Ever wonder how the 20/20 and 6/6 vision scales work? Well, wonder no more. With approximately half of adults requiring some form of corrective eyewear to compensate for visual impairment of various forms, chances are you have had your eyesight graded on the 20/20 or 6/6 scales before. If you haven’t, you have probably heard other people saying they have […]
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Tabitha Babbitt was a quiet weaver living in a Shaker community in Massachusetts. The community thrived on the forestry industry, and she would observe men hard at work sawing logs. In 1810, she thought up an easier way of cutting wood that wouldn’t expend quite so much energy. The men were using a pit saw. It had two handles which […]
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Today I found out what makes a boomerang come back. Non-returning boomerangs have been used for at least 20,000-30,000 years, with the oldest known example carved from a mammoth’s tusk. These non-returning boomerangs were used for hunting and were carved for straight flight and to stay in the air as long as possible when thrown correctly. The hunter was then […]
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Shannon asks: Where did the phrase “coin a phrase” come from? Thanks! For those unfamiliar, “to coin a phrase” traditionally means “to create a new phrase.” These days, “coin a phrase” has also taken on a new meaning, first documented around the mid-twentieth century: “to introduce a cliché sentiment.” Funny enough, we have no idea who first coined the phrase […]
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On September 11, 1857, the Baker-Fancher emigrant wagon train was rolling through Mountain Meadows, Utah, about 35 miles southwest of Cedar City. The train was made up of several smaller parties that joined together on their journey northwest from Arkansas. Some of the emigrants were on their way to settle permanently in California; others were simply searching for greener pastures, […]
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In 1941, Carl N. Karcher, a 24 year old man who had dropped out of school in the 8th grade to work on a farm, and his wife had $15 in cash (about $241 today). They took out an additional $311 loan against their car, and used the money to purchase a hot dog cart. It must not have seemed […]
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Dustin asks: Where did the expression “dead ringer” come from? You have probably heard the often-repeated story about how the original “dead ringer” was a person believed to be dead who was then buried alive. For various reasons, there is a good amount of evidence that being buried alive wasn’t the most uncommon thing in the world until relatively recently […]
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Becky asks: When did women start growing out and painting fingernails? On humans and other primates, nails are a flattened version of a claw which likely developed to aid in gripping and climbing. However, they can also act as a visible “health report.” Someone in poor health, or infected by a fungus, might have yellow, brittle nails, while someone in […]
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Diane M. asks: Where did the expression “pulling my leg” come from? For those who aren’t familiar with the phrase, when someone says, “You must be pulling my leg!” they usually mean, “You must be joking/teasing/making something up.” Extremely popular in the 20th century, the origin of this phrase is still something of an enigma to etymologists. There are two […]
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Dung beetles have long surprised scientists with their remarkable navigation abilities, despite the relatively small sizes of their brains. Scientists have also known that after dung beetles collect the dung, they do a little dance on top of it before moving it in a straight line to their destination. The dancing was once written off as a “happy dance,” but […]
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Ezekiel Proctor was a 19th century Cherokee man who had walked the Trail of Tears from Georgia to the Indian Territory when he was just seven years old. He was proud of his heritage, and he still spoke the language and basked in the customs of the Cherokee people. When he grew up, he became a lawman. Jim Keterson was […]
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Kansas had been swept up in the debate over whether or not it should allow slavery for some time. When it was finally decided that Kansas would be a free state, the South was sore. There were many clashes at the border between northern and southern states during the Civil War, and Lawrence was almost always ready to defend its […]
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Andrew M. asks: Why do we say “You just earned some brownie points.” What were brownie points originally for? There are many, many origin theories for this one. One of the most often repeated and widely accepted theories is that “brownie points”—imaginary points earned by someone for doing a good deed, and lost by doing something unfavourable—stem from the Brownies, […]
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Today I found out the origin of the phrase “mind your own beeswax.” “Mind your own beeswax” and “it’s none of your beeswax” are common phrases you might hear being shouted by six-year-olds on the school playground. For the uninitiated, they basically mean “mind your own business” or “it’s none of your business,” but some people think it’s more complicated […]
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Terryn asks: Who invented the elevator? The history of the elevator, if you define it as a platform that can move people and objects up and down, is actually a rather long one. Rudimentary elevators are known to have been in use in ancient Rome as far back as 336 B.C., with the first reference of one built by the […]
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Ranjiith asks: Why do we say something is as dead as a doornail? In A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens wrote about the questionable phrase, “dead as a doornail,” saying: Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might […]
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Today I found out about the origin of the King James Bible. Back in 1603, Queen Elizabeth I passed away. She had ruled England for 45 years, was well-loved, and provided a sense of stability and security during her reign. Described as “neither a good protestant nor yet resolute papist,” she was able to provide a relatively happy medium between […]
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Today I found out the origins of the words “kitty-corner,” “catawampus,” and other “cat” words. The word “kitty-corner” has many different variations: catty-corner, caddy-corner, cat-a-corner, or kit-a-corner. They all mean the same thing: something that is directionally diagonal from a certain point. Interestingly, despite all of the “cats” and “kits,” the word has nothing to do with domesticated felines. Rather, […]
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