Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world.

Welcome to Fascinating Facts and Tantalizing Trivia

A Hartson Dowd Column

 March 15, 2007

Things You Have Been Wondering About 


Q: Why are many coin banks shaped  like pigs?

A: Long ago, dishes  and cookware in Europe were made of a dense orange clay called "pygg."  When people saved coins in jars made of this clay, the jars became known as  "pygg banks." When an English potter misunderstood the word, he made a bank that resembled a pig. And it caught on.

Q: Did you ever wonder why dimes, quarters and half  dollars have notches, while pennies and nickels do not?

A: The US Mint began putting notches on the edges  of coins containing gold and silver to discourage holders from shaving off  small quantities of the precious metals. Dimes, quarters and half dollars  are notched because they used to contain silver. Pennies and nickels aren't  notched because the metals they contain are not valuable enough to  shave.

Q: Why do men's  clothes have buttons on the right while women's clothes have buttons on the  left?

A: When buttons were  invented, they were very expensive and worn primarily by the rich. Because  wealthy women were dressed by maids, dressmakers put the buttons on the  maid's right. Since most people are right-handed, it is easier to push  buttons on the right through holes on the left. And that's where women's  buttons have remained since.

Q: Why do X's at the end of a letter signify kisses?

A: In the Middle Ages,  when many people were unable to read or write, documents were often signed  using an X. Kissing the X represented an oath to fulfill obligations  specified in the document. The X and the kiss eventually became  synonymous.

Q: Why is  shifting responsibility to someone else called "passing the  
buck"?



Q: Why do people  clink their glasses before drinking a toast?

A: It used to be common for someone to try to kill  an enemy by offering him a poisoned drink. To prove to a guest that a drink  was safe, it became customary for a guest to pour a small amount of his  drink into the glass of the host. Both men would drink it simultaneously.  When a guest trusted his host, he would then just touch or clink the host's  glass with his own.

Q: Why  are people in the public eye said to be "in the  limelight"?

A: Invented in  1825, limelight was used in lighthouses and stage lighting by burning a  cylinder of lime which produced a brilliant light. In the theater,  performers on stage "in the limelight" were seen by the audience to be the  center of attention.

Q: Why  do ships and aircraft in trouble use "mayday"as their call for  
help?

A: This comes from the  French word m'aidez -meaning "help me" -- and is pronounced  "mayday."

Q: Why is someone  who is feeling great "on cloud nine"?

A: Types of clouds are numbered according to the altitudes they  attain, with nine being the highest cloud. If someone is said to be on  cloud nine, that person is floating well above worldly  cares.

Q: Why are zero  scores in tennis called "love"?

A: In France , where tennis first became  popular, a big, round zero on scoreboard looked like an egg and was called  "l'oeuf," which is French for "egg." When tennis was introduced in the US ,  Americans pronounced it "love."

Q: In golf, where did the term "Caddie" come  from?

A. When Mary, later Queen  of Scots, went to France as a young girl (for education &survival),  Louis, King of France, learned that she loved the Scot game "golf." So he  had the first golf course outside of Scotland built for her enjoyment. To  make sure she was properly chaperoned (and guarded) while she played, Louis hired cadets from a military school to accompany her. Mary liked this a lot  and when she returned to Scotland (not a very good idea in the long run),  she took the practice with her. In French, the word cadet is pronounced  'ca-day' and the Scots changed it into "caddie."

Q. How many species of Pacific salmon are there?              

Pacific salmon is a generic term used to describe those members of the genus Oncorhynchus that die after spawning. At present, there are seven species commonly referred to as Pacific salmon. There are five species that occur on both sides of the Pacific Ocean:

Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) a.k.a. king salmon,
chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) a.k.a. dog salmon,
coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) a.k.a. silver salmon,
pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) a.k.a. humpback salmon, and
sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) a.k.a. red salmon.

Two species occur only in Asia:
masu salmon (Oncorhynchus masou) a.k.a. yamame, and
amago salmon (Oncorhynchus rhodurus) a.k.a. biwamasu.

Q.  Can anyone else remember X-Ray machines in shoe shops? And how powerful and dangerous were the X-rays used?

Well, dangerous is a relative term. The "pedoscope", or "fluoroscope", was pretty much uncontrolled in terms of how much radiation it used; as is pointed out in another reply, the link between radiation and cancers was poorly understood and denied. One study in the 50s established that there were machines that emitted up to 116 roentgens per scan, which is pretty flamin' high (someone a mile away from the Hiroshima nuclear explosion would have been exposed to about 300 roentgens across their body). It's a pretty safe bet that, since X-ray exposure and cancer are now known to be firmly linked, that some people died when they didn't have to. The shop assistants were most at risk, working with the machines every day -- getting zapped once or twice is unlikely to have done you any harm, unless you were a weird shoe fetishist who went every day.

Q. Why is Latin America called that when the inhabitants don't speak Latin?

Latin Americans speak Spanish, Portuguese and French, languages derived from Latin. The term was presumably invented as a catch-all to cover all the nations.

Q. Why do we have candles on birthday cakes?

Candles on birthday cakes have been around for some considerable time. Birthday celebrations were originally not celebrations at all, according to some; instead, people worried that they would be attacked by spirits on the anniversary of their birth, and so clustered with family and friends in order to keep safe. This quasi-religious aspect to a birthday "celebration" continued; we have birthday cakes because either the Greeks made round cakes to venerate Artemis, goddess of the moon, or because the Germans made a special bread (which might be called Geburtstagorten and might not) in the shape of the baby Jesus' swadding clothes. The candles were an extension of this; Gibbons stated in 1986 that the Greeks put candles on their round cakes to make them glow like the moon, hoping to gain Artemis' special favour. Alternatively, the candles were intended to carry the birthday wishes up to God (or the gods), along with the smoke. Some Germans even today place a large candle in the centre of a birthday cake to symbolise the "light of life" (from Corwin, 1986).

Adding a number of candles that correspond with years is a fairly obvious extension of the general candles-on-cakes principle, once you're into it anyway. Blowing them out is, I suspect, just done because it's fun to blow out candles, now that the religious aspect has faded away somewhat. Besides, if you don't blow them out then you can't inflict on people those trick candles that relight, which would be the end of a venerable birthday tradition.

Hartson S Dowd

hsdowd@telus.net