1860, was oldest of six children and sole son. His father, a textile trader, died when was Wain was 20, leaving him to support his mother and sisters. He worked as an art teacher and then became an artist for newspapers and periodicals, where he drew both animals and country scenes, which often featured dogs. The first cat drawing he sold—titled Our Cats: A Domestic History—was published in The Illustrated London News in 1884. Two years later, he illustrated a children’s book called Madame Tabby’s Establishment.

 

2. ... But he did draw hundreds of thousands of cats.

Some place the tally at 150,000, but others (notably The Evening Standard in 1933) estimate he illustrated more than a quarter of a million kitties. His subjects included rainbow-colored cats, anthropomorphic cats, and even royal cats—Princess Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein’s chinchilla kitten graced the cover of one of Wain’s many books of illustration in 1911.

 

3. Wain also kept up to 17 cats as pets.
Unsurprisingly, Wain cared for several cats himself. The Evening Standard reported in 1925 that the artist “at one time kept a small ‘family’ of 17 cats who were always posing as models.” His most beloved cat, however, was the first one, a black and white kitten named Peter. Peter came into Wain’s life shortly after his wedding to Emily Richardson, his sisters’ governess. In a tragic turn of events, she was soon stricken with breast cancer and died in 1887, just a few years into their marriage. During her illness, Peter became a constant companion, “lying on the sick bed, just as he always was, his paws and body resting on [Emily’s] arm,” Wain later told The Manchester Weekly Times. He began sketching their devoted pet, and eventually sold drawings of Peter to British periodicals. Peter, who died in 1898, did much more than comfort Emily and inspire Wain. “It is not, I think, too far-fetched to speculate that Louis Wain’s having met Peter changed the course of domestic history,” biographer Peter Dale wrote in his book Louis Wain: The Man Who Drew Cats. “Certainly, the attitude of the general public towards cats, and their feeling (or otherwise) for cats was greatly affected by Louis Wain’s work. … Had Peter not found comfort on Emily’s sick-bed, he would not have made such a ready model for Louis Wain. And had he not received so much attention, he might well have not developed such a personality.”

 

4. He created an animated cat before Walt Disney.
Before Walt Disney debuted any of his classic cartoon characters, Wain developed “Pussyfoot,” which some consider the first animated cat. According to Cat Compendium: The Worlds of Louis Wain, the first Pussyfoot movie screened in London in the spring of 1917, beating even Felix the Cat to theaters—but it didn’t connect with audiences. Filmmaker George Pearson, who collaborated with Wain, claimed that “three or four cartoons were completed, but their cinema success was not great.” The British Film Institute credits Wain as the animator on two shorts: The Golfing Cat and The Hunter and the Dog, both from 1917.

 

5. Wain thought the animals were electric.
As the world’s foremost cat illustrator and president of the National Cat Club, Wain spent hours talking and thinking about his preferred pet. He came to develop a number of theories on them, some the kind of speculative social observations you still hear today—he argued in Cassell’s Magazine, for instance, that cats take after their owner’s personality. But other theories were a bit stranger. Wain seemed to think that cats held an electric charge, writing that he “looked upon a cat as a lightning conductor on a small scale, and that according to its temperament, negative or positive, did it face north or south, or just as the points of its fur were attracted by the negative or positive poles of the earth.”

 

 

Click the link below  to read more of Louis Wain and his cats.

 

Source: Facts About Louis Wain, the Cat-Obsessed Victorian Artist

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - YAMS VS SWEET POTATOES

Did you know.... 

This Thanksgiving, families across the country will enjoy a traditional meal of turkey, stuffing, and sweet potatoes ... or are they yams?

 

1. So what’s a sweet potato?
2. Then what’s a yam?
3. Where did the yam and sweet potato mix-up come from?

 

Discussions on the proper name for the orange starchy stuff on your table can get more heated than arguments about topping them with marshmallows. But there’s an easy way to tell the difference between sweet potatoes and yams: If you picked up the tuber from a typical American grocery store, it’s probably a sweet potato.

 

So what’s a sweet potato?

Sweet potato and yam aren’t just different names for the same thing: The two produce items belong to their own separate botanical categories. Sweet potatoes are members of the morning glory family. Regular potatoes like russets, meanwhile, are considered part of the nightshade family, which means that sweet potatoes aren’t actually potatoes at all. Almost all of the foods most Americans think of as yams are really sweet potatoes. The root vegetable typically has brown or reddish skin with a starchy inside that’s orange (though it can also be white or purple). It’s sold in most supermarkets in the country and used to make sweet potato fries, sweet potato pie, and the sweet potato casserole you have at Thanksgiving.

 

Then what’s a yam?

Yams are a different beast altogether. They’re more closely related to lilies and grasses and mostly grow in tropical environments. The skin is more rough and bark-like than what you’d see on a sweet potato, and the inside is usually white or yellowish—not orange. Yams are a common ingredient in parts of Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Because the inside of a yam is less moist than the inside of a sweet potato, they require more fat to make them soft and creamy. They’re also less sweet than their orange-hued counterparts. In many regions in the U.S., yams aren’t sold outside of international grocery stores.

 

Where did the yam and sweet potato mix-up come from?

So if yams and sweet potatoes are two totally different vegetables that don’t look or taste that similar, why are their names used interchangeably in the U.S.? You can blame the food industry. For years, “firm” sweet potatoes, which have brown skin and whitish flesh, were the only sweet potatoes grown in the U.S. In the early 20th century, “soft” sweet potatoes, which have reddish skin and deep-orange flesh, entered the scene. Farmers needed a way to distinguish the two varieties, so soft sweet potatoes became yams. Nearly a century later, the misnomer shows no signs of disappearing. Many American supermarkets still call their orange-fleshed sweet potatoes “yams” and their white-fleshed ones “sweet potatoes,” even though both items are sweet potatoes. But this isn’t a strict rule, and stores often swap the names and make things even more confusing for shoppers. So the next time you’re shopping for a recipe that calls for sweet potatoes, learn to identify them by sight rather than the name on the label.

 

 

Source: What’s the Difference Between Yams and Sweet Potatoes?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - LEWIS CHESSMEN

Did you know... The Lewis Chessmen are the most important chess pieces in history. Ever since the ivory figures were discovered sometime before 1831 on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, these kings, queens, knights, rooks, bishops, and pawns carved from walrus tusk and sperm whale teeth have long fascinated us with their exquisite craftsmanship and adorably anxious expressions. Despite their fame, some key details about them remain unknown. Here are 12 facts about these Viking-age treasures.

 

1. No one knows who discovered the Lewis Chessmen—or how. 

According to Ivory Vikings: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them by Nancy Marie Brown, the chessmen may have been unearthed from beneath 15 feet of sand at the head of Uig Bay. Or perhaps they were found in a sandbank by a simple farmer who mistook them for elves and promptly fled, only returning to retrieve them at the urging of his braver wife. Or perhaps the survivors of a shipwreck buried treasure they salvaged from the wreck but never returned for it. Yet another theory places them in the ruins of the House of the Black Women, an abandoned nunnery. These various tales have one thing in common: they put the discovery of the chessmen in Uig. All we know for sure is that the chessmen had to have been found before April 11, 1831, when they were displayed in Edinburgh at the Society of Antiquaries for Scotland.

 

2. They may have been carved by a woman sculptor ...
The most widely accepted theory puts the chessmen’s place of origin as Trondheim, Norway. Another has them carved in Skaholt, Iceland. According to the Saga of Bishop Pall, Margret the Adroit, the high-status wife of a priest, “was the most skilled carver in all Iceland” and was regularly commissioned by the bishop to craft walrus ivory gifts he sent to friends overseas. In this theory, that could be how the chess pieces got to the Isle of Lewis, which was an important trading center at the time. Some archaeologists have floated the idea of excavating areas in Skalholt to look for Margret’s ivory workshop.    

 

3. ... Or up to five different artisans. 
Two museum artifact specialists have proposed that, based on the varying quality of the chessmen, at least four carvers created them. And in 2009, forensic anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson, a specialist in facial reconstruction who has “fleshed” out the skulls of King Richard III, Mary, Queen of Scots; and Johann Sebastian Bach, put that number at five based on her analysis of the varied faces on 59 chessmen. She sorted them into five groups based on common characteristics like “round open eyes” and “inferiorly placed nostrils.” (Perhaps it’s possible Margret the Adroit had four assistants in her workshop.)

 

4. The Lewis Chessmen were probably carved between 1150 and 1200.

There’s no archaeological context for the pieces, so we can’t date them precisely. But their clothing offers reliable clues. The rooks are all warriors decked out in a fashion typical of the late-Norse period: long leather coats, kite-shaped Norman shields, expensive swords, and pointy helmets (though two look more like a bowler hat and a bucket, respectively). As for the bishops’ miters, or pointed hats—the way they’re peaked front and back identifies them as a style worn in the late 12th century.

 

5. Four of the rooks are berserkers.

How can we tell? They’re biting their shields. Berserkers, according to a 13th-century account by Icelandic writer Snorri Sturluson, “wore no armor and were as mad as dogs or wolves, bit their shields, were as strong as bears or bulls. They killed other men, but neither fire nor iron could kill them.” The battle frenzy depicted on the chess pieces marks the warrior rooks as being from the North. As Brown notes, “No other culture claims shield-biters.”

 

6. The Lewis chess set may be the first to include bishops.
The 16 bishops in the set are unarmed, richly clothed, and well fed. How did these chubby men of the cloth get onto the battlefield of the board? As the oldest extant chess set that clearly includes bishops, the Lewis set could mark their debut. Perhaps their inclusion was ordered by Pall, bishop of Skalholt, the commissioner of Margret the Adroit’s famed ivory works.

 

 

Click the link below  to read more about Lewis Chessmen

 

Source: Fascinating Facts About the Lewis Chessmen

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - MICKEY MOUSE

Did you know... Red shorts, oversized yellow shoes, white gloves, and big ears: We all know this cartoon mouse. The most recognized rodent in the world, Mickey Mouse is the mascot of Disney and appears on everything from coffee cups and T-shirts to purses and watches. Though he started out on the silver screen, Mickey’s also active in cyberspace — his Instagram account has more than 3 million followers. Here are eight great facts you might not know about the world’s favorite mouse.

 

1. Walt Disney Didn't Draw the Original Mickey Mouse

Walt Disney is the person most closely associated with Mickey, but it was Disney’s creative partner, Ub Iwerks, who first sketched out the cute cartoon mouse. Disney and Iwerks met while working in Kansas City and dreamed up Mickey when they lost the rights to their first popular character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. (Oswald eventually came home to Disney in 2006.) Iwerks made a number of important technological contributions to filmography, and was honored with two Academy Awards.

 

2. Mickey Is Almost 100 Years Old

When Mickey burst on the scene in 1928, Herbert Hoover was President, and “talkies” (movies with sound) were just taking off. In fact, Mickey’s first two appearances were in silent cartoons (Plane Crazy and The Gallopin’ Gaucho), although these failed to find a distributor. Mickey’s third effort — and first public appearance — was Steamboat Willie, which debuted on November 18, 1928, at the Colony Theater in New York. The short film was an immediate hit, and Mickey’s first two shorts were then released publicly, with music and sound effects added.

 

3. The Mouse Never Rests

Since his 1928 debut, Mickey Mouse has appeared in more than 120 theatrical releases. He’s also the mascot of the Disney theme parks (in Florida, Shanghai, Paris, California, and Hong Kong). If that weren’t enough, the anthropomorphic mouse keeps guests company on Disney cruises, and laces up his skates to perform in Disney on Ice, which has entertained more than 320 million guests in 68 countries since 1981.

 

4. He’s a One-Mouse Man (Um, Mouse)

While they’ve never been married on-screen, Walt Disney himself said, “In private life, Mickey is married to Minnie.” The couple have been together since the beginning, although Minerva (Minnie’s real name) did date Mickey’s archnemesis, Mortimer Mouse, for a time. Minnie’s a career woman, too. In 1988, she starred in her own TV special, Totally Minnie, along with Suzanne Somers, Elton John, and Robert Carradine.

 

5. Walt Disney Voiced Mickey and Minnie

Not liking the voice actors he interviewed, Walt Disney voiced Mickey from 1929 to 1946. But before Walt took over, Mickey’s first words were spoken by composer Carl Stalling in The Karnival Kid. Those words? “Hot dog!” Here’s some real romance: Later actors who voiced Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Wayne Allwine and Russi Taylor, got married in real life. Since 2009, Mickey has been voiced by Bret Iwan.

 

6. He’s No Stranger to the Red Carpet ...

Mickey has rubbed elbows with celebrities at the Academy Awards over the years.  In 1988 and again in 2003, he presented the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. His cartoons have been nominated for that same award 10 times, and one, Lend a Paw, came home with the golden statue in 1941. Meanwhile, Walt Disney received an honorary Academy Award in 1932 for creating the cartoon mouse.

 

7. … Or the Hollywood Walk of Fame

If Academy Awards weren’t enough, in 1978, Mickey Mouse was the first cartoon character to get his very own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in honor of his 50th anniversary. (Minnie has one, too.) And in 2005, Mickey Mouse was the first cartoon character selected to be the grand marshal of Pasadena’s Tournament of Roses Parade.

 

8. Lots of Stars Have Mickey to Thank for Their First Major Appearance

The first Mickey Mouse Club variety show aired in 1955, with 39 child actors singing, dancing, and acting in skits. The show ran for three seasons, and a number of “Mouseketeers,” such as Annette Funicello and Johnny Crawford, went on to big Hollywood careers. The All-New Mickey Mouse Club, which launched in 1989, gave us Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Ryan Gosling.

 

 

Source:  Fun Facts About Mickey Mouse

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - BABY ANIMAL NAMES

Did you know... We all know about baby cats (known as kittens, of course) and baby dogs (puppies) — and while many other species use the conventional “kit” or “pup,” some baby animals have names that are a little more creative, and even absolutely adorable. In fact, one of nature’s weirdest babies shares a name with a goofy dog breed. How many of these baby animal names do you know?

 

1. Hedgehogs and Porcupines

In case you thought hedgehogs couldn’t get any more adorable: A baby hedgehog is called a hoglet. Speaking of other cute animals with quills, a baby porcupine is called a porcupette. When porcupettes are born, their quills are soft and don’t harm the mother — but the quills harden within minutes of being exposed to the air. Porcupettes also have long, reddish-brown hair that helps camouflage them in the tree canopy.

 

2. Jellyfish and Eels

Scyphozoa, or “true jellyfish,” have a unique reproductive cycle: A fertilized egg becomes a polyp, which attaches to a coral reef. Eventually, the polyp forms buds that become juvenile jellyfish, called ephyra. In ancient Greece, Ephyra was both the name of a sea nymph and an old name for Corinth. Newborn eels, meanwhile, are called elvers, a word that comes from “eel-fare,” or the journey that elvers make upriver.

 

3. Platypuses and Kangaroos

A puggle can be a dog that’s a mix of a pug and a beagle, but it can be a baby platypus, too. The word originally referred to baby echidnas, the only other extant monotreme, or egg-laying mammal, but it is now used for both platypuses and echidnas. Some prefer “platypup” as a platypus-specific alternative. As for other animals in and around Australia: Baby kangaroos are called joeys, and the term is also used for other baby marsupials like koalas, wallabies, and opossums. While some sources list the origin of this word as unknown, it may be a borrowed word from Australian Aboriginal peoples.

 

4. Chickens, Pigs, Alpacas, and Llamas

Fully grown female chickens are called hens; males are roosters. In their first year of life, they’re called pullets and cockerels, respectively.

Speaking of barnyard animals: You, and most other people, probably call a baby pig a piglet, but it can be called a shoat, especially after it’s been weaned. A litter of piglets is called a farrow.

Meanwhile, alpacas, llamas, and some of their lesser-known relatives all give birth to crias — borrowed from the Spanish word cría, which can mean “baby animal.”

 

5. Puffins and Swans

When baby puffins, called pufflings, are ready to fly, the moon is supposed to guide them to the ocean. Now, city lights get in the way, so volunteers in Iceland's Westman Islands gather them up off the streets and throw them off cliffs or toward the beach to send them in the right direction. Meanwhile, despite what you may have heard in a certain childhood fable, baby swans, called cygnets, are extremely cute.

 

6. Frogs and Snakes

Sure, you could call a baby frog a tadpole, or you could use the fanciful “pollywog” instead. It probably came from the Middle English words for “poll” and “wiggle.” A baby snake, meanwhile, is called a snakelet, and it can either be born live or hatch from an egg, depending on the species. (Speaking of other wriggling, legless babies: A newborn worm is similarly called a wormlet.)

 

7. Hares and Hawks

During its first year of life, a hare is called a leveret. Middle English borrowed it from French; in modern French, a hare is called a lièvre. The name “eyas” for a baby hawk had a funny journey that also involves Middle English. Centuries ago, Middle English speakers were confused about the term “neias,” which is from the Anglo-French word niais, or “fresh from the nest.” They heard “a neias” as “an eias,” and eventually the word just dropped the “n” at the start.

 

8. Peacocks and Primates

A peacock is just a male peafowl; the female peafowl is called, fittingly, a peahen. Their babies are called peachicks, which just continues the naming convention. Monkeys, apes, and human beings are all primates — and all of their babies are called infants.

 

 

Source: Adorable Baby Animal Names You Should Know

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - 'WISE WORDS?

Did you know.... You think you’ve seen every category of words … then you find this batch, including such oddities as tableclothwise and rabbitwise. Who knew English could adverb like that? These terms, mainly adverbs, are also mainly nonce words—words coined for one occasion and then likely never used again. But thanks to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), these rarities have been preserved, like mutant dinosaurs with gills in the fossil record. Just like weird fossils, these terms all have value in showing the full record of English—if you like looking at language historywise.

 

1. Three-corneredwise 
Ever need to say “triangularly”? Then you’ll want to know this rare word, used as far back as 1580.

 

2. Moon-wise

Most of these words are adverbs with the meaning “in the manner of X,” but a few are adjectives meaning “knowledgeable about X.” The term moon-wise, which has been around since the mid-1500s, fits in the latter category and applies to anyone who knows a lot about that big rock in the sky that affects tides, makes werewolves, and attracts astronauts. The moon also had its own directional word.

 

 

3. Devil-wise
To behave devil-wise is to be devil-like, though not necessarily devil-may-care. This term has been around since at least 1601. A 1910 use from Alice Dudeney’s A Large Room is suggestive of a devil’s ability to vanish: “Even before she drank, which at last she did, Sir Walter seemed to recede, devil-wise, into smoke.”

 

4. Strumpet-wise
Strumpet is a 14th-century term for a sex worker that forms the basis for the colorful adverb strumpet-wise. The term has been around since at least 1653, and it appears in sultry fashion in The Kingdom Of Melchior, a 1949 book by A. Hamilton: “The beauty of some strange lands comes boldly to the stranger and, strumpet-wise, seduces his affections.”

 

5. Tableclothwise

Few would think the manner of a tablecloth could inspire any additional words, but few would be wrong, as they so often are. In Rudyard Kipling’s Life’s Handicap, from 1891, this passage makes the prosaic tablecloth poetic: “Clouds of tawny dust … flung themselves tablecloth-wise among the tops of the parched trees, and came down again.” That’s tablecloth-tacular.

 

 

Click the link below  to read more on the Wise word.

 

 

Source: ‘Tableclothwise,’ ‘Parrotwise,’ and other ‘-Wise’ Words That Never Caught On

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - SHAKESPEAREAN INSULTS

Did you know...  If there’s one thing William Shakespeare did best, it was making dirty jokes. Or coining words and phrases. Or using language so imaginatively that we’re still not always sure what he meant. Or, as evidenced below, it might have been insults. Here’s a breakdown of 10 of the Bard’s best barbs, from an unfatherly outburst in King Lear to an iconic “your mom” moment in Titus Andronicus.

 

1. “Thou art a boil, a plague-sore or embossèd carbuncle in my corrupted blood.”

From: King Lear (Act 2, Scene 4)

King Lear: I prithee, daughter, do not make me mad.
I will not trouble thee, my child. Farewell.
We’ll no more meet, no more see one another.
But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter,
Or, rather, a disease that’s in my flesh,
Which I must needs call mine. Thou art a boil,
A plague-sore or embossèd carbuncle
In my corrupted blood. But I’ll not chide thee.
Let shame come when it will; I do not call it.

 

King Lear is supposed to be splitting his remaining time on Earth between the houses of his two eldest daughters, Goneril and Regan—but Lear’s 100 knights are lousy guests, and Goneril wants him to dismiss half of them. He storms off to plead his case to Regan, and the three characters end up in a bitter quarrel with the sisters united against their father. 

Lear lists some ridiculous things he’d rather do than live at Goneril’s with just 50 knights (become a stablehand’s packhorse, for one), and when Goneril basically says, “Fine, do that,” Lear lets loose the impassioned outburst above. “Forget it. Goodbye forever, Goneril,” he’s saying. “You’ll always be my flesh and blood, and by that I mean you’re a bulging, festering abscess.” (His attempt to guilt her into relenting backfires, because when he says, “All my knights and I can just stay with Regan until you come to your senses,” Regan tells him he can only bring 25 knights.)

 

2. “ ... thou art false as hell.”

From: Othello (Act 4, Scene 2)

Othello: Why, what art thou?
Desdemona: Your wife, my lord, your true and loyal wife.
Othello: Come, swear it. Damn thyself,
Lest, being like one of heaven, the devils themselves
Should fear to seize thee. Therefore be double
damned.
Swear thou art honest.
Desdemona: Heaven doth truly know it.
Othello: Heaven truly knows that thou art false as hell.
Desdemona: To whom, my lord? With whom? How am I false?
Othello: Ah, Desdemona, away, away, away!

 

Othello confronts Desdemona (his wife) after becoming convinced that she’s having an affair with Cassio (his right-hand man). When she insists that heaven knows she’s virtuous, Othello’s retort is something to the effect of “The only thing heaven knows is that you’re hellishly deceitful.” Desdemona wasn’t cheating on Othello, which makes the insult hellishly cruel—but if you ever have incontrovertible proof that someone is deceiving you, “Thou art false as hell!” might pack a stronger punch than “You’re an evil liar!”

 

3. “ … you starveling, you elfskin, you dried neat’s tongue, you bull’s pizzle, you stockfish!”

From: Henry IV, Part 1 (Act 2, Scene 4)

Prince Hal: I’ll be no longer guilty of this sin. This sanguine
coward, this bed-presser, this horse-backbreaker,
this huge hill of flesh—
Falstaff: ’Sblood, you starveling, you elfskin, you
dried neat’s tongue, you bull’s pizzle, you stockfish!
O, for breath to utter what is like thee! You tailor’s
yard, you sheath, you bowcase, you vile standing
tuck—
Prince Hal: Well, breathe awhile, and then to it again, and
when thou hast tired thyself in base comparisons,
hear me speak but this.

 

Right before this verbal skirmish, Prince Hal and his pal Poins call out Sir John Falstaff for exaggerating his own feats during a robbery (in which, unbeknownst to Falstaff, the boys themselves had participated incognito). Hal, tired of all the braggadocio, pokes fun at Falstaff for his vast size, which Falstaff counters with a barrage of barbs related to Hal’s scrawniness. He starts with a softball if there ever was one—starveling just means “starving person”—but finishes the sentence strong with a string of shriveled animal parts. A neat is a cow or an ox; a stockfish is any dried fish in the Gadidae family (which includes cod and haddock, among others); and a bull’s pizzle is a dried bull’s penis, once common as a flogging whip. Elfskin, meanwhile, is a bit of a mystery. It doesn’t appear anywhere else in the written record, and some people think Shakespeare actually meant eel-skin, which he used to describe skinny arms in King John. Body-shaming comments are in poor taste, sure, but “You’re such a dried bull’s penis!” is a spectacular thing to shout at anyone, regardless of their size.

 

4. “ … a fellow … whose face is not worth sun-burning … ”

From: Henry V (Act 5, Scene 2)

King Henry: But, before God, Kate, I cannot look greenly nor gasp out my eloquence,
nor I have no cunning in protestation, only
downright oaths, which I never use till urged, nor
never break for urgin. If thou canst love a fellow of
this temper, Kate, whose face is not worth sun-burning,
that never looks in his glass for love of
anything he sees there, let thine eye be thy cook.

 

King Henry V (a.k.a. Prince Hal, all grown up) delivers this self-own while proposing to Princess Katherine of France during the play’s penultimate scene. As if calling his face “not worth sun-burning” didn’t already make it clear enough that he thinks he’s ugly, Hal follows it up with “I never look in the mirror just to admire my reflection.” Shakespeare didn’t make the character unattractive for no reason: The real-life Henry V took an arrow to the face during the Battle of Shrewsbury. Plus, it opens the door for Henry to make the point to Katherine that “a good heart,” unlike beauty, never fades.

 

5. “Thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows … ”

From: Troilus and Cressida (Act 2, Scene 1)

Thersites: [Achilles] would pound thee into shivers with his
fist as a sailor breaks a biscuit.
Ajax: You whoreson cur!
Thersites: Do, do.
Ajax: Thou stool for a witch!
Thersites: Ay, do, do, thou sodden-witted lord. Thou
hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows; an
asinego may tutor thee, thou scurvy-valiant ass.
Thou art here but to thrash Trojans, and thou art
bought and sold among those of any wit, like a
barbarian slave. If thou use to beat me, I will begin
at thy heel and tell what thou art by inches, thou
thing of no bowels, thou.
Ajax: You dog!

 

Thersites’s enslaver, the great Greek warrior Ajax, is trying to make him share what he knows about Trojan prince Hector’s challenge for one-on-one combat against Greece’s chosen champion. Instead of complying, Thersites pummels him with enough colorful insults to fill their own list. (To be fair, Ajax is pummeling him with blows.) He’s basically telling Ajax that he’s extremely stupid, and smarter men are just using him as a weapon—but he’s not even that good at fighting, especially compared to Achilles. In battle, Thersites says, “thou strikest as slow as another.” “Thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows” is self-explanatory even to someone with an elbow’s amount of brain, and Thersites drives the point home by telling Ajax he’s so dim that a little donkey could teach him a thing or two.

 

Click the link below  to read more on Shakespearean insults.

 

 

Source: You Bull’s Pizzle! Breaking Down Iconic Shakespeare Insults

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - THANKSGIVING MYTHS

Did you know.... Generations of Americans have been gathering to celebrate Thanksgiving for hundreds of years, sharing holiday stories and trivia around the dinner table. However, not everything we once learned about the holiday has held up to the test of time (or further examination). Here are seven common Thanksgiving myths worth busting — and sharing — between slices of pumpkin pie.

 

1. Myth: Thanksgiving Has Been Celebrated Since the 1600s
Americans haven’t continuously celebrated Thanksgiving since its first iteration in 1621. In fact, there are few surviving details of the earliest Thanksgiving celebration; according to some historians, that’s because colonists didn’t view the meal as a new tradition. While Thanksgiving-like events occasionally occurred in the century after, it wasn’t until 1789 that George Washington began the trend of Presidents declaring official days of autumnal celebration. Even then, Thanksgiving didn't become a national holiday until 1863, when a campaign for its recognition was supported by President Abraham Lincoln.

 

2. Myth: Colonists Who Arrived on the Mayflower Were Called Pilgrims

“Pilgrim” is the term we commonly use today to refer to the European settlers who ventured across the Atlantic, though that’s not what passengers on the Mayflower went by. Those who boarded the ship to start a new life in North America referred to themselves as “saints” or “separatists” because of their division from the Church of England. Later on, the colonists would be called “first-comers” or “forefathers,” until around 1800, when the term “pilgrim” emerged, and stuck.

 

3. Myth: Pumpkin Pie Was Served at the First Thanksgiving

Pumpkin pie is synonymous with Thanksgiving, though the earliest celebrations likely didn’t include the custardy confection. Initially, the colonial settlement in Plymouth, Massachusetts, lacked an oven, making it difficult to bake such a dish. Many historians point out that the colonists also lacked the sweeteners needed to create desserts like pie or cranberry sauce. Those weren’t the only foods lacking, however; potato dishes were also absent, and it’s possible venison, not turkey, was served as the centerpiece dish.

 

4. Myth: Thanksgiving Has Always Been Held in November

The earliest national observances of Thanksgiving didn’t follow a pattern; instead of occurring on a predictable date, the timing of the holiday was left up to the President. As noted above, George Washington was the first President to acknowledge Thanksgiving, designating Thursday, November 26, 1789, as a day of prayer and gratitude. However, Thomas Jefferson refused to declare a date, citing a conflict of church and state. And in 1815, fourth President James Madison set Thanksgiving for April of that year. While November celebrations were typical, Thanksgiving didn’t get its official designation as the fourth Thursday of the month until 1941.

 

5. Myth: Abraham Lincoln Began the Turkey-Pardoning Tradition
Tad Lincoln, the youngest son of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, had a soft spot for animals, including a turkey meant to be the family’s Christmas dinner in 1863. Tad successfully argued against eating the bird, and instead kept the turkey as a pet, jump-starting the misconception that Lincoln was the first President to pardon a turkey for Thanksgiving. American Presidents have received live turkeys as holiday tokens since the 1870s, and many ended up served on platters instead of spending their remaining days on a farm. Turkey pardons happened sporadically, but it wasn’t until 1989 (with President George H.W. Bush at the country’s helm) that such pardoning became a formal tradition.

 

6. Myth: Sweet Potatoes and Yams Are the Same Food

While both sweet potatoes and yams are associated with Thanksgiving, the two tubers aren't the same — biologically, they’re not even related. These root crops have noticeable differences: Yams are larger, with a darker exterior that feels rough to the touch, like tree bark. Sweet potatoes are typically smaller, with a smoother skin. When it comes to their inner contents, yams have more starch and are drier than sweet potatoes, and are typically not as sweet. In fact, most “yams” sold in the U.S. are just mislabeled sweet potatoes.

 

7. Myth: Only Americans Celebrate Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is one of America’s oldest traditions, though Americans aren’t the only ones who celebrate a harvest season holiday. Canadians have long observed their own Thanksgiving, dating back to 1578 when explorer Sir Martin Frobisher set sail from England in an attempt to discover the Northwest Passage. To honor the safe journey, Frobisher and crew had a feast of meager rations — biscuits, salt beef, and peas. The date became an official holiday three centuries later, in 1879. Outside of North America, Thanksgiving celebrations can also be found in Liberia, Grenada, and select regions of the Netherlands and Australia.

 

 

Source: Thanksgiving Myths, Busted

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - T-GLOTTALIZATION

Did you know..... When it comes to pronouncing words like ‘written,’ it can be hard to tell there are any ‘t’s in the word unless you see it, well, written. Turns out there’s a linguistic term for this t-dropping: T-glottalization.

 

Despite what we tell kids as they're learning to spell, “sounding it out“ doesn’t always work. In fact, if you say “sounding it out,“ chances are you won’t pronounce that last t. Dropping that t sound is an example of what linguists call glottalization: the sudden coming together of the vocal cords to block the flow of air, and then opening again. In other words, replacing a sound with a pause in the vocal cords.

 

In American English, the letter t is especially likely to be glottalized, and it can happen at the end or in the middle of words. In the middle of a word, it typically happens in one of two scenarios: when a t is before a consonant starting a new syllable (such as in Scotland or Batman) or when a t is before a syllable making the n sound (such as certain or kitten). Ts before a vowel sound, on the other hand, are almost never dropped, meaning words like gritty and meta are typically safe from this phenomenon. 

 

T-glottalization exists in most English dialects, but it is most frequently heard (and likewise most studied) in dialects of British English. Completely dropping the ts in butter or water, for instance, would feel bizarre to an American—it sounds distinctly British. Yet, you rarely hear an American pronounce either of those words with a hard, crisp ‘t’ sound in the middle, either. Instead, many ts in American English are subject to a tactic between pronouncing and glottalizing: flapping. Flapping, in linguistics, refers to replacing a t sound with a quick, d-like sound. So, for Americans, butter ends up sounding more like “budder,“ and water ends up sounding more like “wadder.“

 

But not all British dialects feature t-glottalization. Famously, British Received Pronunciation—the “posh”-sounding British accent most often used for period pieces and by the royal family—pronounces every single t crisply. If you watch actors perform a William Shakespeare play, for example, you’ll probably hear t sounds loud and clear. It’s the effort to pronounce every t that helps distinguish the accent and give it its formal, upper-class perception, whereas t-glottalization is seen as much more casual in British English. 

 

The glottalized t is so widespread that it even has its own phonetic symbol: ʔ. But why do we do it in the first place? No one knows, exactly, but most linguists assume that it’s for the same reason that many other linguistic quirks arise: it makes it easier and faster to communicate. 

 

In fact, in America, t-glottalization seems to be on the rise. Young people are especially likely to swallow their ts, leading to more and more instances of Americans saying things like “impor-an” instead of important. For linguists, this is an important statistic; studies find that young people are usually the first to adopt new linguistic trends that later become commonplace. So before you make fun of your local Gen Z-er for dropping their ts in new places, remember that they’re “impor-an” linguistic innovators.

 

 

Source: The Reason Some People Drop Their ‘T’s When Speaking

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - JOSÉPHINE DE BEAUHARNAIS 

Did you know.... Joséphine de Beauharnais and Napoleon Bonaparte’s relationship is the stuff of legends. But before they met, de Beauharnais experienced significant hardship. Even after she married Napoleon—her second husband—her life was far from a fairytale.  Ahead of the release of Ridley Scott’s biopic Napoleon, here are 11 facts about Joséphine de Beauharnais, the woman who, for 14 years, stood in the emperor’s shadow. 

 

1. Joséphine de Beauharnais was almost born British.

Joséphine’s family owned sugar plantations in tiny Martinique, a French colony in the Caribbean Sea. The French and British had been fighting for control over the island as part of the Seven Years War, with the British seizing control of Martinique in 1762. The conflict between the two countries ended with the 1763 Treaty of Paris, which saw Martinique pass back to French ownership just four months before Joséphine was born.

 

2. The name Joséphine de Beauharnais never existed—at least not within her own lifetime.

Joséphine was the eldest child of Joseph Tascher de La Pagerie, a gambler who squandered the family’s wealth. Born Marie-Joseph-Rose on June 23, 1763, her family knew her as Yeyette, and in adulthood she was known simply as Rose or Marie-Rose. When she married Alexandre, Viscount of Beauharnais in 1779, she became Vicomtesse de Beauharnais.  It was Napoleon who preferred to call her Joséphine, and shortly after meeting him she became Joséphine Bonaparte. Joséphine de Beauharnais is a conflation of her lifetime names that history bestowed in retrospect.

 

3. She was a widow before she met Napoleon. 

Joséphine’s marriage to Alexandre was arranged by their two families—she was only 16 when she sailed to France to meet her new husband. Alexandre showed little interest in his bride; by all accounts, his motivations in marrying her were social expectation and to facilitate access to his inheritance. After being unimpressed with attempts to educate her, he left in favor of his mistress, Laure de Longpré, who bore him a child. Alexandre got his comeuppance when he met the guillotine during the Reign of Terror.

 

4. Joséphine had two children with Alexandre, Viscount of Beauharnais.

Though Joséphine’s marriage to Alexandre was not a happy one, it was still fruitful: the couple had two children, a son and daughter. After their separation, their daughter, Hortense (born April 10, 1783), stayed with Joséphine while their son, Eugène (born September 3, 1781), eventually went to live with Alexandre. Both children stayed close to their mother throughout her life. Napoleon was fond of his stepchildren, treating them like his own, and Eugène often accompanied him on his military campaigns. When Joséphine’s relationship with Napoleon was floundering, she encouraged a marriage between Hortense and Napoleon’s brother Louis, in no small part to stabilize her own situation. The union made Joséphine a mother-in-law to her brother-in-law, and when Louis became King of Holland, Hortense became Queen. 

 

5. Joséphine changed her birthdate on their marriage certificate to seem closer in age to Napoleon.

After a brief courtship, Napoleon and Joséphine married on March, 9, 1796, in the town hall of Paris’s 2nd Arrondissement. It was a rushed affair, to which Napoleon arrived two hours late. Joséphine was 32, he was 26; the age difference famously led them both to alter their birthdates on the marriage certificate so they would appear of a similar age. Joséphine subtracted four years, and Napoleon added 18 months.

 

6. Joséphine had in-law trouble from the start.

The Bonaparte family took an immediate dislike to Joséphine. As an older woman with children, they didn’t think she was a suitable match for Napoleon. Her immodest, spendthrift nature was counter to their ideals of a frugal, family-oriented woman and they found her social ease and sophistication threatening. Throughout her relationship with Napoleon, her in-laws conspired to get rid of her, and were happy when the couple finally separated. 

 

Click the link below  to know more about Joséphine de Beauharnais

 

Source: Facts About Joséphine de Beauharnais

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - DEVILS TOWER

 

Did you know... Steven Spielberg fans are likely familiar with Devils Tower, even if they don’t know it by name. The dramatic butte—which towers 1267 feet above the plains of northeastern Wyoming and the Belle Fourche River—was famously featured in 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, culminating in a scene in which an alien mothership descended upon the rock formation. In the nearly five decades since its release, the film has introduced several generations of fans to the natural landmark—whether they were watching it at home or at a special screening at the base of Devils Tower itself. That said, there’s a lot more to this natural wonder than what you’ve seen on the silver screen.

 

1. Devils Tower is sacred to many Native American tribes.
To the Northern Plains Indian Tribes, Devils Tower isn’t just a stunning landmark—it’s a sacred place. It appears in multiple oral histories and sacred narratives, and is also known by multiple ancient names. For example, the Arapahoe call Devils Tower “Bear’s Tipi”; the Kiowa refer to it as “Aloft on a Rock” or “Tree Rock”; and the Lakota people know it as “Bear Lodge,” “Bear Lodge Butte,” “Grizzly Bear's Lodge,” “Mythic-owl Mountain,” “Grey Horn Butte,” and “Ghost Mountain.” However, it’s commonly referred to as “Mateo Tepee,” which is likely Sioux for “Bear Wigwam,” or “Bear Lodge.” (Long ago, the surrounding region was home to many bears.) To this day, Devils Tower is frequently the site of ceremonial rituals, including sun dances, sweat lodges, and prayer and artifact offerings. (While visiting the park, make sure not to touch or move any religious artifacts.)

 

2. Its name is controversial.

Devils Tower received its popular English name in 1875, when Colonel Richard Irving Dodge led geologist Walter P. Jenney’s scientific expedition through the Black Hills region. They were there to confirm claims of gold, first initiated by General George Armstrong Custer. But when they arrived at the rock formation, they were overwhelmed by its natural beauty. Dodge described the landmark as “one of the most remarkable peaks in this or any country.” Dodge recorded the butte’s name as “Devils Tower,” writing that the Natives “call this shaft The Bad God’s Tower, a name adopted with proper modification, by our surveyors.” But since so many Native names for the towering formation referenced a bear—plus, Native translations for “Bear Lodge” appeared on early maps of the region—it’s likely that Dodge’s expedition simply mistranslated the landmark’s name. (In the Lakota language, the bad god or evil spirit is called wakansica, and the word for black bear is wahanksica.) In recent years, Native tribes have petitioned to officially change the name of Devils Tower to Bear Lodge, as they find the current moniker offensive. Meanwhile, other locals argue that changing the formation’s name would cause confusion and harm regional tourism.

 

3. Devils Tower was America’s very first national monument.
Devils Tower was the very first official United States National Monument. It was proclaimed by President Theodore Roosevelt—who famously loved the American West—on September 24, 1906, shortly after he signed the Antiquities Act into law. Roosevelt made Dodge’s translation the tower’s official name, but along the way, the apostrophe in “Devil’s Tower” was dropped due to a clerical error. The error was never corrected so, to this day, the tower is simply called “Devils Tower.”

 

4. It’s not a volcano.

Some claim that Devils Tower is an old volcano, but geologists say it’s likely an igneous intrusion, meaning it formed underground from molten rock, or magma, that pushed up into sedimentary rock and became solid. Over millions of years, the surrounding sedimentary rock eroded away to display the tall, grayish core within. Experts estimate that the formation of Devils Tower occurred about 50 million years ago, whereas the erosion took place between 5 and 10 million years ago.

 

5. It’s not hollow.
Devils Tower is composed of a rock called phonolite porphyry, which is like a less sparkly granite, as it contains no quartz. And while it may appear hollow at a distance, the striated monument is actually solid. (The NPS compares it to “a bunch of pencils held together by gravity.”)

 

6. It’s really big.

Devils Tower isn’t just extremely tall—it’s also very wide. Its summit is around 180 feet by 300 feet—roughly the size of a football field—and the circumference of its base is around one mile.

 

7. It’s a famous rock-climbing destination.
Devils Tower is popular among rock climbing enthusiasts, who rely on its many parallel cracks to shimmy their way to the top. (Long before modern climbing equipment existed, local ranchers simply made do with a wooden ladder.) According to the National Park Service, Devils Tower sees between 5000 and 6000 rock climbers a year. However, the site is closed to climbers each June, as Native American ceremonies are often held during and around the summer solstice. Additionally, some routes are closed each spring to protect nesting prairie or peregrine falcons.

 

 

Source: Majestic Facts About Devils Tower

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - EX MACHINA

Did you know.... Alex Garland had been in the movie industry for 20 years before making his directorial debut with Ex Machina, a cerebral sci-fi look at what it is to be—or not be—human. It follows Caleb (Domnhall Gleeson), a computer programmer recruited by reclusive tech billionaire Nathan (Oscar Isaac) to perform a Turing test on Ava (Alicia Vikander), a strikingly humanlike robot. This leads to questions of empathy, ethics, and the nature of existence, all shrouded in mystery, alcohol, and the occasional touch of disco dancing. Here are 10 things you might not know about the Oscar-winning film, which is nearing its 10th anniversary.

 

1. Ex Machina used Tinder as part of its promotional campaign.

When the film was shown at SXSW, some festival attendees found themselves ever so slightly duped. A promotional bot was set up on Tinder using images of Alicia Vikander and chatting to matches as her character Ava before directing them to the film‘s Instagram account. A bot of a bot. Layers on layers.

 

2. It contains what might be the most dense, obscure in-joke in cinema history.
When Caleb begins coding at Nathan‘s computer, he enters an algorithm known as the Sieve of Eratosthenes, which is designed to find prime numbers. The prime numbers it chooses form the ISBN of the book Embodiment And The Inner Life: Cognition And Consciousness In The Space Of Possible Minds by Dr. Murray Shanahan, a favorite of Garland‘s and a big influence on the film. Shanahan even served as a scientific advisor on the film.

 

3. The film was inspired by a number of educational texts.
Other books Garland cites as a big influence on the film include 1953‘s Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein; 1983‘s Machine Language for Beginners by Richard Mansfield; 1989‘s The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and The Laws of Physics by Roger Penrose; and The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (2005) and How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed (2012), both by Ray Kurzweil.

 

4. You can spend the night at Oscar Isaac‘s (on-screen) home.

 

The Juvet Landscape Hotel in Norway was used as Nathan‘s house. The hotel prides itself on being “in the middle of nowhere” and is situated “in a remote part of a remote village in a remote region.” The nearest airport is Ålesund, about 60 miles away. They have a nice approach to meals, where they don‘t serve lunch but encourage you to take a bag to the breakfast buffet. 

 

5. The thought experiments are taken from real life.
The thought experiments mentioned in Ex Machina are real conundrums from the world of philosophy. The “Mary in the black and white room” scenario was coined by Frank Jackson in 1982 before expanding into several books designed to highlight the difference between knowledge and actual sensory, subjective experiences, or qualia. 

 

 

Click the link below  for more facts on Ex Machina.

 

Source: Fascinating Facts About ‘Ex Machina‘

Edited November 20, 2023 by DarkRavie

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - COLOR YELLOW

Did you know.... The color yellow is one of the more perplexing hues on the color wheel. Humans perceive the color as both energetic and aggressive as well as warm and frustrating. Some cultures consider it a symbol of power and good fortune, while others conflate the color with weakness (“yellow-bellied”) or manipulation (“yellow journalism”). These six facts explore the ins and outs of the tone and all the various ways it fills our everyday lives.

 

1. Yellow Pages Were Created Because a Printer Ran Out of White Paper

One day in 1883, Cheyenne, Wyoming-based printer Reuben H. Donnelley was busy printing the latest edition of the phone directory when he unexpectedly ran out of white paper. Unwilling to put off production until he could restock, he instead resorted to finishing the job with yellow paper, unknowingly creating an icon of the then-nascent information age. After subscribers commented on how these yellow pages were easy to find amid piles of white-hued publications, Donnelley produced the first official Yellow Pages phone book three years later. Using the color yellow for telephone business directories then became the norm around the world.

 

2. The Creator of the Yellow Smiley Face Only Made $45

The bright-yellow smiley face is a symbol baked into the fabric of the digital age, providing the foundation for the emoji that have become the techno-hieroglyphics of modern life. But that very first exaggerated face had to come from somewhere — and that somewhere was Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1963, the State Mutual Life Assurance Company reached out to graphic designer Harvey Ball to create a symbol to help boost company morale. “I made a circle with a smile for a mouth on yellow paper, because it was sunshiny and bright,” Ball later told the Associated Press. For 10 minutes of work, he received $45 — not a bad rate, but not exactly commensurate with the $500 million business that yellow-hued grin inspired.

 

3. The First Emperor of China, Huangdi, Was Known As the Yellow Emperor

Although purple is often associated with emperors, kings, and queens throughout European history, yellow is the color of royalty in ancient China. This has to do in large part with the country’s quasi-mythological emperor Huangdi, who supposedly ruled around the 27th century BCE. It’s traditionally believed that Huangdi (huang means “yellow” in Chinese) introduced wooden houses and the bow and arrow, and defended China against bands of marauding barbarians. For these (supposed) efforts, Huangdi now stands as a legendary figure and mythical progenitor of the Han Chinese people. Although the historicity of Huangdi has been called into question by historians in the 20th century (CE, that is), his story has exalted the color yellow in Chinese culture as a hue that embodies royalty, power, and good fortune.

 

4. The Sun Isn’t Actually Yellow

Many kindergarten drawings magnetized to fridges around the world feature a big yellow sun with bright rays shooting in all directions. But is the sun actually yellow? How our eyes perceive the sun’s color relies on a variety of things, including the light’s intensity, environmental factors, and the limitations of human biology. Because Earth’s atmosphere is so effective at reflecting blue light, the light that eventually reaches our eyes has a slight yellow tint to it. When the sun is closer to the horizon at sunset, the sun’s light passes through even more of Earth’s atmosphere, thus scattering even more blue light, which makes our host star a warmer, reddish hue. But when astronauts escape the confines of Earth’s atmosphere, the sun they see is completely white, as the star basically emits across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio to gamma waves. According to NASA, however, the sun emits most of its energy at around 500 nanometers in the visible spectrum. This means the sun is technically blue-green, but the physical limitations of our eyes prevent us from perceiving it.

 

5. We Are Biologically Wired to See School Bus Yellow

Parked outside schools across the U.S. are bright-yellow school buses, and that subtle color assault on your eyes is by design. In 1939, school transportation officials met at Columbia University to standardize buses in an effort to make them both safer and cheaper to mass-produce. During this meeting, 50 shades of yellowish orange were pinned to the wall, with Color 13432 — known today as National School Bus Glossy Yellow — eventually emerging as the winner. Humans are trichromatic, meaning our eyes have three types of photoreceptor cells (red, blue, and green), and as a wavelength, school bus yellow is at the peak where two of our three photoreceptors (red and green) are equally stimulated — so it essentially sends double the transmissions to the brain.

 

6. Maybe Avoid the Color Yellow on a First Date

While yellow is beloved by some cultures, school transportation boards, and certain springtime pollinators, the color scores low marks when it comes to fashion. According to a 2010 study published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, yellow ranks among the lowest for both men and women when it comes to a “mean attractiveness score.” Conversely, the highest-scoring colors among both sexes were red and black. Additionally, an unrelated survey held in 2013 by a U.K. online retailer asked around 2,500 adults about the attractiveness of certain clothing colors, and yellow again scored low marks. To add insult to injury, yet another survey found the color yellow inspired the least amount of confidence (along with orange and brown). However, some of these preferences may be regional. A 2019 study surveyed 6,000 people across 55 countries about their feelings for yellow in general, and found that preferences for yellow increased in areas with rainy weather far from the equator. This is likely because the color yellow is more closely associated with warm, sunny weather, which is rarer the farther you move away from the globe’s middle.

 

 

Source: Sunny Facts About the Color Yellow

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - JURY DUTY

Did you know... Each year, roughly 32 million Americans open their mail to find that they’re being summoned to court—not to be tried or litigated against, but to serve on a jury panel. For days, weeks, or even months at a time, community members attend trials and are charged with coming to a consensus opinion about a civil or criminal matter.

It’s important work, but it’s also disruptive, which is why many people try to get out of it. For more on jury duty, including being excused, being sequestered, and the one time jurors can ignore the law, read on.

 

1. A lot of people simply don’t show up for jury duty.

While methods may vary somewhat depending on the various state and federal court protocols, jurors are often plucked from voter or Department of Motor Vehicles registrations at random, provided they’re at least 18 and an English-speaking citizen of the United States. That 32 million figure is based on a 2007 survey by the National Center for State Courts, one of the few instances in which statistical information about jury service has ever been compiled. (In federal court, roughly 194,000 people were called for duty in 2016.) But sending a notice is no guarantee a person will show. According to that same NCSC survey, barely a quarter of those potential jurors appear. Some are excused, owing to medical or financial hardships, and a portion—roughly 3 million—just don’t come to court at all. And just being called for jury duty doesn't mean they will actually serve on a case: Only about 1.5 million people wind up sitting in the jury box. Failing to appear for a jury summons can have consequences ranging from fines to jail time, depending on the temperament of the judge. One potential juror who failed to appear in Georgia in 2023 was tasked with writing a 30-page essay on why serving is important.

 

2. People use a lot of different methods for getting out of jury duty.

When a potential juror finds serving difficult owing to medical or financial issues, most courts will be lenient and might offer to postpone service or excuse it altogether if the person can prove those hardships (by getting a doctor’s note, for example). Age can also be a mitigating factor, if it can be demonstrated the task would be difficult, given the juror’s health. Those solely responsible for children might also be excused. In other cases, a person’s occupation could be enough to pardon them. According to the Administrative Offices of the U.S. Courts, which oversees federal courts, active members of the armed forces or National Guard are exempt; so are professional members of fire or police departments; the same goes for elected officials. In fact, they’re barred, meaning they couldn’t serve on a federal jury even if they wished to. Another group that’s exempt: convicted felons, who face exclusion from service in roughly half of all states and limitations in others. Jurors who also appear a little too enthusiastic to serve may be passed up by attorneys, because seeming very eager to serve can come off as a little suspicious.

 

3. The jury selection process can involve social media.

Attorneys want to seat a jury that they feel stands the best chance of being impartial and ideally a little favorable toward their respective arguments. That selection process is known as voir dire (Latin for “to speak the truth”), in which the lawyers try to tease out any potential prejudices before agreeing on the panel. They also have a set number of peremptory challenges to try and replace jurors they feel could be unsympathetic to their case, even if there’s no obvious cause, like being a relative to someone involved. But attorneys also look at nonverbal cues—like potential jurors who hesitate in answering or body posture—to help them determine who might be a good fit. Law firms may also try to vet jurors based on their internet profiles, including social media posts. The American Bar Association dubbed it “Voir Google,” and it comes with some measure of risk. One sitting juror in a 2013 New York trial told the judge that a defense team member had visited his LinkedIn profile.

 

4. Employers aren’t necessarily required to pay employees for jury duty.

 

The intersection between civic duty and earning a living can be complicated. There is no federal law requiring employers to pay employees for their time spent on a jury, though a number of states (Alabama, Colorado, and Florida among them) require at least a minimum daily payment. In New York, for example, jurors are paid $40 a day for three days, with the state “encouraging” (but not requiring) employers to pay their full wage [PDF]. Other states prohibit employers from forcing people to take paid time off to serve. There’s at least one constant: no state allows an employer to threaten someone with termination for serving on a jury.

 

5. A jury can ask questions.

Typically, it’s the attorneys in a case that do the asking. Jurors are expected to remain silent and attentive—but they do sometimes have ways to pose a question. While protocol varies by state, sometimes jurors can submit written queries to a judge, who will then consult with counsel on both sides. If there are no objections, the question can be brought up. But not all legal minds endorse the practice. Some lawyers believe that allowing jurors to ask questions can slow down a trial; others argue that submitting a question that isn't asked might prompt the juror to infer the answer is incriminating, even if that isn’t the case.

 

Click the link below  to know more facts on Jury Duty.

 

Source: Peer Pressure: Facts About Jury Duty

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - LONGEST SONG

Did you know... If you want to listen to the longest song ever recorded, get comfortable—you're going to be here for a few days.  When it comes to music-related world records, Guinness has one for just about every venture imaginable—and probably some you never would’ve imagined at all.

 

The “largest human image of a musical instrument,” for example, was a saxophone formed by 1660 people in Nice, France, as part of 2014’s National Music Day. It took a slightly smaller group to earn the distinction of “most people playing musical tubes”—1171 people, to be exact, in the Chinese city of Chengdu in 2019. And if you were wondering which concert played host to more births than any other concert in history, the answer is 1969’s famously lawless Altamont Speedway concert in California. The Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane, and several other high-profile music groups made appearances, as did four newborn babies.

 

There are Guinness World Records in more conventional categories, too. George Gershwin’s “Summertime” is the most recorded song of all time; and the “Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band,” a disco remix of John Williams’s Star Wars compositions from Meco’s 1977 album Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk, is considered the best-selling instrumental single.

 

 

 

The longest song ever officially released, on the other hand, has yet to achieve such mainstream success—maybe because it’s a staggering 138 hours, 41 minutes, and 20 seconds long. A writer and musician named Dr. Jagadeesh Pillai, of Varanasi in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, nabbed the title on March 5, 2023 with his composition and recording of a single epic track based on the 16th-century poem Shri Ram Charit Manas. The song contains all 15,000-plus verses of the poem in the Awadhi language, a version of Hindi. It takes more than five days to listen to from start to finish. Pillai’s achievement edged out the previous record holder, “The Rise and Fall of Bossanova,” created by Michael and Kelley Bostwick of Palmer, Massachusetts. They released it on November 1, 2016, under the artist name P C III. Its duration was a mere 13 hours and change.

 

 

Source: What Is the Longest Song Ever Recorded?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - CHRISTMAS TREE TIPS

Did you know.... Decorating a Christmas tree is a highly personal endeavor. Everyone has different preferences when it comes to tree size, ornament color, accents, and other decisions. But that doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from some basic strategies when making a seasonal scene. Whether you have a fresh spruce or an artificial trunk, here’s how to maximize your tree’s potential.

 

1. Hang your lights evenly. (And vertically.)

For a lot of people, managing to successfully untangle a ball of https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/653841/how-to-hang-christmas-lights-on-your-treeChristmas tree lights is enough to call it a day. But how you hang those strings is just as important. You can opt for a vertical hang, where the string goes up and down, or a horizontal approach, which involves wrapping the lights around the tree. Going vertical is easier, and making sure you keep a consistent distance between rows will help with visual appeal. As for incandescent bulbs and LEDS: the former may be cheaper, but the latter won’t burn hot and will likely last longer. (Either way, make sure you leave the lights off when you’re not home.) As for how many lights you’ll need: One good rule of thumb is to shoot for 100 lights per foot. A 6-foot tree means 600 lights.

 

2. Figure out how many ornaments you’ll need.

A family’s ornament stash builds over time as more and more decorations are amassed. Too few ornaments and your tree will look sparse. Too many and it’ll look overstuffed. You can use an online ornament calculator like this one to try to figure out how many ornaments you’ll need in relation to your tree size. Remember: While a 360-degree view of a tree might be nice, it’s easier to relegate it to a corner so you won’t have to worry about decorating the back. Consider that placement if you’re low on ornaments.

 

3. Consider flocking.

Flocking is the practice of dusting a tree with artificial snow for that premium winter look. In days past, people used flour and other pantry items. Today, you can buy commercial flocking packs that might use paper, corn starch, and a flame retardant for safety. If you go this route, though, take care when spraying your tree with water—it helps the flocking stick—and never do so around lights or other electrical decorations. You can also opt for artificial trees that come pre-flocked.

 

4. Fill in bare spots.

Some trees are overstuffed with branches, while others may resemble the sad thing that plagued Charlie Brown. If your tree is feeble-looking in spots, you can use pine garland or tinsel that resembles natural needles. You can also grab branches from the bottom of the tree to help plug in gaps higher up. If you have an artificial tree, you might want to consider devoting time to fluffing it, or teasing the branches that have been compressed in a box all year. It’s time consuming, but you’ll wind up with a fuller-looking tree.

 

5. Size up your ornaments.

Ornaments come in a variety of sizes, and each is suited to a different position on the tree. Try to place your largest ones deep into the tree, where they can fill gaps and get support from where branches are strongest. (They’ll also reflect light, making the tree shine.) Smaller ornaments can hang closer to the end of branches. You can make it even easier on yourself by grouping ornaments by size and color before you start hanging them so you won’t have to search for the right one.

 

6. Use ribbon.

A great way to add color to your tree is to opt for a bright ribbon, which also serves to cover up barren areas if you’re low on ornaments. While experts can use entire rolls of ribbon at once, you might be better served cutting a roll into sections of a few feet each. Start at the top of the tree—securing the tip if you have to—and then snake it around branches.

 

7. Stick to a theme.

There’s nothing wrong with some haphazard placement of ornaments, but the easiest tree on the eyes will be one that has some kind of unifying theme. That might be a color or ornament shape. Depending on your decorations, you might also be able to work toward a rustic or contemporary approach. For colors, try to stick to two or three—any more and you run the risk of things looking a little disorganized. (Unless, of course, that’s your theme.)

 

8. Measure your topper.

Tree toppers may be out of fashion for some, but decorating is a subjective activity. If you want an angel capping your tree, you won’t get fined. Just make sure it has the same shape: wider toppers go with wider trees, while narrow toppers are good for skinnier trunks. You also want to make sure it’s not too heavy or unbalanced. Decorating resource Balsam Hill recommends trying to balance a topper in your hand. If it topples over in 3 seconds or less, it’s probably going to sag.

 

 

Source: Ornamental Health: Tips for Decorating Your Christmas Tree

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - SENSE OF SMELL

Did you know... None of our senses is as frequently maligned as our sense of smell. Our noses, while convenient, often are portrayed as second-tier sniffers, behind the gifted olfactory senses of dogs, sharks, and other animals. It’s said our noses can’t even smell that many distinct odors. And after all, smell doesn’t help us navigate our world as much as our sight or touch does — supposedly. However, all of these purported “facts” are actually fictions. The seven (real) facts below explain just how amazing our sense of smell really is.

 

1. Olfaction Is the Oldest Sense

When complex life established a foothold on Earth 1.5 billion years ago, smell was the first sense that evolution developed. Chemoreception — detecting chemicals in the environment by scent — is a common trait among all animals, and even single-celled organisms. Smell is vital not only for finding food but also for finding a mate, a pretty key ingredient for furthering your particular limb on the tree of life. But although this sense is ubiquitous throughout the various phyla, kingdoms, and domains, not all organisms smell the same way. Single-celled organisms use a protein in the cell wall to detect chemicals, while plants use mechanisms baked in their genes to detect volatile organic compounds. Snakes, meanwhile, use their forked tongues to “grab” scents and then quickly return them to the olfactory bulb located at the roof of their mouths. This allows snakes to discern the direction of smells, which scientists describe as “smelling in stereo.” When it comes to life’s oldest sense, evolution has had more than enough time to create a variety of techniques.

 

2. Our Nose Can Sense 1 Trillion Odor

Humans are actually better than dogs when it comes to detecting certain smells, and our noses can actually sniff out a staggering 1 trillion (yes, with a “t”) odors. The impressive nature of our noses is a relatively recent discovery, however, which may explain why the human sense of smell long got a bad rap. Nearly a century ago, scientists pegged the human nose’s olfactory abilities at about 10,000 distinct smells — not bad, but far less impressive than our eye’s ability to glimpse 1 million colors (or more, for those lucky tetrachromats). In 2014, researchers from Rockefeller University in New York City decided to take a closer look at the nose’s true powers, and found that the human nose was much more capable than we imagined, giving the phrase “the nose knows” a whole new level of credibility.

 

3. Smell Is Closely Entwined With Memory

Sometimes smells like fresh-cut grass, a delicious baked pie, or a particular deodorant will bring back a long-forgotten recollection that sends you strolling wistfully down memory lane. Well, that’s by biological design, and it has to do with the way the human brain is wired. Unlike our four other best-known senses — which are first routed through the thalamus before reaching the hippocampus, the area of the brain associated with memory — smells are sent directly to the olfactory bulb located above the nasal cavity. While this bulb is directly tied into the hippocampus, it’s also connected with the emotion-processing amygdala, which is why smells can elicit such potent memories. Because smells can deliver these powerful whiffs of nostalgia, companies including Nike, Verizon, and many others have developed — and sometimes even trademarked — certain smells associated with their retail stores and products.

 

4. Some Women Don’t Have Olfactory Bulbs (But Smell Fine)

The olfactory bulb, as the name suggests, is central to our sense of smell. With millions of olfactory receptor cells, the bulb helps translate smells into signals the brain can interpret, so no olfactory bulb means no sense of smell — or so we thought. In 2019, scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel were studying why some people have such a particularly strong sense of smell when they discovered in an MRI scan that one 29-year-old participant was completely missing her olfactory bulb. The woman was also left-handed — a factor that when combined with a missing olfactory bulb has a known effect on the organization of the brain. After poring over more data, the scientists estimated that 0.6% of women (and 4.25% of left-handed women) don’t have an olfactory bulb, but nevertheless can smell as well as — and in some cases even better than — those with one. Strangely, missing bulbs were not found in men. How is this possible? Well, we don’t really know (yet). It’s possible that functions associated with the bulb were disorganized in these particular southpaws, meaning the necessary receptors are still there, just arranged in ways imperceptible to MRI scans. For now, the mystery remains.

 

5. Our Sense of Smell Is Strongest in the Evening

Although it’s imperceptible to the average person, smell actually fluctuates throughout the day. Research conducted by Brown University in 2017 studied 37 teenagers for a week and measured their sense of smell in relation to levels of melatonin, a hormone that helps induce sleep. The study found that our sense of smell is intimately entwined with our circadian rhythm — the natural cycle our bodies experience every day. When participants were approaching “biological night” around 9 p.m., their sense of smell was heightened, but strangely the opposite was true between 3 a.m. and 9 a.m. Although scientists don’t know the reason for this sniffing discrepancy, one theory harkens back to our evolution. In our hunter-gatherer days, the body might’ve ramped up our sense of smell right before sleep in an effort to hunt (or forage) for that last meal or to detect any nearby threats before bedding down for the night. An increased sense of smell might’ve also encouraged some pheromone-induced mating. Whatever the reason, humanity’s sense of smell appears to be a bit of a night owl.

 

6. Humans Are Wired to Smell Petrichor

You know that earthy smell that always accompanies rain after a long dry spell? That specific aroma has a name, “petrichor.” Coined in 1964 by Australian scientists (who would know a thing or two about dry spells), “petrichor” is a portmanteau of “petros” (stone) and “ichor,” which is a name for a bloodlike “ethereal fluid” of the gods in Greek mythology. The smell comes from actinobacteria that release organic compounds known as geosmin into the air when it rains. What’s strange is that humans are incredibly sensitive to the stuff — our ability to smell petrichor is far more sensitive than the ability of sharks to smell blood in the water. Many of humanity’s modern biological oddities can be explained by the hundreds of thousands of years spent living in hunter-gatherer tribes, and our keen sense for petrichor is another one to add to the list. Some scientists theorize our noses are so fine-tuned to sniff out this smell because finding water and rainy weather was often a matter of survival — and where there’s petrichor, there’s water. So the next time that telltale smell tickles your nostrils, sit back and marvel at the meticulous machinations of evolution that made such a moment possible.

 

7. You Can Smell Emotions

Most people are familiar with the power of pheromones, but research is hazy at best regarding what role they play in human behavior and sexual attraction. Bees, for example, possess a vomeronasal organ that detects pheromones and sends signals to the brain. While some humans possess the remnants of this organ, it’s vestigial and nonfunctional. However, scientists expect that other parts of the olfactory system might’ve picked up the slack, making chemoreception between humans possible. A study conducted in 2012 collected sweat from male participants as they watched fear- or disgust-inducing movies. When women participants were asked to do a visual task while exposed to the sweat samples, scientists monitored their facial expressions and discovered that women matched the emotion that originally elicited the sample — a sign that something in the sweat activated some form of chemoreception locked away in the human mind.
 

 

Source: Facts About Our Amazing Sense of Smell

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - TALK TURKEY?

Did you know.... Want to spice up conversation this Thanksgiving? Use these terms while you’re talking turkey.

 

 

1. Rum Cobble-Colter

According to A new dictionary of the terms ancient and modern of the canting crew, in its several tribes, of Gypsies, beggers, thieves, cheats, &c., with an addition of some proverbs, phrases, figurative speeches, &c., first published in the late 1600s, a cobble-colter is a turkey. A rum cobble-colter, on the other hand, is “a fat large cock-turkey.”

 

2. I Guess It’s All Turkey
This American phrase is “a quaint saying indicating that all is equally good,” according to A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon and Cant. “It is said that an old gentleman who was asked at a Thanksgiving dinner if he preferred the white meat or dark of the standard dish replied, ‘I don't care which; I guess it’s all turkey.’”

 

3. and 4. Bubbly-Jock and Bobble-Cock

Bubbly-jock is Scottish slang for a male turkey, from the noise the bird makes. The term can also be used to describe “a stupid, boasting person” or “an excessive talker,” all usages that might apply at your Thanksgiving dinner. Slang for a turkey in northern England, meanwhile, is bobble-cock, according to The Slang Dictionary: Or, The Vulgar Words, Street Phrases, and "Fast Expressions” of High and Low Society, published in 1864.

 

5. Turkey Merchants
According to 1884’s The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical, and Anecdotal, this was a term for “dealers in plundered or contraband silk.” Previously, it referred to something more obvious: “a driver of turkeys and geese to market.”

 

6. Alderman
A “well-stuffed” turkey. An alderman in chains is a turkey with sausages; according to A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, published in 1788, the sausages “are supposed to represent the gold chain worn by those magistrates.”

7. Cold Turkey Rap

According to Eric Partridge’s A Dictionary of the Underworld: British and American, this 1928 term means “an accusation, a charge, against a person caught in the act.” Perhaps you’ll get a cold turkey rap for stealing seconds—or thirds—of your favorite dish this holiday.

 

8. Block Island Turkey
An American slang term for salted cod, originating in Connecticut and Rhode Island.

 

9. Turkey Puddle

Eighteenth-century slang for coffee.

 

10. Snotergob
According to A Dictionary of the Scottish Language, snotergob is “the red part of a turkey’s head.”

 

11. Red as a Turkey Cock
This phrase dates back to 1630, according to Dictionary of Proverbs. It could refer to any kind of flushing of the face (including, perhaps, when your dad and your uncle are getting too worked up debating politics).

12. To Have a Turkey On One’s Back

According to the 1905 book A Dictionary of Slang and Colloquial English, this is what you say when someone has imbibed a bit too much: It means “to be drunk.”

 

13. Drive Turkeys to Market
This phrase is best used when the person at dinner who has had a few too many attempts to walk. According to Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang, the mid-19th-century phrase means “drunken, unsteady manner,” and comes from the fact that “the turkey-driver is forced to follow the birds’ meandering course along the road.”

 

 

Source: Old-Timey Turkey Terms to Bring Back This Thanksgiving

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - WHY "MERRY"?

Did you know.... For well wishes on all occasions, from general holidays like Halloween and Valentine’s Day to personal milestones like anniversaries and birthdays, English speakers are happy to let happy do the heavy lifting. But for some reason, we’ve decided that Christmas deserves its own bespoke greeting.

So, as Thanksgiving fades to black, the word merry shakes off the dust of its nearly year-long hibernation and emerges—along with eggnog, ugly sweaters, and jolly old St. Nick himself—into the glorious red and green glow of seasonal relevance. Which leaves the curious with one question: How exactly did merry become the go-to modifier for Christmas—and only Christmas?

 

Merry Christmas, Ya Filthy Victorians!
It all began when merry arrived in Old English by way of Germanic. It essentially meant “pleasing,” but that definition expanded over the centuries to cover “festive,” “joyous,” and other celebration-related senses. The earliest known reference to merry Christmas dates back to 1534—in a letter from John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, to Henry VIII’s chief minister Thomas Cromwell. “And thus our Lord send yow a mery Christenmas, and a comfortable, to yowr heart desyer,” Fisher wrote. Happy got a slightly later start, showing up in English around the 14th century from hap, meaning “good fortune.” Happy, too, enjoyed a broadening of its definition into the territories of pleasure and celebration, and it wasn’t long before people were wishing each other happy holidays. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Happy New Year came first in the mid-16th century, and Happy Christmas was in play by the late 17th.

 

 

For a while after that, merry and happy were both regularly paired with Christmas. It wasn’t until the Victorian era that merry pulled ahead in the rankings, thanks to some seminal Yuletide content. Charles Dickens peppered 1843’s A Christmas Carol with roughly 20 Merry Christmases, for example, and not a single happy Christmas. The first commercial Christmas card, which debuted that same year, featured Merry Christmas as well. The phrase also cropped up in carols, including early versions of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” favored by 19th-century British kids. As one stanza went, “I wish you a merry Christmas / And a happy new year / A pocket full of money / And a cellar full of beer.”

 

Though not all Victorian Christmas traditions have prevailed, our modern conception of the holiday is still very much a reflection of that era—as evidenced by the fact that we’re still reading (or watching adaptations of) A Christmas Carol, sending Christmas cards, and listening to “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Moreover, we’ve shored up the staying power of Merry Christmas by adding our own memorable references to the heap, from Judy Garland’s warbling “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” to Home Alone 2: Lost in New York’s iconic catchphrase, “Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals!” Using merry for other occasions wasn’t always unheard of; merry Thanksgiving and merry birthday continued making appearances into the 20th century. But the ever-swelling volume of Christmas culture containing merry has anchored it to the holiday in a manner that hasn’t happened with any other fête.

 

 

 

All things considered, it’s quite an achievement that the UK has managed to avoid merry’s monopoly and keep happy Christmas on the market. Semantics just might know why.

 

It’s a Jolly Holiday With Merry
Despite their definitional overlap, merry and happy aren’t mirror images of each other. Since the 14th century, per the OED, people have used merry to mean “boisterous or cheerful due to alcohol.” Merry Christmas, therefore, might be construed as a winking way to say, “I hope your cup runneth over ... with champagne at all the best Christmas parties, that is!” You could argue that it’s vaguely sacrilegious, or at least in poor taste, to focus on booze-heavy revelry during a holiday that’s about as holy in origin as they come. And you certainly wouldn’t be the first. “We make Christmas excessively merry, only by being excessively wicked; and we celebrate the festivity of our Savior, as if we were ministering the mad orgies of Bacchus,” one observer wrote in a 1772 issue of The London Magazine: Or, Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer. “But profligacy is the characteristic of this wretched age.” And the next age, too: A North London reverend named Gordon Calthrop pointed out the debauchery often involved in a merry Christmas during an 1864 address that advocated for happy Christmases rather than simply merry ones. But his thesis was less about condemning merrymakers and more about questioning whether merriment equaled happiness. In Calthrop’s estimation, it did not.

 

 

“The boisterous gaiety which many put on, is oftentimes only a mask. It covers a sad—sad face,” he said. “And if a man tries to reassure me, or to persuade himself, by extravagant demonstrations of delight, that he is exceedingly happy, I always feel disposed to take the liberty to doubt the statement. True happiness is not a noisy and boisterous, but a quiet thing.” You can write it off as a personal hot take that true happiness is never expressed noisily. But Calthrop’s opinion does jibe with the connotations of the words merry and happy. The former is typically characterized by some energetic and short-lived expression of cheer: laughing, singing, dancing, clinking beer steins, etc. Happy, meanwhile, often implies a deeper-seated and less fleeting kind of contentment—not to mention its original sense regarding good fortune. This distinction could shed light on why people started wishing each other a merry Christmas and a happy New Year: as if to say, “I hope you have a really fun Christmas, and then after that I hope the new year brings you lasting pleasure and prosperity.”

 

One Happy Royal Family
Calthrop wasn’t the only 19th-century Christian who found something lacking in a really fun Christmas. Plenty of others contended that the notion of a merry Christmas was juvenile, irreligious, or just not a very accurate representation of how it feels to actually celebrate the holiday.

 

 

 

“Merry Christmas is quite the term for the young, but it a little jars upon the ears as life goes on, and we know more of its troubles and sorrows. For myself, I confess that I much prefer the ‘Happy Christmas.’ It speaks to all of the birthday of our King,” one person wrote in an 1878 issue of a Gloucestershire parish magazine.  These sentiments were evidently pervasive enough in the UK that by the early 20th century, the phrase Merry Christmas had gained a bad rap as an Americanism. “I send you of course the greetings of the season: Merry Christmas (a foolish American wish!) and a Happy New Year,” someone wrote to the editors of The Catholic Fortnightly Review in 1909.

 

Great Britain’s Happy Christmas crusaders, like baby Jesus before them, were soon blessed with a gift from a king. During the monarchy’s first-ever Christmas Day message in 1932—written by Rudyard Kipling and broadcast over the radio to the entire empire—George V wished everyone a happy Christmas. George VI took up the happy mantle during his reign, as did Elizabeth II after him. Their Christmas Day broadcasts made it abundantly clear that Happy Christmas was high society’s holiday greeting of choice. (That said, some members of the royal family do sometimes use Merry Christmas these days.)

 

 

 

All feelings about the merits of a merry Christmas versus a happy one aside, we can all agree that Crimbo has at least earned a hat tip for heading off merry’s descent into obsolescence. (Not to diminish the good work of the humble merry-go-round.)

 

 

 

Source: Why Do We Only Say “Merry” for Christmas?