The St Leger course looks entirely anticlockwise to me, the Derby is mostly so, and the 2,000 Guineas is dead straight. Are you thinking of the Irish versions?
We spent part of today touring Le Pays Des Abers in Finisterre. It’s a complex of estuaries and very picturesque. Rabbit hole coming up.
The name is slightly curious. Le Pays Des is French - The Land Of The; but Abers is Breton - Mouths Of Rivers. You find Aber in Welsh placenames - Aberystwyth, Abergavenny - Breton is a celtic language like Welsh; or, particularly, Cornish. So why no Cornish placenames beginning with Aber?
It’s a two part answer. First, unsurprisingly, there are: Aberfal, Aberplymm. Second, unlike Welsh, Cornish is a dead language, and the old names have been forgotten and replaced: Falmouth, Plymouth.
But Cornish hasn’t always been dead, of course. For example, on September 16, 1620, Cornish was still being spoken. So: where did the Mayflower sail from?
I haven’t got a definitive answer. A hundred years later it was still spoken in isolated parts of Cornwall. So yes, probably there were many people who would have said the Mayflower sailed from Aberplymm - if they had ever heard of Aberplymm. Even now, In Cornwall isolated means isolated.
History indicates that Plymouth definitely called itself Plymouth by then. The Mayflower sailed from Plymouth. But not everyone would have agreed.
j
Isn’t Plymouth technically in Devon? There were still Cornish speakers in the west of Cornwall, and should they have referred to it, they might have said Aberplymm, but I don’t think any Plymouth locals would have.
Anyway, “Plym” is (probably) from Old English, so it might well be that Aberplymm is a calque from English into Cornish.
The current border runs through suburbs of Plymouth. So yes, you’re correct. But Aberplymm was one of the example placenames that I found (thus trapping me in that rabbit hole!) I presume the range of the Cornish language extended into what is now Devon.
j
Marc Daniels directed the first season of I Love Lucy, as well as many episodes of Star Trek and other Desilu shows.
According to his son in the documentary Lucy and Desi, Daniels thought Lucy was “the best actor of the 20th century.”
Among other actors he directed were George C. Scott, Julie Harris, and Laurence Olivier, who is often given that epithet.
BTW, I highly recommend the documentary. It’s on Prime Video.
Well, if you go back far enough, it extends as far as East Anglia and Kent! But yes, rural Devon probably spoke a Celtic language in the early Middle Ages, judging by place names. At the point where it would have been dying out, it wouldn’t have been possible to distinguish Welsh, Cornish, and Breton. https://cdn.website-editor.net/s/4c85baab6fab498b9458acdf2c96eef7/files/uploaded/Celtic+Devon+20260220.pdf?Expires=1783768092&Signature=TozagyHT5s7hth152YB-U17l3Jmuc1sguBnxsVylBgyDm0isRgwzlb0blPU2PA-vzzxJea7XzUc7cLkPzwGov7DHpuUJFv3Z6UnZ8609hYRtKH2q-OOPrPRB~1jLxkuuyYbiyTMxp3Rk5lBGse9XhqxjIr4fYy0RYJa4QnjVg3mB1PiBoowSCEwFNP7~FdRuyQ21-cLiHY207~e~lFIaTWLoGCimiBJnYmgmluU3CG0n26QCYGaGTRiIGNA6UfMhsHO6OpGgyKhRfBb7pO8kNax5vf76zY5y7qLV4Wn3rbMSAQxRqpTTLz3Orr8RhpVciWJs0bWAe8ik~vqGOwORiQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K2NXBXLF010TJW is a sort of interesting deep dive; I don’t know the author by some of the people mentioned in the introduction are authorities.
It looks like that’s a Welsh URL. Not the website itself, mind you: Just its address.
Could be. I saw a reference to those three while I was searching. Supposedly the 2,000 Guineas (bet that prize money has gone up) had a right turn at some point. I didn’t follow it up, as I probably should have. General rule: Never believe anything online unless it’s an original article from me.
This is kinda trivial, but: The Derby, until relatively recently, was held on a Wednesday, and you could attend for free (and you still can, so far as I’m aware).
You can watch for free because the course is on common land, so you can just wander over to the course. I used to work (think 1980’s) three or four miles from the course, and it was common practice to take the Wednesday afternoon off work and walk to the Derby. Epsom Downs is the only racetrack I have ever been to. I have seen the Derby two or three times and the Oaks (the other Epsom Classic, which used to be held on the Saturday, but which these days is on the Sunday) once.
j
As I recall W.I. wound up with a patent for the knuckle joint at the base of the mast. Everything else already existed somewhere.
That’s … odd …
As I recall, Baden Powel asserted that most people naturally tend to drift “right” when lost. German research has indicated circles but no preference for lost people.
This seems to be a study of “put a lot of people in a room and tell them to walk around”, which is a bit different to “lost” or “go through the intersection”.
It doesn’t strike me as particularly unusual; if you asked me to walk down a path, I would probably stick to the right-hand side, so in the case of a square path that would mean turning counter-clockwise. Maybe it seems more unusual in left-side driving countries.
The term "tomahawk chop, " faux-karate chop used by “American Indian” pro wrestlers, was in common use in the *1950s, the first reference I could find being in 1948. The Atlanta Braves and FSU Seminoles were Johnny-Come-Latelies in cribbing the term. First press account I could find was 1991, so I doubt it was common use much before that.
*Old news to any old-skool wrestling fans, but the only one I ever saw use it was Wahoo McDaniel in the mid 1970s.
I don’t follow this. Sticking to the right hand side of a square path could result in either clockwise or counterclockwise turns, depending on which way you’re facing when you start walking. If the right side of the path is towards the outside of the square, then you’ll make CCW turns, but if the right side of the path is toward the inside of the square, then you’ll make CW turns.
I agree. I mean, if i’m walking down a path I’ve never walked before, I have no idea if the next turn will be toward the left or right.
If I’m walking along with a wall on my right-hand side and I make a right turn, I will run into the wall. Isn’t that how it works for you? I guess I should have said “square enclosed area” rather than “square path”.
Not humans in general, just several dozen healthy Spanish and Japanese students roughly between the ages of five and twenty-five. This reeks of “study that will fail replication.”
Never mind. I posted something not-smart.
That describes my entire posting history!
I think it’s fairly well established that when folks walk into a room they tend to turn left, absent any reason to do otherwise.
I was in a catered event once, sitting to the right of the only door in. Every single server who walked in with fingerfood or drinks turned left and served people over there first, sometimes meaning they were out before they got to us. We had to physically walk over to the doorway and intercept them to get a new drink.