##EMBED## The word blond derives from the Old French word “blund”, meaning literally “a color midway between golden and light chestnut”. “Blund” then is typically thought to have come from the Latin word “blundus”, which was a vulgar pronunciation of the Latin “flavus”, which means “yellow”. The French origin of the word “blond” is how we get the added “e” […]
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Today I found out Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn once struck a spectator twice in the same at bat with foul balls, the second time as she was being carried off on a stretcher. The event happened on August 17, 1957 during a game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Giants. The spectator was Alice Roth. Roth was […]
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##EMBED## Wil Wheaton did the voices for many of the Romulans in the 2009 movie, Star Trek. This was at the urging of Greg Grunberg, who, among other things, starred in director J.J. Abrams’ Alias TV show and briefly in Lost. Grunberg was originally also supposed to play an on-screen role in Star Trek, but was unable to do so […]
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Today I found out, until he was nine years old, the woman Eric Clapton thought was his sister was actually his mother. Clapton’s mother, Patricia Molly Clapton, was just 16 years old when she met and subsequently had a very brief relationship with Clapton’s father, Edward Walter Fryer. Fryer was a 24 year old Canadian soldier stationed in Britain during […]
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Today I found out where the ampersand symbol and name came from. The symbol for “&” comes from combination of letters in the Latin for “and”, “et”. Specifically, in Old Roman cursive, it became common to combine e’s and t’s, which produced something like this: Over the next six centuries the ampersand gradually became more elaborate until we get the […]
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Today I found out the symbol on the “pound” or “number” key (#) is also called an “octothorpe”. The origins of this term date back to the 1960s and 1970s in Bell Labs with the first documented place this word showed up being in a U.S. patent filed by Bell Labs in 1973. The exact etymology of this word isn’t […]
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Today I found out what the “bee” in “spelling bee” means. While no one knows exactly where the word derives from, the “bee” in “spelling bee” simply means something to the effect of “gathering” or “get together”. The earliest documented case of this word appearing with this meaning was in 1769, referring to a “spinning bee”, where people would gather […]
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Today I found out Adolf Hitler had a British nephew who joined the U.S. navy during WWII. Hitler’s nephew, who he would come to call “my loathsome nephew”, was originally named William Patrick Hitler, but he later changed it to William Patrick Stuart-Houston to distance himself from his uncle’s name after WWII. William was born in Liverpool, the son of […]
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##EMBED## The tallest man in history was Robert Pershing Wadlow, who was 8 feet 11.1 inches (2.72 m) tall and 485 pounds at the time of his death. By the age of 4 years old, he was already 5 ft 4 inches tall (1.63m). At the age of 13, he became the tallest boy scout in history at 7 ft […]
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Today I found out Mr. Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister. After Fred McFeely Rogers, better known as Mr. Rogers, graduated from college in 1951, receiving a B.A. in Music Composition, he began working in television, at first for NBC and later for WQED, which was a Pittsburgh public TV station that was the U.S.’s first community supported TV station. […]
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Myth: Pasta originally comes from Italy. Worldwide, pasta has become synonymous with Italian cuisine. Italian immigrants themselves brought pasta everywhere they went. While it is true that the most famous varieties and recipes of cooking pasta really do come from Italy, surprisingly, the actual origin of pasta lies elsewhere! So how did pasta make its way to Italy? One of […]
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Today I found out the founder of FedEx once saved the company by taking its last $5,000 and turning it into $32,000 by gambling in Las Vegas. The man is Frederick W. Smith who is the founder and current CEO of FedEx. In 1971, Smith took his personal fortune of around $4 million and raised around an additional $90 million […]
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Myth: You lose body heat faster through your head than the rest of your body. It is very common for parents to advise their children to wear a hat or to cover their head when its cold outside, with the reasoning behind this advice often cited as “most of your body heat escapes through your head” or “you lose heat […]
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Today I found out New Mexico Whiptail lizards are all females. While this isn’t completely unheard of among various life forms on Earth, such as with certain plants, insects, and sea life, among others, what is particularly interesting is how the New Mexico Whiptail lizards go about reproducing. To do this, they will generally perform a type of pseudocopulation where […]
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