December 2009
Magnetic storm
On Sept. 2, 1859, at the telegraph office at No. 31 State Street in Boston at 9:30 a.m., the operators’ lines were overflowing with current, so they unplugged the batteries connected to their machines, and kept working using just the electricity coursing through the air.
In the wee hours of that night, the most brilliant auroras ever recorded had broken out across the skies of the Earth. People...
Fairy tales
Popular fairy tales and folk stories are more ancient than was previously thought, according research by biologists.
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
They have been told as bedtime stories by generations of parents, but fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood may be even older than was previously thought.
A study by anthropologists has explored the origins of folk tales and...
Words
A pig in a poke
Meaning
An offering or deal that is foolishly accepted without being examined first.
Origin
‘Don’t buy a pig in a poke’ might seem odd and archaic language. It’s true that the phrase is very old, but actually it can be taken quite literally and remains good advice.
The advice being given is ‘don’t buy a pig until you have seen it’....
Yorktown
General George Washington, though indispensable to the cause of the American Revolution and a supremely gifted leader, showed poor instincts for military strategy throughout the revolutionary war. When the time came for the final decisive battle of in Yorktown, Virginia - the battle that ended the war - Washington’s strong preference was to try and retake Manhattan from the British instead....
Neville Chamberlain
Neville Chamberlain, the man who tried to appease Hitler and thus became an everlasting symbol of weak naïveté in foreign policy. In fact, Chamberlain has become so reviled a symbol of weakness, that his name is immediately invoked any time a politician even hints at a preference for negotiations rather than military threats toward a potentially hostile dictator. While most historians now ...
From bees to Blues Brothers
Because John Belushi of Saturday Night Live hated the costume he has to wear to play one of his most popular characters - a bee, the box-office phenomenon The Blues Brothers are born. As recounted by Saturday Night Live musical director Paul Shaffer: “Meanwhile, Belushi was complaining about his bee costume. Belushi hated putting on the bee costume. It weighed a ton and made him sweat like...
Kidney transplants
“The first successful kidney transplant was performed in 1954. To the layperson, it looked rather like a miracle: someone who would surely have died of kidney failure could now live on by having a replacement organ plunked inside him. Where did this new kidney come from? The most convenient source was a fresh cadaver, the victim of an automobile accident perhaps or some other type of death...
Top 10 heavyweight boxers
10 Ezzard Charles
One of the most steel-chinned men ever to fight. He may be the second greatest light heavyweight of all time after Archie Moore. Charles killed Sam Baroudi after a very brutal fight. It shouldn’t be praised, as Charles felt terrible afterward, and adopted a more cautious style. A true gentleman. But it does show the vicious intensity he had in close-quarters mix-ups.
He is...
Bizarre mental disorders
10 Zoosadism
Zoosadism is a term coined by Ernest Borneman referring to pleasure (sometimes sexual pleasure) derived from cruelty to animals. Zoosadism is part of the Macdonald triad, a set of three behaviors that are a precursor to sociopathic behavior – so next time you see a kid being cruel to an animal, remember that he is a potential future serial killer! In general, the link between...
10 unique places
10 The Door To Hell Turkmenistan
The Door to Hell, as local residents at the nearby town of Darvaza have dubbed it, is a 70 meter wide crater in Turkmenistan that has been burning continuously for 35 years. In 1971, geologists drilling for gas deposits uncovered a huge underground cavern, which caused the ground over it to collapse, taking down all their equipment and their camp with it. Since...
Legacies of Middle Ages
I wrote this list as a companion to the “Top 10 Misconceptions about the Middle Ages” list. A few words on the criteria I used to put this list together. First of all, the boundaries of the Middle Ages are a matter of some debate. I define the period as being between the late 7th and the late 14th centuries, so I imagine there will be some comments protesting that. For what it’s worth, Classical...
Words
Redding
Q. In an online photo-sharing group of which I’m a member, someone posted a scan of a calotype print titled Redding the Line. Some members of the group think that “redding” refers to the application of a red colorant to the surface of something. Or does it instead mean making repairs? [William Chepulis] A. The photograph is a famous early one, a member of a series...
Words
Shoestring
Q. Have you researched the etymology of the phrase “shoe-string budget”? My German partner keeps seeing it in the English-language press, but he can’t understand where it comes from. And he keeps bothering me about it because I’m an editor! I’ve searched the Web but have found nothing conclusive. Could you give us some history? [Russell Clarke] A....
Words
Griffonage To someone coming unawares upon this word, it might seem to have a connection to that fabulous beast called the griffin or gryphon, the one with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion. Or might it perhaps refer to the vulture with that cognomen or the breed of dog similarly named, both of which derive from an older English spelling of “griffin”? Alas,...
Juarez
By the estimate of journalist Philip Caputo, the most violent city in the world is not located in Afghanistan, Iraq or some Sub-Saharan African country, but across a river from the United States in Juarez, Mexico. And in the almost three years since President Felipe Calderón launched a war on drug cartels, some 14,000 people have been killed in the country of Mexico, and part of the country...
Princess Leia
Carrie Fisher, who played the role of Princess Leia, George Lucas and Star Wars: “George made me take shooting lessons because in the first film I would grimace horribly at the deafening sound of the blanks from the blasters and the squibs that the special effects team would place all over the set and on the stormtroopers. So George wanted to make me look like I’d been shooting...
Words
Amn’t
Q. Why don’t we say “I amn’t”? All the other personal pronouns have two contracted forms that can be used in present-tense negative constructions, such as “we’re not” or “we aren’t”. The first person singular, however, has only one - “I’m not”. What happened to “I amn’t”? [Fred A Roth,...
Words
Bring home the bacon
To earn money, especially money for one’s family; to be successful, especially financially successful.
Origin
The origin of the phrase ‘bring home the bacon’ is muddled by association with other ‘bacon’ expressions - ‘save one’s bacon’, ‘cold shoulder’, chew the fat’ etc. In reality, the link between...
The dark side of Dubai
The dark side of Dubai
Dubai was meant to be a Middle-Eastern Shangri-La, a glittering monument to Arab enterprise and western capitalism. But as hard times arrive in the city state that rose from the desert sands, an uglier story is emerging. Johann Hari reports
The wide, smiling face of Sheikh Mohammed - the absolute ruler of Dubai - beams down on his creation. His image is displayed on every...
Money supply
The calamity of the Great Depression dwarfs the calamity of 2008, in large part because the Fed turned the crisis of 1929 into the Great Depression by acting to contract the money supply, helping cause U.S. output to decline by a third and unemployment to rise to 33%: “In perhaps the most important work of American economic history ever published, Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz...
James Brown
Paul Shaffer, musical showman par excellence whose career has included long stints as musical director with David Letterman and Saturday Night Live, delivers an encomium to his favorite musician, the King of them all, the Godfather of Soul - James Brown: “The one artist that woke me up and got me going - and, I must add, has kept me going throughout my life - was the Godfather of Soul, Mr....
The Great Beginning
For the ancient Chinese, God did not create the heaven and the earth, it just happened. And man came from the worms of the decaying Pan Gu’s body: “Though by no means a godless people, the ancient Chinese were reluctant to credit their gods - or God - with anything so manifestly implausible as the act of creation. In the beginning, therefore, God did not create heaven and earth;...
Prostitution
Prostitutes in the United States a century ago likely made in excess of $70,000 per year in today’s dollars - far in excess of today’s prostitutes, and were a higher percentage of the population. The reason? Today’s prostitutes face more competition from women willing to have sex with a man for free. This conclusion stems from the work of economist Sudhir Venkatesh on the subject...