Unwrap the name of a candy bar, and you just might find a story inside. For instance, one chewy treat found in many a checkout lane is named after a family’s beloved horse. And: 50 years ago in the United States, some Latino elementary...
It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when people disagreed over the best word to use when answering the phone. Alexander Graham Bell suggested answering with ahoy! but Thomas Edison was partial to hello! A fascinating new book about...
How are lakes named? Does the proper name of a lake come first, as in Candlewood Lake, or does the word Lake precede the proper name, as in Lake Erie. It’s a question that’s long puzzled limnologists, the people who study lakes. The...
Following our conversation about fossicking for gemstones, a listener in Melbourne, Australia, points out that where he’s from, emu is slang for a person who picks up discarded tickets at a racetrack, hoping to find an accidentally discarded...
If someone urges you to spill the tea, they probably don’t want you tipping over a hot beverage. Originally, the tea here was the letter T, as in “truth.” To spill the T means to “pass along truthful information.” Plus...
If you have enough for Coxey’s army, you have heaping helpings of it. The phrase goes back to the 1890s, when the United States was in the midst of an economic depression. Activist Jacob Coxey led a ragtag group of hungry protesters across the...