What do you call the dent in the bottom of a champagne bottle? A kick (or a punt).
Gin comes from the French genièvre, for “juniper.” (Gin is made from juniper berries.)
Why six-packs? Breweries thought six beers were “the maximum a woman could safely carry.”
By 3000 B.C. there were at least six different types of beer in Egypt.
During Prohibition, half of all federal prison inmates were in jail for violating liquor laws.
If you feed beer to a laboratory rat, it will live six times longer than a rat that drinks only water.
Familiar Phrases
TO BE WELL-HEELED
Meaning: To have plenty of money or be well-to-do
Origin: “It might be assumed that well-heeled originally alluded to the condition of a rich person’s shoes. But that is not the case. In the 18th century, it was a fighting cock that was ‘well-heeled,’ that is, fitted with an artificial spur before facing an opponent in the pit. From that, men began to ‘heel’ themselves, to carry a gun, before entering a trouble zone. Perhaps because most troubles can be alleviated by money, the expression took on its present financial aspect.” (Heavens to Betsy!, by Charles Earle Funk)
TO HAVE SOMEONE OVER A BARREL
Meaning: To have the upper hand
Origin: “In the days before mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, lifeguards placed drowning victims over a barrel, which was rolled back and forth while the lifeguard tried to revive them. The person ‘over the barrel’ is in the other person’s power or at his mercy.” (The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, by Robert Hendrickson)
TO BE A BASKET CASE
Meaning: An overly anxious or stressed person who can’t function normally
Origin: “First appeared as a slang term in WWI meaning ‘a quadruple amputee.’ Soldiers who had lost all their limbs actually were carried in baskets, because if they were carried on stretchers, they’d be too likely to fall out.” (Jesse’s Word of the Day, by Jesse Sheidlower)
PULL THE WOOL OVER SOMEONE’S EYES
Meaning: Fool someone
Origin: “Goes back to the days when all gentlemen wore powdered wigs like the ones still worn by the judges in British courts. The word wool was then a popular, joking term for hair . . . The expression ‘pull the wool over his eyes’ came from the practice of tilting a man’s wig over his eyes, so he couldn’t see what was going on.”
LET THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG
Meaning: Reveal the truth
Origin: Refers to a con game practiced at country fairs in old England. A trickster tried to sell a cat in a burlap bag to an unwary bumpkin, saying it was a pig. If the victim figured out the trick and insisted on seeing the animal, the cat had to be let out of the bag.
CHEW THE FAT
Meaning: Chat; engage in idle conversation
Origin: Originally a sailor’s term. Before refrigeration, ships carried food that wouldn’t spoil. One of them was salted pork skin, a practically inedible morsel that consisted largely of fat. Sailors would only eat it when all the other food was gone . . . and they often complained as they did. This (and other) idle chatter eventually became known as “chewing the fat.”
HAVE A SCREW LOOSE
Meaning: Something is wrong with a person or mechanism
Origin: The phrase comes from the cotton industry and dates back as far as the 1780s, when the Industrial Revolution made mass production of textiles possible for the first time. Huge mills sprang up to take advantage of the new technology (and the cheap labor), but it was difficult to keep all the machines running properly; any machine that broke down or produced defective cloth was said to have “a screw loose” somewhere.
IN THE NICK OF TIME
Meaning: Without a second to spare
Origin: Even into the 18th century some businessmen still kept track of transactions and time by carving notches—or nicks—on a “tally stick.” Someone arriving just before the next nick was carved would arrive in time to save the next day’s interest—in the nick of time.
Measurements
THE INCH. In its earliest form, the inch was the width of a grown man’s thumb. In the 14th century, King Edward II of England decreed that “the length of an inch shall be equal to three grains of barley, dry and round, placed end to end lengthwise.” This evolved into today’s standard measurement.
THE FOOT. Originally the length of a person’s foot, the foot was later standardized in English-speaking countries to be 12 inches long. In other parts of the world, however, it could be anywhere from 11 to 14 inches in length.
THE YARD. Originally the standard length of the belt that Anglo-Saxons wore. In the early 1100s, King Henry I of England decreed that a yard would be the distance from his nose to the thumb of his outstretched arm, which came to about 36 inches.
THE MILE. A descendant of the ancient Roman measure called the mille passuum, which meant “a thousand paces.” Each pace was the equivalent of 5 Roman feet, which meant there were 5,000 feet to the mile. Today there are 5,280 feet to the mile. Why the extra feet? Because when the English incorporated the mile into their system of measurement, they wanted it to be equal to 8 furlongs. A furlong—originally defined as the distance a horse could pull a plow without resting—was exactly 660 feet long, so the English multiplied 660 by 8 to get 5,280. (Why didn’t they just knock some feet off the furlong and keep the mile a tidy 5,000 feet long? Because property was measured in furlongs—and changing the furlong would have screwed up every property holding in the kingdom.)
Royal Gossip
While performing her duties as queen, Cleopatra sometimes wore a fake beard.
In her entire life, Queen Berengaria of England never once visited England.
By the time the king of Siam died in 1910, he had fathered 370 children.
King George I of England (1714–1727) was German. He couldn’t speak a word of English.
Queen Victoria’s first act as queen: moving out of her mother’s room.
Napoléon Bonaparte, a Frenchman, designed the flag of Italy.
King Henry VIII owned tennis shoes.
Queen Anne of England (1665–1714) had 17 children. They all died before her.
Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII, had six fingers on her left hand.
Louis XIV owned 413 beds.
England’s Prince Charles won the Alfred E. Neuman Look-Alike Contest in 1992.
Mary Stuart became Queen of Scotland when she was only six days old.
In her entire lifetime, Spain’s Queen Isabella (1451–1504) bathed twice. King Louis XIV bathed three times.
REMEMBER 1984?
First photos of missing children on milk cartons
Soviet Union boycotted summer Olympics in L.A.
Newsweek magazine dubbed 1984 the “Year of the Yuppie”
#1 movie: Ghostbusters
Word Origins
NAMBY-PAMBY
Meaning: Weak, wishy-washy
Origin: “Derived from the name of Ambrose Philips, a little-known poet whose verse incurred the ridicule of two other 18th-century poets, Alexander Pope and Henry Carey. In poking fun at Philips, Carey used the nickname Namby Pamby: Amby came from Ambrose; Pamby repeated the sound and form, but added the initial of Philips’s surname. After being popularized by Pope in The Dunciad, namby-pamby went on to be used for people or things that are insipid, sentimental, or weak.” (Word Mysteries & Histories, by the Editors of The American Heritage Dictionaries)
KALEIDOSCOPE
Meaning: A tubular optical toy; a constantly changing set of colors
Origin: “In 1817 Dr. David Breuster invented a toy which he called a kaleidoscope. He selected three Greek words that when combined had a literal meaning of ‘observer of beautiful forms.’ The words were kalos (‘beautiful’), eidos (‘form’), and skopos (‘watcher’). The term has come into prominent use in its figurative sense; namely, a changing scene—that which subtly shifts color, shape, or mood.” (The Story Behind
the Word, by Morton S. Freeman)
MONEY
Meaning: Currency; a medium of exchange in the form of coins and
Origin: “Hera, queen of the Greek gods, kept her name out of the vulgate [common speech] until she moved to Rome and became Juno. As Juno Moneta (Juno the Monitress), she presided over a Roman temple where gold was coined. Moneta became the eponym of money, and Moneta’s temple a mint.” (Thou Improper, Thou Uncommon Noun, by Willard Espy)
COOKIE
Meaning: A small sweet cake, typically round, flat, and crisp
Origin: “The word was borrowed from the Dutch koekje, ‘little cake,’ which is the diminutive of Dutch koek, ‘cake.’ Cookie came into American English from the Dutch settlers of New York. It first appears in 1703 in the statement that ‘at a funeral, 800 cockies . . . were furnished.’ This early English spelling of the word differs from our modern spelling, but several other spellings also arose, such as cookey and cooky. The spelling cookie may have won out because the word is very common in the plural, spelled cookies.” (Word Mysteries and Histories, by the Editors of The American Heritage Dictionaries)
DRAB
Meaning: Lacking brightness, dull
Origin: “In the 16th century, drab was a word for a kind of cloth, coming into English from French drap, ‘cloth.’ From this, the word came to mean the common color of such cloth, which was its natural undyed color of dull brown or gray. Hence the fairly general meaning ‘dull,’ whether of an object’s color (where it usually is brown or gray still, as ‘drab’ walls) or in a figurative sense, as a ‘drab’ day or someone’s ‘drab’ existence.” (Dunces, Gourmands & Petticoats, by Adrian Room)
SALARY
Meaning: A regular payment made by an employer to an employee
Origin: “A salary, during the great days of the Romans, was called a salarium, ‘salt-money.’ The ancients regarded salt as such an essential to good diet (and before refrigeration it was the only chemical that preserved meat) that they made a special allowance in the wages of soldiers to buy sal (Latin for ‘salt’). With time any stipend came to be called a salarium, from which English acquired the word salary.” (Hue and Cry and Humble Pie, by Morton S. Freeman)
BLINDFOLD
Meaning: A piece of cloth tied around the head to cover the eyes
Origin: “The name of the folded piece of cloth has only a coincidental resemblance to the way the material is doubled over. Blindfold actually comes from the Middle English blindfeld, ‘to be struck blind.’ Walter Tyndale used blyndfolded in his English translation of the Bible (1526), and if he was not the first to make the mistake, he was certainly the most influential.” (Devious Derivations, by Hugh Rawson)
Medicine Cabinet
Before World War I, Aspirin was a registered trademark of the German company Bayer. When Germany lost the war, Bayer gave the trademark to the Allies as a reparation in the Treaty of Versailles.
Why do men wear fragrances? Thanks to some clever marketing during World War II, Old Spice aftershave became part of the soldier’s standard-issue toiletry kit and “changed the smell of things.”
Hate taking care of your contact lenses? It could be worse. Early contacts were made from wax molds (wax was poured over the eyes). The lenses, made of glass, cut off tear flow and severely irritated the eyes. In fact, the whole ordeal was so painful that scientists recommended an anesthetic solution of cocaine.
On average, each person uses 54 feet of dental floss every year. That may sound like a lot, but dentists recommend the use of one and a half feet of dental floss each day. That’s equal to 548 feet a year.
In the late 1940s aerosol hair spray was a growing fad among American women. The only problem was that it was water insoluble, which made it hard to wash out. Why? The earliest fixative was shellac, more commonly used to preserve wood.
Ancient Chinese, Roman, and German societies frequently used urine as mouthwash. Surprisingly, the ammonia in urine is a good cleanser. (Ancient cultures had no way of knowing that.)
Average American
Number of ice cubes the average American puts in a glass: 3.2.
About 77 million babies were part of the baby boom generation. Four percent of them walk to work.
Four percent of Americans are allergic to hamsters.
More Americans claim German ancestry (46.5 percent) than any other. Irish ancestry is number two, at 33 percent.
Fifty percent of Americans believe humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs.
Ninety percent of Americans thought income taxes were fair in 1944. Only 51 percent agreed in 2005.
When asked to name the odor that best defines America, 39 percent of Americans said “barbecue.”
Forty-nine percent of Americans say they pray to God for financial advice.
Most adults believe we will make “first contact” with alien life by the year 2100.
The Time It Takes
Fifty-eight seconds for the elevator in Toronto’s CN Tower to reach the top (1,815 feet)
One minute for a newborn baby’s brain to grow 1.5 mg
Forty-five minutes to reach an actual person when calling the IRS during tax time
Four hours, 30 minutes to cook a 20-pound turkey at 325°F
Ninety-two hours to read both the Old and New Testaments aloud
Ninety-six hours to completely recover from jet lag
Seven days for a newborn baby to wet or soil 80 diapers
Nineteen days until baby cardinals make their first flight
Twenty-five days for Handel to compose The Messiah
Thirty days for a human hair to grow half an inch
Extended Sitting Section
Here’s a small selection of our favorite
conspiracy theories, unexplained deaths,
and other thought-provoking topics.
What do you think: Is it fact or fiction?
Elvis Lives!
Plenty of people really believe Elvis is still alive. As RCA Records used to ask: Can millions of Elvis fans be wrong? You be the judge.
Early in the morning of August 16, 1977, Elvis Presley and his girlfriend, Ginger Alden, returned to Graceland from a late-night dentist appointment. The two stayed up until about 7 a.m., when Alden went to bed. But, according to one source, “because he had taken some ‘uppers,’ Elvis was still not sleepy.” So the King retired to his bathroom to read a book. (Sound familiar?) That was the last time anyone saw him alive.
THE OFFICIAL STORY
When Alden woke up at 2:00 in the afternoon, she noticed that Elvis was still in his bathroom so she decided to check on him.
When she opened the door, she saw Elvis sprawled face forward on the floor. “I thought at first he might have hit his head because he had fallen,” she recalls, “and his face was buried in the carpet. I slapped him a few times and it was like he breathed once when I turned his head. I lifted one eyelid and it was just blood red. But I couldn’t move him.” The King was dead.
Elvis was rushed to Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, but doctors could not revive him. He was pronounced dead at 3:00 p.m. The official cause of death: cardiac arrhythmia brought on by “straining at stool.” (The actual cause of death: most likely a massive overdose of prescription drugs.) That is what is supposed to have happened. Nevertheless, Elvis aficionados across the country see a host of mysterious circumstances that suggest the King may still be alive.
SUSPICIOUS FACTS
• The medical examiner’s report stated that Elvis’s body was found in the bathroom in a rigor-mortised state. But the homicide report said that Elvis was found unconscious in the bedroom. In The Elvis Files, Gail Brewer-Giorgio notes, “Unconsciousness and rigor mortis are at opposite ends of the physical spectrum: rigor mortis is a stiffening condition that occurs after death; unconsciousness, a state in which a living body loses awareness. Bedroom and bathroom are two different places.”
• The medical examiner’s report lists Elvis’s weight at the time of death as 170 po
unds; he actually weighed about 250 pounds.
• Elvis’s relatives can’t agree on how Elvis died. His stepbrother Rick claims Elvis suffocated on the shag carpet; his stepbrother David thinks Elvis committed suicide. Larry Geller, Elvis’s hairdresser and spiritual adviser, claims that Elvis’s doctors told Vernon Presley (Elvis’s father) that the King had leukemia, which may have contributed to his death. Some theorists charge that the confusion surrounding Elvis’s death proves that the star faked his death. If the King is really dead, why can’t his loved ones get their stories straight?
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Did Elvis foresee—or fake—his death?
• Elvis didn’t order any new jumpsuits—his trademark outfit—in all of 1977. Why not? Did he know he wasn’t going to need any?
• On his last concert tour, Elvis was overheard saying, “I may not look good tonight, but I’ll look good in my coffin.”
• Was Elvis imitating his manager, Colonel Tom Parker? As a young man, Parker also faked his death. An illegal immigrant from Holland whose real name was Andreas Van Kujik, Parker left Holland without telling his relatives; they thought he was dead.
Was the corpse in Elvis’s coffin really Elvis’s?
• Country singer Tanya Tucker’s sister LaCosta was at the King’s funeral, and she was shocked at the body’s appearance: “We went right up to his casket and stood there, and God, I couldn’t believe it. He looked just like a piece of plastic laying there. He didn’t look like him at all . . . he looked more like a dummy than a real person. You know a lot of people think it was a dummy. They don’t think he was dead.”
• Some observers said they thought the corpse’s nose looked too “pugged” to be the King’s. They speculated that even if the King had fallen forward and smashed his nose at the time of his death, it would have naturally returned to its original shape, or would at least have been fixed by the undertaker—if the body was really Elvis’s. (The Elvis Files)
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