Nevin asks: Why is “Humpty Dumpty” always depicted as an egg? As you seem to have noticed, in the “Humpty Dumpty” nursery rhyme, nowhere does it say that Humpty is an egg, yet he is often presented as such in pictures and stories. The version of the rhyme that most children learn today goes like this: Humpty Dumpty sat on […]

Rachel asks: Was “Mother Goose” a real person? A nursery necessity and childhood favourite, Mother Goose is a household name and the writer of dozens of well-known nursery rhymes like Baa Baa Black Sheep, Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill, Pat-a-Cake, and Three Blind Mice. In answer to your question, you may be disappointed to learn that according to […]

The Civil War ended 148 years ago this past month (April 9th, 1865) with the surrender of the Confederate forces at the Appomattox Court House in Northern Virginia.  54 years ago, in December 1959, the last reported surviving veteran of the Civil War, Walter Washington Williams, passed away in Houston, Texas at the reported age of 117.  President Dwight Eisenhower […]

Today I found out that Cinderella’s Castle at Disney World and Sleeping Beauty’s Castle in Disney Land are modeled after Bavaria’s Neuschwanstein Castle. Each castle was also inspired by several other castles, including Fontainebleau and Versailles, but with Neuschwanstein’s dainty turrets and romantic views, it’s easy to see how one castle could take the credit for such iconic masterpieces. While […]

Although yoga is something of a recent fad in the West, you’re probably aware that this system of gentle exercise and meditation has very ancient roots. What you might not know is just how ancient some aspects of yoga are, or how much yoga has changed on down through the millennia, with some of the most significant changes coming in […]

Although the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States currently seem extremely polarized, they did not start out that way. In fact, these two parties originated as one, single party. This party was called the Democratic-Republican Party, and it was organized by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson in 1791. The purpose of the Democratic-Republican Party was to stand in […]

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! Oh… it’s, a blimp… 1925 marked the year when the first Goodyear airships ascended to the skies. More than 85 years later, the iconic Goodyear blimps can still be spotted drifting through the clouds during football games, basketball tournaments, and even over the 2012 London Olympics. While today the Goodyear blimps are invariable associated […]

Today I found out that for something that’s supposed to be clean and pure, soap has a murky past. No one knows for sure when soap was first invented, although it appears to have been around since the dawn of civilization. One of the reasons it’s so hard to pin down soap’s first appearance is that it can be made […]

Today I found out the English “alphabet song”, also known as “The A.B.C.”, is based on a tune by Mozart, which in turn is based on a French tune, “Ah, vous dirai-je, maman” (“Ah! Would I tell you, mother?”), which popped up in 1761.  A couple decades later, Mozart used this tune in his Twelve Variations on Ah, vous dirai-je, […]