I may be the only Doper who, in high school, used to buy day-old napoleons from a bakery located in the 42d St. IRT subway station in Manhattan - or at least, the only Doper who did that and survived.
The word was (probably) coined by Seneca the younger for his satire on the death of Claudius. It’s a pun on “apotheosis”, the deification of dead Roman Emperors. Seneca was suggesting that the dim-witted* Claudius would instead become a gourd. You can read the book in translation – Penguin (among others) has published it.
I liked the word so much that I used it in the first chapter of my book [Medusa: Solving the Mystery of the Gorgon. So I’ve actually used the word in print.
*unless, as in Robert Graves’ novels, you think that Claudius was a much cleverer individual than history gives him credit for, one who knew how to lay low and avoid assassination.
The geothermal springs of the UK. Two (slightly interesting) facts for the price of one - plus a challenge.
I grew up believing that there was, famously, one hot spring in the UK, the one that was used to supply the Roman baths at Bath. Not so - this Wiki page lists 19 of them, 18 in England (and several of these admittedly also in Bath) and one in Wales. But the listing intrigues me, as it gives the temperature of the hot spring as well. Like:
Lower Dimindale, Derbyshire 11.5 °C (52.7 °F)
What? You’ll be there a long time poaching an egg in that. Is there a record for the coldest hot spring? Are we looking at it right here? Come on, robardin and ftg, show me what you’ve got!
(;))
j
former US president Jimmy Carter and Motown founder Berry Gordy are second cousins.
If you put the centaur Chiron on TV, would he have a chyron?
How about the Styx boatman Charon?
In some third-world countries, where record-keeping is spotty, the way you know that a child is old enough to start school is if they can reach over the top of their head and touch the opposite ear. Below around age 5, kids’ arms are too short, relative to their head size, to do that.
Well yeah, but the Alous were brothers.
The original snake oil actually was an effective medicine. Specifically, it was the fat from a specific species of Chinese water snake, which is very high in omega-3 acids and useful for treating inflammation. The Chinese railroad workers brought it with them to America and would rub it on their joints after a hard day’s work. When word got out about this Chinese miracle pain reliever a lot of hucksters started selling fake snake oils that didn’t work, which is how the phrase came to mean a over hyped treatment that doesn’t actually do anything.
The Christmas song “Jingle Bells” was part of a wave of minstrel songs based on the supposedly hilarious proposition of black people having fun in the white snow.
“The story I must tell”: “Jingle Bells” in the Minstrel Repertoire
And, because his middle “name” was just the letter “S” that wasn’t an initial for any actual name, it is properly written without a dot. His name is “Harry S Truman”, not “Harry S. Truman” — some authors get this right, and some don’t.
Jumbo lived from 1860 through 1885, per Wikipedia, which suggests several possible etymologies for the name.
The name was used again in Helen Bannerman’s 1899 story, Little Black Sambo, whose parents were Black Jumbo and Black Mumbo. Note that they were not “black” in the common modern usage of the word (Negro), but Southern Indian or Tamil (Wikipedia). There was nothing offensive about the names or the characterizations at the time — all that arose later. One later knock-off version of the story relocated the action to the American South, where the family was depicted as a rather uncouth-looking black family. Some versions of the story got renamed “Little Brave Sambo”. Walt Kelly once drew a sequence of Pogo strips in which a goofy version of the story was told, named “Little Plaid Sambo”. He was actually drawn with a plaid pattern on his face and arms.
ETA: In the original Bizarro story, told in a Superboy issue and set in Smallville, in one scene Superboy refers to Bizarro as “Mumbo Jumbo”.
Spiders in Space: Little spiders like to balloon. No, not twisting long balloons into animal shapes (though that would be *tre *cool), but traveling distances by turning their butts skyward, letting out a thin thread of web and allowing the wind to pick them up and dispersing them all about. The rides can be long duration (>weeks: spiderlings can survive weeks traveling with no food} and they can reach high altitudes (into jet streams; they’ve been found up to ~5km).
As an arachnophobe, I’m distressed that I can’t even escape spiders by moving to the top of Mt. Everest (BTW, the high, cold winds at the summit are jet streams). And, the thought of spiders bumping uglies in the mile-high club disgusts me!
I’ve seen it both ways (S and S.) but that makes sense.
A couple other name things: Michael J. Fox’s middle name is “Andrew.”
“He did not like the sound of “Michael A. Fox” during a time when “fox” was coming to mean “attractive” and because his middle initial sounded too much like the Canadian “eh?” He also didn’t like the sound of “Andrew” or “Andy,” so he decided to adopt a new middle initial and settled on “J,” as a tribute to actor Michael J. Pollard.[10]”
And this guy—Ed. Weinberger, Ed. being short for Edwin. “Weinberger, along with James L. Brooks, David Davis, Allan Burns, and Stan Daniels, formed the core of MTM Enterprises. In 1977, they left for Paramount Pictures and started the John Charles Walters Company. Weinberger also played Mr. Walters in the logo. The series Taxi was created the following year. He also wrote and co-created The Cosby Show, which ran for eight years. Weinberger went on to create and executive produce several other sitcoms, including Amen, Mr. President, Dear John, Baby Talk, and Sparks.”
Weinberger explained in 2000 that he began using the abbreviation “Ed.” when he was eight years old, admitting that “it’s an affectation that’s gotten out of hand.”[1]
So he prefers Ed. Weinberger, not Ed Weinberger.
Truman himself signed his name as “Harry S. Truman”, so I don’t know how you determine the ‘proper.’ He didn’t have a birth certificate, so if he used a period for his own name, that’s good enough for me.
It’s another data point for the UK. 50 miles is a long ways, 4,400 feet is very high, and 53° is hot.
There are three hot springs in the vicinity of Burning Man, Trego, close at hand; Black Rock, about 30 miles north; and Double Hot, six miles from Black Rock. During the event all three are closed to the public for fear the crowds will damage the grounds but the rest of the year you can bathe in the former two. If you get close to the source they can be uncomfortable but downstream most people can find a spot that’s to their liking.
Not so with Double Hot. It’s waters are 170 - 180° and will easily kill you in seconds.
The difference in time between T. Rex and Stegosaurus is greater than the gap between T. Rex and humans (85 vs 65 million years).
I’ve mentioned this many times on the Dope, but one of the most interesting facts I’ve ever come across is this: a gallon of gasoline contains more hydrogen than a gallon of liquid hydrogen.
Cy Young has the most wins in the history of Major League Baseball. He also has the most losses.
Another thread was discussing how vaccines are developed and it made me think about something I’d read long ago…that they used to use smallpox scabs to try to immunize people.
“Three or four scabs were ground into powder or mixed with a grain of musk and bound in cotton. Infected material was then packed into a pipe and puffed up the patient’s nostril. The practice of variolation is believed to have been ritualized by the Chinese. The blowpipe used during the procedure was made of silver. The right nostril was used for boys and the left for girls.[2]:45”
Actually it is NOT.
“Jumbo” was a phrase (somewhat derogatory) uses to describe a big, clumsy man. Usage from the early 1800-s.
Jumbo the Elephant was (maybe?) given this name because of this already-established usage.
It did a lot to popularize the word, of course.
The “Ancient Ruins of Machu Picchu” are not so very ancient…
Construction on the site started about 1450…
By that time Oxford (the university) was already 350 years old and in continuous use.
Machu Picchu expired about 100 years later. Oxford is still hanging in there. Now that is real old school.