2496: Basque Demographics for the Future Oct 12, 2021
Basque has survived the Indo-European invasions of Celts and later Romans, Spanish and French empires, but faces certain other problems today. The Spanish government these days is now much more supportive of the language, and now in Basque Autonomous community, the largest percentage of surveyed speakers belong to 16–24 age range at 57.5% of the overall population—likely even higher with those younger—as opposed to the over 65 range, which is only at 25%. This will basically secure the language's vitality for the next generations, and is reflective of the anti-Basque policies of the Franco regime. In French Basque Community however, the largest demographic of speakers is the over-65 range, and of that it is only 32.4%. This is a bad sign in general for any language development, as this is past the age of raising children and thus past the time for native transmission.
2488: Mayan Directions & Maize Oct 4, 2021
The Mayans used a system where the four cardinal directions represented by the four colors of maize. This translated as white for north, black for west, yellow for south, and red for east. Inscriptions from around AD 600 use the names of the directions as they correspond to the colors, which in addition to the agricultural, culinary, and indeed major religious significance to the crop, a genericized symbolic blend of those as used for giving people directions.
2483: siamese twins Sep 29, 2021
The term 'siamese twins' is becoming less popular compared to 'conjoined twins', because of perceived racial connotations. Indeed, Thailand isn't even called Siam anymore. The term was originally coined after Chang and Eng Bunker, two famous conjoined twins from Thailand living in the former half of the 19th century. They toured the world for many years, especially the USA, becoming quite famous both in the medical community and wider culture. This term 'siamese twins' is even used in astrophysics to describe two galaxies that appear to be close to conjoined, though these days many do not like to use this term
2481: nicotine Sep 27, 2021
Tobacco is native to Central America, hence the word coming to English from Spanish, and likewise there was a Portuguese connection—albeit more convoluted—for 'nicotine'. It is named from the New Latin 'nicotiana', which is the scientific name of the plant, 'nicotiana herba', and that word comes from the name of the French ambassador to Portugal, who brought tobacco back to France in 1560: Jean Nicot. It is unclear where that name originates.
2476: Literacy and the Historical Record Sep 22, 2021
It would be a mistake to assume that in history is always better understood the further ahead in time one looks. For instance, in post-Roman Europe, and most extremely in Britain, literacy rates plummeted within a generation of the collapse of the empire. As a result, while archeological information is just as viable, written records which had provided detail on more particular aspects of life at that time. This was one of many ways in which the society of the Britons in many ways reverted to its pre-Roman state, but it leaves much of the history of the 5th century and onwards shrouded. In general, collapses society that lead to declines in literacy cause blank spots in an otherwise rich historical records as happened same happened with the arrival of the sea peoples at the collapse of bronze age societies around the Mediterranean.
2473: Cleveland Guardians Sep 19, 2021
Unlike with the Washington Football Team which moved to remove its old name of the Washington Redskins and went with a temporary name (still in use) the Cleveland Indians became the Cleveland Guardians in 2021, and at the same time announced their new logo, and mascots. Many had predicted other named, including the Cleveland Spiders, a name used over 110 years ago for a Cleveland baseball team, but in the end it was named for the Guardian of Traffic statues in the city.
2462: The Cotton Fire and the Dissolution of the Monasteries Sep 8, 2021
The Cotton Fire (named for the library's founder, not the material) was significant in its devastation because the library housed many antiques and particularly rare books. This time, AD 1731, was particularly significant as well because its founder who died 1631 had gotten many documents that were being privatized after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, a series of legal decrees that broke up monasteries, convents, abbeys, etc., selling off land and liquidating many assets including priceless documents and manuscripts. During the English Reformation as well, many books were destroyed outright, for their materials, or purchased with no understanding of value and stored in any sort of condition. Therefore, when Sir Robert Bruce Cotton had in the late 16th and early 17th century made a point of collecting some of these, often his library housed sole copies. The fire, which caused some 1/4 of the library to be lost meant that many documents were completely lost forever, and many others, like the only copy of Beowulf, took significant damage.
2461: Old English Rune Poem Sep 7, 2021
The Old English rune poem is a significant document in runology wherein each line contains a riddle to which the name of the rune is the answer. It uses 29 Anglo-Saxon runes as opposed to Young Futhark's runes. Unfortunately, the original was lost in the Cotton Fire at Ashburn House in 1731, though it had been copied in 1705 onto copper plates. On these copies however, some of the formatting was changed and possibly more than two lines were added.
2460: How D-Day was almost Stopped by a Crossword Sep 6, 2021
D-Day was one of the most significant days of the 20th century, and yet it was all almost stopped due to a crossword puzzle. In the days leading up to the originally chosen date, the The Daily Telegraph had answers across multiple crosswords that included on one 'Utah', 'Omaha', then 'Mulberry', 'Overlord', and finally 'Neptune': all names of landing sites chosen in the beaches of Normandy, or names for operations (e.g. Operation Overlord). After an investigation by MI5, this was determined to be a coincidence.
2458: German Cake: Not Named for Germany Sep 4, 2021
The sort of chocolate cake known as 'German cake' is not only invented in America, but wasn't even supposed to be named after the country of Germany. Plenty of foods are named for their supposed region of origin like 'French fries' but in this case it was just named after a man Samuel German who started the Baker's Chocolate Company who named it "Baker's German's Sweet Chocolate".
2456: Fraternities Using Greek Sep 2, 2021
Fraternities and Sororities in North America usually use 2 or 3 Greek letters in their names. Some of these don't stand for anything, but originally these secret societies, now public, used Greek mottos, such as the oldest, ΦΒΚ, standing for Φιλοσοφία Βίου Κυβερνήτης (Philosophia Biou Kybernētēs) literally translating as "love of wisdom [philosophy] is the helmsman of life", or ΔΥ standing for Δικαια Υποθηκη (Dikaia Upotheke) for 'justice, our foundation'. Some fraternal societies have kept these mottos secret, or have just picked Greek letters for nothing in particular.
2455: H-Hour & D-Day Sep 1, 2021
H-Hour refers to the time of day which a battle was set to commence, with this phrase entering the military parlance of the First World War. The 'H-' stands for 'hour' in effect, but the Norwegian calque 'klokken H' only took the letter and not the pattern. This pattern was also used for D-Day, which now refers to a specific moment in history—June 6, 1944—but just referred to the planned, secretive date of the Normandy landings.
2455: syphilis Aug 31, 2021
'Syphilis', since its arrival to Europe from the Americas took on a number of euphemisms including 'purple flower', 'great imitator', 'black lion', and so on. It might sound therefore that 'syphilis' is the scientific name is more straightforward, but this too is a sort of euphemism, coming from the name of a character in Girolamo Fracastoro's poem about a boy who insults a Greek deity and is cursed with a harsh disease. The poem actually used the spelling 'Syphilus' but this was changed in common spelling for the disease.
2390: Traboules and Snickelways Jul 5, 2021
While terms for common architectural and city-planning phenomena do not tend toward regionality, there are some exceptions. For instance, the French city of Lyon is famous for what are known as a 'traboule', which literally means like 'crossway' but refers to a city-specific system of passageways and alleys that often cross into private property, and were once used to move silks to the river to be sold when it was given a near monopoly on the French silk trade. Likewise, the city of York is famous for its so-called 'snickelways', a term derived for its narrow, winding alleys coined in the 1980's. These are only a couple examples of city-specific terminology, partly because of the unique way that they sprang into being, but many other cities have similar reasons for their own unique, or at least particular terms.
2388: How the Vitamins got their Names Jul 2, 2021
While the need for vitamins is a basic one, the naming of them is only misleadingly basic. Vitamins A, B, C, D, and E are all named simply in order of their discovery, starting in 1912. After this however, the list skips right to K, which has its name for two reason. On the one hand, mainly this is because it was what was available, though now F-J have all been renamed, either as mere variants of other vitamins—particularly of vitamin B—or were false discoveries. Others have suggested this is from the German word 'koagulation' since it was discovered in Germany and helps with blood coagulation. Even if this is true, it is not as relevant as the first reason though. Other anomalies include a lack of vitamin N, Q, R, or T despite there being vitamins P, S, and U.
2368: Sir Isaac Newton's Anti-Counterfeit Technique Jun 12, 2021
In the Middle Ages and even into the 17th century, coin clipping (also including shaving) wherein some amount of the money is removed. One way devised as an anti-counterfeit measure by Sir Isaac Newton in 1696 when he was Warden of the Royal Mint was to use grooves on the edge such that shaving and clipping would be easier spotted. One phrase inscribed on these coins after this was DECUS ET TUTAMEN meaning "an ornament and a safeguard". This is actually a phrase from Virgil's Aeneid and was printed on British coins for many hundreds of years.
2357: Franco-Belgian Border Stones Jun 1, 2021
A story broke the news recently of a Belgian farmer moving a border-stone into France, thereby shrinking France by a few square meters. The stones were officialized by the 1820 Treaty of Kortrijk but on the stones is written a few things which don't seem to go along with that. First, the stones say 1819 not 1820, but this is just because the stones were set before the treaty was finalized in March of 1820. They also have written on one side 'F' and on the other 'N'. It isn't 'north' and anyway the 'F' is for 'France'. Instead, when this treaty was signed, even though the borders remained mostly the same afterwards, Belgium was not a country and the territory it now comprises was for the most part within the borders of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
2353: Origin of Solfège Sounds May 28, 2021
Solfège, i.e. pairing notes of a scale to syllables did not draw these syllables entirely out of nowhere. It comes from the medieval hexachord scale associated with words from a Latin hymn for St. John the Baptist's Day:
(Ut) queant (la)xisresonare fibris
(Mi)ra gestorum (fa)muli tuorum,
(Sol)ve pollutis (la)biis reatum,
(S)ancte (I)ohannes.
Notably, the 'do' and 'ti' are missing, and 'ut' is included. Indeed, 'ut' was actually preferred in solfège later into the 17th century but was changed to make for the sake of the preferred sound. 'Ti' was added originally as 'si' from the name of the saint himself at the end, but in the anglophone word became 'ti' for ease of discernment.
2340: Nicknames for Queen Elizabeth II May 15, 2021
Queen Elizabeth II goes by many names but within her own family she is known as 'Gary' and 'Cabbage'. Both are variations on other affectionate terms, with the former coming from a childish mispronunciation when a young Prince William had a hard time saying 'granny'. It stuck and now her grandchildren call her Gary affectionately. Her late husband Prince Philip called her Cabbage as a joking overly literal translation of the French phrase 'petit chou' which effectively means 'little darling' but literally means 'little cabbage'.
2336: Original Description of Double Negatives May 11, 2021
There is a common understanding of double negatives in Standard English resulting in a positive. This is not nearly as simple as the case in reality, but that's because the initial analysis of the phenomenon is often misunderstood. When Bishop Robert Lowth described this in 1762, he was discussing words to convey one's point of view, such as saying
"I don't disagree" to imply either:
• "I certainly agree"
• "I agree"
• "I sort of agree"
• "I don't understand your point of view" / "I have no opinion"
He called these 'weasel words' because one might weasel out of a situation with this linguistic vaguery around a double negative, but he did not mean this as a rule for the whole language.