The Irish didn’t get the memo.
You are correct but one incorrect followup to that fact I’ve heard is that the dropped n started out as “a norange” and got copied as an error as “an orange”
That the loss of initial “n” was due to absorption of the “n” to the preceding indefinite article is probably true, but it happened in French and Italian before the word entered English. There was never an English form with an initial “n”. Scots however did have a form “nirrange”, which was created from the n-less form due to the opposite process: the “n” from the indefinite article was moved to the beginning of the following word.
The OED says
The loss of initial n- in French and Italian probably results from absorption of the n- when preceded by the indefinite article, although in some cases such forms may reflect loss of n- already in Arabic. Scots form nirrange shows attraction of the ‑n of the indefinite article by metanalysis.
The origins of color names (in English) is pretty interesting. “Green” seems to be related to “grass” and “grow”, by some kind of common root. “Yellow” seems to have some kind of connection to “gold”. “Red” does not appear to have any particular connection to anything – it is a pretty basic concept (orange used to simply be in the scope of red). “Blue” is not really related to anything either – from what I understand, blue is one of the last colors to enter a language. Many of the other color names are closely related to a thing – “purple” for instance seems to come from the name of a mollusk from which a purplish dye was extracted.
Near as I can tell Pres. Barack Hussein Obama is the only president to have set foot above the Arctic Circle.
Where and when was that?
- Kotzebue, for sure. Maybe other places, too.
Obama, Carter, Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt are the four US presidents who’ve won the Nobel Peace Prize.
TR is the only one who’s also won the Congressional Medal of Honor.
TR Sr. and junior, and Arthur and Douglas MacArthur are the only father/son winners of the CMO
TIL of the Ramon Mobile Home Park in Palm Springs, Ca.
What about it?
There was some sort of fire.
OK, so what’s the interesting fact about a fire in a trailer park?
Can’t speak for @motu, but there are some interesting things about Ramon Trailer Park (and several other trailer parks in Palm Springs):
- The fact that there are even trailer parks in Palm Springs at all might surprise those from outside California. Palm Springs’ reputation (from half a country away) is that of exclusivity and wealth.
But better than that, these aren’t ordinary trailer parks. And not ordinary trailer park homes.
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Trailers in parks like Ramon were owned/rented by stars looking for a convenient getaway from L.A. Bing Crosby owned an entire park called Blue Skies Village that still exists today.
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These trailer parks are coveted housing today and are considered an integral part of Palm Springs’ cultural heritage. Few trailer park homes become the subject of coffee-table books and write-ups in Architectural Digest.
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The creativity behind the designs and add-ons to the single trailers, double-wides, and mid-century manufactured homes is interesting to peruse. These aren’t the kinds of trailer homes with which most people are familiar.
The rabbit hole:
41-minute video, but easy to use a the video as a “photo album” fast forward through images/clips of individual homes. A very cool community has built up at Ramon. The recent fire destroying five homes is a shame, but nowhere near the most interesting thing about the place.
Palm Springs Historical Society article.
My Wife and I bought a new home. We have plenty of room to set up a good bristle dart board. I used to play casually. I found out so did my wife, but she was on a team/league. She had a handicap rating.
HUH? Wow, had no idea. A darts handicap rating. I guess it worked great for her, so she would start out with some points because of her ‘handicap’ and then hit a couple of triples in a row. She would win for her team.
This is going to be interesting, and I suspect humbling.
TIL, Elizabeth I of England and Mary, Queen of Scots never actually met each other face to face.
That’s a great one. Apparently they had a correspondence and discussed meeting but it never happened.
I heard this back in 1971 when they released the movie Mary Queen of Scots. The film has them meeting face to face twice, but several places pointed out in 1971 that they had never actually met in real life.
That can be extended to the more general fact that none of the Tudor monarchs met any of their Scottish counterparts.
Although he wasn’t actually the first writer to use the idea, Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots meeting was a dramatic cliché going all the way back to Schiller’s Mary Stuart in 1800. The real rarities are the plays, operas and films about them that don’t include it.
I’m surprised that Henry VII and James IV never met, though I can’t find any account where they did so. Even the wedding between James and Margaret Tudor was by proxy.
Speaking of mobile home parks-- the Goethals Community Park located in Staten Island is the only mobile home park in New York City,
https://www.silive.com/news/2021/07/could-mobile-homes-help-provide-affordable-housing-in-n