Yeah, no kidding. My parents subscribed to RD for years, and I always did the vocabulary quiz and never missed the Drama in Real Life feature.
As for the OP:
I learned that SCUBA stands for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus from an episode of Family Ties.
Maybe this is a more obvious source, but I learned alot from Schoolhouse Rock:
The Preamble to the Constitution
The correct usage of adverbs and interjections…
What happens to a bill on Capitol Hill…
The function of conjunctions
…and many more!!!
My Mom would buy me a comic book if I got 90% right on the vocab quiz, 2 if 100% correct.
When I was a kid, I learned the state capitals and the presidents from Animaniacs (I also memorized that entire damned countries of the world song). They stuck with me long enough to be a huge help in 10th grade US history.
Once I stopped watching Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? I lost all concept of world geography.
Naval ranks from Star Trek, like Aesiron said.
Most of what I know about 80s and 90s pop culture and music comes from “Weird Al” Yankovic.
I learned what prostitution was from Les Misérables (I was ten, and my mom enlightened me before taking me to see the show.)
Marvel Comics taught me such words as temerity, insouciance, and my favorite, microencephalic. Their villains tended to be wordy and long-winded.
Should the situation ever arise (in London) where I needed it, I now know how to wrestle crocodiles into submission from watching WAY too much “Crocodile Hunter”
