Electric eels are not eels. They are a freshwater fish native to
South America and are related to the carp.
It Isn’t Made of Cheese, Either
The “dark side of the moon” sounds like a daunting, frightening, mysterious, and terrifying place—and it would be, if it existed. Although it’s true that the same side of the moon always faces the earth, that doesn’t mean the other side is always dark. Every acre of the moon is illuminated at one time or another. However, if the phrase “dark side of the moon” didn’t exist, we might not have one of the best rock albums in history.
Head cheese is not a type of cheese—it’s not even a
dairy product. Head cheese is boiled and coarsely chopped
meat from the head of a calf or pig (sometimes a sheep
or cow) and may also include meat from the heart or feet.
The boiled meat is then mixed with gelatin, shaped in a mold
to resemble cheese, and served cold.
W. C. Fields Forever
“Anybody who hates children and dogs can’t be all bad” is the perfect quote to embody the comedian W. C. Fields (William Claude Dukenfield), and it’s one of his most famous sayings, but like most things in this book, it’s a myth. The actual quote is “Anybody who hates dogs and babies can’t be all bad.” This misquote wouldn’t be enough to include by itself if not for the fact that W. C. Fields never said either line in the first place. The original quote came from Leo Rosten, the humor writer, who said it when introducing Fields at a dinner. Unfortunately for Mr. Rosten, W. C. Fields is still given credit for this great line.
Koala bears are not bears. They are marsupials like kangaroos,
opossums, Tasmanian devils, and wallabies, all having a pouch
where their newly born baby (“joey”) develops.
Exit, Stage Left!
W. C. Fields has been falsely credited with several events and quotes—even after his death. Included in most nonfiction stories of Fields is the epitaph on the vault housing his ashes, “On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.” It would be a great ending to the comedian’s career, but it’s not true. In fact, Fields never even said this line—it actually appeared as a joke in the magazine Vanity Fair in the 1920s and was assigned to Fields after his death. What is on his grave marker in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery? His name and his birth and death years.
Welsh rabbit has nothing to do with rabbits. In the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, the adjective Welsh meant something
of inferior quality. So if someone couldn’t snare a rabbit
for dinner, he or she might have had to settle for Welsh rabbit—
melted cheese on toast.
Structured Chaos
In 1976, the American Institute of Architects awarded the Kemper Arena in Kansas City their prize as “one of the finest buildings in the nation.” So it was no surprise when on June 3, 1979, they decided to hold their annual conference near the arena. On the first day of the conference, architects toured this awe-inspiring structure, noting, in particular, the wide-spanning roof trusses, which the Architectural Record described as having “an almost awesome muscularity.”
On the second day, a major storm hit Kansas City, with winds in excess of seventy miles per hour. Soon the architects’ awe turned into “ahhh!” when the roof of “one of the finest buildings in the nation” collapsed. Apparently, the bolts used in the roof hangings weren’t strong enough to support the wind, the rain, and the roof at the same time. So because of a bad bolt, the whole arena got screwed.
Holy Santa Maria!
As I’ve mentioned before, Christopher Columbus’s journeys to the New World were fraught with mistakes, miscalculations, misinterpretations, and miscellaneous mischief. Here are but a few examples:• The main reason Columbus was so confident he could reach Asia was that he had underestimated the earth’s circumference by 7,600 miles.
• Not realizing he had discovered a new continent, he never bothered naming it—so a less-significant explorer, Amerigo Vespucci, decided to name it for him—America.
• Columbus searched in vain for gold and treasure but never found any. He did make one interesting trade with the Indians—his crew infected them with smallpox and, in exchange, the Indians presented the Europeans with syphilis.
A Close Shave
Hans Steininger was a famous politician in Brünn, Austria, not necessarily for any legislation, but because his beard was longer than he was tall—it was reportedly the longest beard in the world. But his beard’s growing days were cut short in September 1567, when while climbing the steps leading to the council chamber, he tripped over his beard, fell down the stairs, and died. It’s like the old saying, “Hair today, gone tomorrow.”
Whalebone, used in the nineteenth century for buggy whips,
parasol ribs, and corset stays, is not bone at all. It is baleen,
a stiff but somewhat elastic substance made of keratin (the
same stuff that’s in our fingernails, teeth, and hair) found in
the upper jaws of baleen whales.
Cue the Crying Indian!
Earth Day, April 22, 1990, was celebrated by hundreds of thousands of people gathered in New York’s Central Park to express their support for environmental programs. When the event was over, more than memories were left behind—fifty park sanitation workers picked up an estimated 1,543 tons of litter the concerned demonstrators had left behind.
The English horn is neither English nor a horn.
Its origins are in the Near East, and it
was improved and redeveloped in Vienna.
It is a woodwind in the oboe family.
Like a Rolling Stone
A stone with mysterious etchings was uncovered by archaeologists among prehistoric Native American relics in the Grave Creek Mound in West Virginia in 1838. Over the next century, the stone continued to stump scientists and more than sixty linguists, who were unable to decipher the strange carving. In 1930, a young man photographing the famous mystery from a variety of angles accidentally discovered the solution. Like the popular optical illusion puzzles in which greatly elongated letters can be read only when they’re viewed at an extreme angle, the photograph solved the nearly 100-year-old mystery. The carving on the stone read:
BILL STUMP’S STONE
October 14, 1838
Making one wonder if the legend meant it was a stone by Bill Stump or if Bill knew his stone would stump people.
Roses on Your Piano
Pokémon, Beanie Babies, Cabbage Patch Kids, and tulips are all examples of collectible “crazes.” Yes, tulips. Tulips were introduced into Holland in the late 1500s and were much sought after by the upper class. In 1634, traders began speculating on tulip bulbs, and soon the price of certain prized tulips skyrocketed—the age of tulipmania had struck! The rare Semper Augustus sold for as much as 5,500 florins per bulb, the equivalent of eight pounds of gold. But eventually, the tulip bubble burst, and in February 1637, the price of bulbs hit the dirt. Thousands of people went bankrupt, and investors refused to honor the futures contracts they had signed. When these cases went to court, they were ruled to be gambling debts, not enforceable contracts. I guess in this case it wasn’t money but tulip bulbs that were the root of all evil.
Auguste Rodin’s famous bronze sculpture referred to as The Thinker wasn’t what the artist was thinking about. Rodin originally named his sculpture The Poet, as it depicts Dante Alighieri, the author of The Divine Comedy, sitting in front of the gates of hell contemplating his great poem. An unknown art critic who was unfamiliar with Dante’s work referred to the statue as The Thinker, and the name caught on.
Sitting in Judgment of Yourself
The Pacific Gas & Electric Company was on trial in Nevada City, California, in 2000 charged with “failing to trim vegetation around power lines.” The trial was delayed for more than thirty minutes when the power to the town was accidentally cut off—a tree branch had fal
len and knocked down a power line. It’s events like these that strengthen my belief in God—and that he’s got a sense of humor.
“At the end of every rainbow, you’ll find a
pot of gold.” It’s something we all think about
at one time or another when we see a rainbow,
but that’s not how the original saying went. In the
thirteenth century, a common saying was,
“One would be as likely to find a pot of gold as
to find the end of a rainbow,” which makes sense.
The Irish borrowed from this saying and crafted it
into their leprechaun mythology.
Roll It
It’s assumed that sunny California became the home to early filmmakers because it’s, well, sunny. Motion picture cameras of the day required a lot of light, and it was less expensive to shoot outdoors than in a studio. But these pioneers of the picture show weren’t just looking for a place in the sun, they were also looking for a place to hide. You see, Thomas Edison owned the patent on the film camera, and these filmmakers were infringing on Edison’s patent. Southern California became the perfect location because it was as far away from Edison’s lawyers as one could get and still stay in the United States. If the lawyers “went West,” it was a simple matter for these filmmakers to escape to Mexico.
A Close Call
In July 1956, a B-47 Stratojet subsonic bomber crashed into a storage igloo twenty miles south of Cambridge, England. The plane burst into flames on impact but surprisingly didn’t ignite the contents of the igloo. A lucky day for the citizens of Cambridge, because the igloo contained three Mark Six nuclear bombs.
Until 1937, consumption and sale of cannabis
(as hemp for clothing and rope and in cigarette
form) was made illegal without the purchase of
a federal tax stamp. Congress didn’t think it had the
authority to outlaw a plant, so they imposed a hefty
tax instead. This reduced the amount of trade,
but apparently not enough. To legally make
marijuana illegal, Congress simply stopped issuing
the tax stamp, and without a tax stamp, it was
illegal to buy or sell cannabis.
Don’t Want No Fancy Funeral, Just One Like Old King Tut
On November 4, 1922, archaeologist Howard Carter made one of the greatest archaeological finds in history when he discovered the virtually untouched tomb of Tutankhamen, the Egyptian boy king, who lived around 1350 B.C. The tomb of King Tut, in the Valley of the Kings, was so filled with artifacts, it took nearly ten years to catalog them all. But one, the most stupefying and mind-boggling artifact of them all, was reported on by Charles Langdon Clarke of the Toronto Mail and Empire—it was King Tut’s “golden typewriter.” Yes, a solid-gold typewriter was found among the thousands of other priceless items in the tomb. A rival newspaper sent a reporter to interview noted Egyptologist Dr. C. T. Currelly, curator of the Royal Ontario Museum, to discuss the earth-shattering discovery. Once Clarke realized someone was going to follow up on his story, he decided to release his source: himself. Clarke confessed that the golden typewriter was a hoax. What’s odd is that no one questioned how the golden typewriter could print hieroglyphics and how a machine could be built large enough to hold all the symbols. But what’s stranger than that is, of all the truly amazing and real artifacts discovered in the tomb, why would someone want to make up a fake one?
A Twist of Lemming
Contrary to popular myth, lemmings do not commit mass suicide. The origin of this lemming tale is traced to the 1958 Walt Disney film, White Wilderness. One scene shows a dozen lemmings scurrying toward the edge of a cliff, where they “dutifully toss themselves over a cliff into certain death in icy Arctic waters.” Believe it or not, the filmmakers staged the suicide scene, but when the lemmings refused to go voluntarily over the cliff, they were tossed over by the film crew. “Gradually strength wanes . . . determination ebbs away . . . and the Arctic Sea is dotted with tiny bobbing bodies,” concludes the narrator.
You would think the Disney Company, which made its fortune off a mouse, would be kinder to its relatives.
Even though footballs are called “pigskins,” they are
not made from pigskins but from cowhide.
Sax and Violins
Catgut, which for centuries has been used to string musical instruments, is made from cats, right? Not even close. Catgut is a term for a chemically treated animal intestine made into a tough string or cord. But the animal in question isn’t a cat and never has been; it’s a sheep. So why isn’t it called sheepgut? Good question. Here’s my guess: Imagine the sound of a young child practicing a violin, and then imagine the sound of a cat with its tail caught in a door. The word catgut makes a lot more sense now, doesn’t it?
The pineapple is almost exclusively identified with
Hawaii, but the fruit is not native to the islands. Our
old friend Christopher Columbus picked up a few in
the Caribbean in 1493, and because they looked like
great big pinecones, he called them the “Pine of the
Indies.” The English compared the sweet taste to
an apple, and soon the fruit was called a pineapple.
They became all the rage in England and were
introduced to Hawaii when Captain James Cook
took some with him on an expedition circa 1770.
It’s a Dog’s Life
When calculating the age of old Fido, most people use the equation one human year equals seven dog years. But if you think about that logic for only a moment (four hours in dog moments), you’ll see it doesn’t hold true. Using this theory, Bluey, an Australian cattle dog who lived to be twenty-nine years old, would have been 203 years old in human years. So how do you compare a dog’s age in human years? Since puppies become dogs much quicker than babies become adults, the equation could be figured more along these lines: fifteen years for the first year of the dog’s life, ten years for the second, seven for the third, and three for each following year. Making a three-year-old dog thirty-two, a fourteen-year-old dog sixty-five, and our twenty-nine-year-old dog an amazing but more realistic 110 years old. Of course, it’s much harder for a dog to figure out the age of a human in dog years.
Covering Up the Past
Can you imagine someone taking a beautiful piece of white marble Greek statuary and painting it in flesh tones, making its hair black or brown, coloring the clothing, or if the statue was naked, painting in pubic hair? That would be considered vulgar and uncouth, but that’s what the Greeks did. Statues in ancient times weren’t cold, bland, white likenesses of gods, royalty, and nobles—they were colorfully painted and left no detail to the imagination. Even busts were painted—and sculptures of people’s heads were, too!
Bald eagles aren’t bald, so how did they get their name? In Middle English, balded meant “white,” and over the years, the word was shortened to bald. That’s why the American eagle, with its white-feathered head, is called the bald eagle. Pibald (“part white”) is used to refer to dogs with white spots.
Alone Again, Naturally
Let’s get this straight: Charles Lindbergh was not the first to fly nonstop across the Atlantic. The first nonstop flight was made on June 14, 1919, by John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown, and if you count two earlier dirigible crossings transporting a total of sixty-four people, Lindbergh was actually the sixty-seventh person to cross the Atlantic. The key word missing from these previous accomplishments is solo. On May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh was the first person to fly nonstop across the Atlantic, from the United States to Europe, by himself. I suppose if people could remember his nickname, “The Lone Eagle,” they wouldn’t get things confused.
A “moment” technically lasts ninety seconds.
Ship Faced
It was one of the most historic battles of the Civil War—the four-hour Battle of Hampton Roads on March 9, 1862, between
the two ironclads the Monitor and the Merrimac. What makes this battle easily memorable is that both ships’ names started with the letter M. The problem is, the Monitor didn’t fight the Merrimac, it fought the Virginia. The Merrimac was a typical U.S. Navy wooden frigate built in 1856 that was set on fire so as not to be confiscated by Confederate forces. The Rebels salvaged the ship, cut off its upper hull, and outfitted it with sloping metal sides, rechristening it the CSS Virginia, and it was under that name that it battled the Monitor. In 1995, the U.S. Postal Service commemorated the battle with a 32¢ “Monitor * Virginia” stamp and was inundated with calls and letters telling them they had screwed up.
A steel-jacketed bullet is actually made of brass.
Stupid History: Tales of Stupidity, Strangeness, and Mythconceptions Throughout the Ages Page 6