Well, at least 4 US Presidents chose not to use their proper first name
Hiram U. Grant (a general HUG? probably not)
Stephen G. Cleveland (that rolls off the tongue)
Thomas W. Wilson
John Calvin Coolidge (perhaps a little too religious)
Then, David Dwight Eisenhower got his names switched around
Leslie Lynch King Jr. will not be mentioned.
British prime minister Gordon Brown’s first name was James !
Nor William Jefferson Blythe III
talk about victorian times and fainting when seeing a woman’s ankle … we can easily see it was a lie!!!
Andrés Manuel López Obrador aka AMLO ,(current mexican president)
was born:
Manuel Andrés López Obrador and changed his names legally to avoid going by the abbrev. of MALO (= spanish for BAD, BROKEN, KAPUTT, FUBAR) - which is not so hot a name for a politician.
11 percent of all the gold ever mined is worn by or owned by women in India. That’s more than the gold reserves of any country in the world.
I think this a wild mischaracterization of the ownership patterns. Gold jewelry is a family store of wealth, and not in any practical sense under the control of the women in those families.
If the bride’s family gives her $10k worth of gold jewelry at marriage it’s just a gift to the groom’s family, not an asset of the bride.
The majority of men and women in most Indian families I know would disagree with you on this. But I acknowledge that there could be significant selection bias in my sample.
Today I learned that there was such a thing as Yarn Bombing. This probably isn’t news to most dopers, as yarn bombing originated in the US. However, the practice has spread to the UK, where it has taken on a very specific form. Another TIL - this specific form has a name (and a wiki page): the Post Box Topper.
I imagine most (all?) dopers are aware that we post our letters in things called post boxes. Click the icon for an image:
A little over a decade ago, the practice of adorning them with little hats (for want of a better word) appeared in this country. The practice is now very widespread - we must be approaching a 50:50 split between plain and topped. The wiki page has a few nice examples.
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It’s a fun google if you want to waste ten minutes.
j
The podcast More or Less, where economists examine claims like this for accuracy, concluded it was more or less correct.
One of those factoids I heard when little, that turned out to be unconfirmed or entirely false, was that Hindu brides could keep all the jewelry that they could carry to their wedding.
Other such tales was that Chinese wives made the meals as hot as possible so that’s the food would still be warm when the menfolk were done and they were allowed to eat. Hence the higher prevalence of stomach cancer in Chinese men than women.
Or the stories about Oriental potentates who’d fatten-up in anticipation of ceremonies where their subjects would set them on huge scales and reward them with an equal amount of gold. (This had some truth to it, on the case of the third Aga Kahn)
This information sent me down a subreddit rabbit hole and I found a couple of Yarn Bombing subs to peruse. Thanks!
Errrr…
Happy to oblige; or Sorry 'bout that. Whichever applies. 
j
I’m sure there was no offense intended, but nowadays the standard usage is to use the adjective “Oriental” only for objects, not for people.
That is an interesting and new fact for me. What word should be used instead?
I had a friend who was involved in the Ojai valley yarn bombing, er, gangs (?). They did quite elaborate displays.
“Asian”, or ideally a more specific word if known.
Thanks, I’ll bear that in mind. But Occidental is still OK for “Western”?
More American soldiers died in training for D-Day than on actual D-Day itself.
Ah, thank you, now I ken that one stop sign in Portland.