Zippy Facts

The confetti we throw today at newlyweds and returning heroes is a way of honoring them on special occasions or celebrating their accomplishments. But these little bits of colored paper did not begin as paper at all. Hundreds of years ago, the celebration of carnival days in Italy gave merrymakers an excuse for boisterous carryings-on….

There are hundred of thousands of craters visible on the Moon, measuring from a few feet across (craterlets) to about 150 miles across (basins or walled plains). The craters seem to be the result of both meteorites and volcanic activity. Most scientists agree that the Moon came under a meteorite bombardment some 4.5 billion years…

Kissing the Blarney Stone at Blarney Castle near Cork, Ireland, is supposed to transfer the gift of gab to the kisser. But the idea that the word blarney meant a smooth talker came from the mouth of Elizabeth I of England in 1602. She had insisted that Dermot McCarthy surrender Blarney Castle as proof of…

In 1923, an earthquake struck near Tokyo and Yokohama, killing more than 130,000 people and destroying most of both cities. More recently, in 1995, the city of Kobe, Japan, was devastated by a powerful 7.2 magnitude earthquake that killed more than 6,400 people. Volcanoes have also caused destruction in Japan. In 1792, the dome of…

When the National Weather Service forecasters use the term probability of precipitation, they mean that in ten instances of weather patterns similar to the one they are looking at, it rained five times. The service keeps cumulative records, and the probability forecast is a statistic based on what has happened. For example, if a cold…

One of the oldest of the Grecian myths tells of the struggle for supremacy between Zeus and the Titans, the sons and grandsons of Uranus and Gaea. The leader of the Titans was the powerful Atlas. And when the Titans were overcome, Atlas, in punishment, was obliged thereafter to bear the weight of the heavens…

Just as Alfred Wegener was getting his degree in astronomy, the new science of meteorology was getting a boost from some new scientific advances. The telegraph, the laying of the Atlantic cable, and wireless communications were making storm tracking and weather forecasting much more accurate. Wegener became a meteorologist. He used kites and balloons to…

For a long time, scientists thought that galaxies were quiet, stable citizens of the universe. On the contrary, however, many galaxies engage in great, even violent, activity. Seyfert galaxies, for instance, emit 100 times the electromagnetic waves of ordinary galaxies. Active galaxies are known to collide and produce massive nuclear explosions, sending jet streams of…

Bleach doesn’t know which clothes are white. What it does know about is color, because color is a lot more fundamental, chemically and physically speaking, than our mere human wash day preferences. Bleach attacks colored chemical compounds, most of which do indeed have something in common, and leaves behind a lack of color that we…

The motive force for cable cars is provided by a moving cable generated from a power station. The system was conceived in 1867 by the American mechanic Andrew S. Hallidie. By 1873 the first cable railroad, built by the Clay Street Hill Railroad Company, was in operation in San Francisco. This remarkable system, which aroused…

The expression “to break the ice” means: To dispel coolness or aloofness; to break through reserve or formality, establish friendly relations; also, to start an enterprise. Literally, of course, it is the ice on a river or lake that is broken for the passage of boats in early spring. Because that denoted the start of…

Step into a modern shoe store and take a look around. High-heeled and platform shoes, boots, sandals, moccasins, wooden-heeled clogs, quite a variety for today’s shopper. Recent fashions? Well, not one of the footwear styles you see today is less than 400 years old! The History of Shoes is indeed interesting. The loftiest high-heeled and…

To behave in a cowardly manner; to act pusillanimously. The expression comes from the cockpit, the arena or ring where gamecocks are pitted against one another to see which can vanquish the other. Cockfighting is one of the oldest of sports; it is recorded among early Chinese accounts and was practiced in ancient India, Persia,…

The word “dial” comes from the Latin word “dialis”, which means “daily”, because a sundial throws a shadow related to the time of day. The word “dialling” originally referred to the math required to create a sundial to tell time based on the position of the sun, and those skilled in the art were called…

The British dish, “Toad in the Hole” is similar to the American dish “pig-in-a-blanket”. Sausages are dipped in Yorkshire pudding batter, then baked, and is usually served with vegetables and onion gravy. The origin of the name is not completely clear. The dish itself is at least 250 years old and probably older. Many agree…

The Gorilla from the Tom and Jerry cartoons was Grape Ape. Who was that cartoon gorilla with the hat, bow tie, and suspenders from The Magilla Gorilla Show? The cartoon gorilla with the hat, bow tie, and suspenders was The Magilla Gorilla. What is the Latin name for the western lowland gorilla? The Latin name…

As the earth orbits the sun, the sun’s rays strike the areas near the Equator at a more direct angle. This delivers more energy at the equator, than they do at the poles. It also means the poles are generally colder than the equator. When sunlight shines on the earth at a lower angle, the…

The word scuttlebutt comes from sailors of the British Navy. Nineteenth-century warships had large wooden casks with holes cut in the lid for drinking water. The word scuttle means a hole, like the one created to scuttle a ship, or in this case, the one in the cask. The water cask itself was called a…

Although white slaveholders tried to suppress African culture (they believed slaves could be controlled more easily if they spoke only English and depended on what the slaveholders taught them), slaves created their own African American culture by combining English and Christianity with their African culture. They recognized their African heritage, but accepted America as home….

As far as is known, Anita Loos originated the expression “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” when selecting it as the title of her book. But she may have taken the idea from an amusing book, The New King Arthur, which first appeared anonymously in 1885, but was written by an American poet, Edgar Fawcett. The book is…

Originally, the word “pale”, from the Latin palus, stake, meant just that, a stake to be driven into the ground. It had an especial meaning, also, a stake to be driven into the ground along with others, so as to form a fence. From the latter it came to mean a definite limit or boundary,…

Chaplin’s trademark, the derby cocked on his head, thick swatch of a moustache, and gargantuan shoes, was the result of Mack Sennett’s request that he “get into a comedy make-up” for Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914). With a little ingenuity, he concocted the outfit in a dressing room while Fatty Arbuckle and Chester Conklin…

The expression “a Roland for an Oliver” means: Tit for tat; a blow for a blow; an eye for an eye. There was an actual Roland, a knight who fought under Charlemagne and who was killed in a rear-guard action in the Pyrenees in A.D. 778. From his heroic action grew the famous medieval Chanson…

We are so accustomed to the term “Knickerbockers” that we can scarcely realize it is barely a hundred years old. It seems that it must date back to the days of Peter Stuyvesant, when the Dutchmen on Manhattan Island all wore flaring breeches now called knickerbockers. But, though the name of this garment is often…

One of the more popular stories as to how New York got its nickname is as follows. During the 1940s, Robert Emmerich, who played piano in the Tommy Dorsey Band, wrote an obscure song called “The Big Apple.” It was soon forgotten by everyone except legendary reporter Walter Winchell, who liked the song so much…

In 1905, a group of African Americans led by William Edward Burghardt (W. E. B.) Du Bois founded the Niagara Movement at Niagara Falls, Canada. The group was considered radical because it demanded action rather than empty promises. Members of the Niagara Movement later became part of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored…

Judging by what we see on television, you’d think that the major role of champagne in American culture is to hose down Super Bowl winners in locker rooms. Somewhat younger children do the same thing with soda pop, making sure to shake the bottle well before moving the thumb partially aside on the top in…

Most things get a little bigger when they are heated, even though you probably cannot notice it. If you were to place a glass in a pan of water and heat the water slowly, all the surfaces of the glass would expand evenly, making the whole glass a little bigger. But if you pour boiling…

Antilia was a legendary island in the Atlantic that appeared on European maps before the discovery of the New World. Sometimes described as a large island, sometimes as a small isle, and sometimes as a chain of islands, Antilia was said to have been colonized by Christians fleeing the Muslim invasions of Spain and Portugal…

It used to be that the federal government prohibited brewers from listing the percentage of alcohol on the labels of beers to discourage people from choosing their beverages based on alcohol content. But that’s not true anymore. In 1935, two years after the repeal of Prohibition, the Federal Alcohol Administration (FAA) Act prohibited the labeling…

The phrase “root hog or die” means to get down to hard work or suffer the consequences, to shift for oneself. The earliest literary use so far reported goes back only to 1834, to Davy Crockett’s autobiography, A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett, written just two years before his death at the Alamo….

The watering or sprinkling cart was a much more familiar vehicle on our dusty American streets a few decades ago than it is today. In fact, nowadays one sees only a motorized version of it cooling hot paved city streets in midsummer. But from the use of this former vehicle in slaking the dust of…

Silk is a fine, lustrous, natural fibre made from secretions by very small silkworms to produce cocoons. The cultivation of silk began more than 5,000 years ago in China, and the process is very manual and expensive. In 1935, while China and Japan were at war and the silk supply to Western countries was interrupted,…

Alex Haley wrote the Autobiography of Malcolm X in 1965, besides Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Malcolm X never saw the book. He was killed right before the manuscript went to press. Other literary works by Haley include a biography of the security guard Frank Wills, who discovered the break-in at Watergate, A…

Nope, there’s no year zero in our calendar system. he year before Christ was theoretically born is referred to as 1 B.C.; the year he was born is counted as A.D. 1, with no Year Zero in between. And if Jesus were born in A.D. 1, on December 25 (which he wasn’t), it would be…

The word cent comes from a Latin word that means “one hundred,” so you might think that the many-legged creature called the centipede has 100 legs. But it’s only a rare centipede that has exactly 100 legs. All centipedes have one pair of legs for each body segment; so if a centipede has 20 body…

The phrase “Argus eyed” means extraordinarily vigilant. This, too, comes from Greek mythology. The goddess Hera, wife of the supreme god Zeus, jealous of his affection for the nymph Io, turned her into a cow and then appointed Argus, possessed of a hundred eyes and able to see in all directions, as guardian and caretaker….

It is the auctioneer’s hammer that is referred to in the phrase “to put under the hammer”. The small mallet used by him when tapping “once,” to indicate that the item on sale is about to be “going” to the latest bidder; “twice,” to give reluctant bidders another chance; “three times,” as notice that the…

In the slang of the submarine arm of the navy, a torpedo is called a “fish,” and in applying this nickname our sailors are more nearly correct than they are probably aware with respect to the origin of the name. For the object which was the first torpedo was indeed a fish, in particular, that…

I asked the same question on a trip to Portugal and western Spain, where more than half of the world’s cork is grown, but I was unable to get a satisfactory answer. It was like asking a silkworm about polyester. Back home, I learned why many wineries are switching to plastic stoppers. Yes, they’re more…

Almost all birds have keen vision, and birds of prey have the keenest vision of all. These birds cruise through the air looking for worms, small animals, or other birds on the ground, and must be able to see tiny creatures far below them. Of all birds of prey, the eagle probably has the best…

The Ptolemaic system was a series of theories proposed by Ptolemy to explain the order and movements of the universe. Because Ptolemy’s system of predicting planetary movement was so accurate, all the theories of the Ptolemaic system became the accepted view for centuries even though many were inaccurate. Ptolemy did realize that Earth was a…

Mozart kept a starling in his home, and it helped him with his compositions. While he wrote and played, the starling would sometimes come up with variations of what Mozart was playing. Giving his bird full credit, Mozart would find the bird’s contributions appealing and add them to his composition. When the bird died, Mozart…

Before radio was invented, there was no way for a ship to communicate with land, so there was no way to know when a ship might arrive at a port. A man who lived on the island of Mauritius seemed to have discovered a way of predicting the arrival of ships. No one has ever…

When the liquid carbon dioxide in the tank turns into gaseous carbon dioxide, it gets cold enough to freeze some of the carbon dioxide into “snow.” But why, indeed? All that’s happening is that the compressed carbon dioxide gas is expanding as we let it loose into the room. Do expanding gases automatically get cold?…

By the time of Achilles’ death, the Trojan War had lasted more than ten years, and the weary Greeks were eager to go home. The Greek warrior Odysseus devised one last scheme to enter and defeat Troy. As a trick, the Greeks boarded their ships and sailed away, leaving a giant wooden horse on the…

Charles Goodyear invented the process of turning raw rubber into a usable product. Before Goodyear’s invention, rubber melted, decomposed and became sticky in heat. The process Goodyear invented, called vulcanization, solved these problems and created a major world industry. Goodyear was the first American to vulcanize rubber, a process which he discovered in 1839. Unfortunately,…

Because as a young man he had a dream in which he saw himself astride a horse and in battle unharmed by bullets and arrows. Behind his ear was a smooth stone, and in his long unbraided hair was the feather of a red hawk. Crazy Horse became convinced that so long as he was…

We must turn to the Bible to see why the feminine proper name “Abigail” started to become a synonym for servant. In the First Book of Samuel, the twenty-fifth chapter tells how David, in return for past favors, made a peaceful request to the wealthy Nabal for food for his followers. Nabal rejected the request…

There are now about 370 million television sets around the world, which means one person in every ten owns a TV set. The country with the most TV sets is the United States, which has about 120 million sets in 72 million homes. The Soviet Union ranks a distant second, with about 50 million sets,…

Mickey Mouse’s nephews were Mortie and Ferdie. Mickey Mouse is the most popular cartoon rodent, hands down. But who’s the second most popular cartoon mouse? Just cartoon mice, or all rodents? We’d have to give Rocket J. Squirrel of Rocky and Bullwinkle the thumbs-up if we’re talking about all animated rodents. However, the mouse category…

The phrase “not to know if one is afoot or on horseback” means: To be so completely confused, thoroughly upset, or beside oneself as to be unable to determine whether one is walking or riding; to be utterly befuddled. This degree of pixilation, or this way of expressing it, is apparently known only in America;…

When you hustle to the bank for some quick cash, it’s easy to wish that that anonymous machine would just once spit out a few extra bills, or accidentally hand out fifties instead of tens. But such fortuitous errors are rare. Why? Inside an automatic teller machine, or ATM, are bricks of cash in various…

The Chunnel, short for Channel Tunnel, is actually three tunnels, two train tunnels and a central service tunnel, that connect England and France. It was completed in 1994 and extends for 31 miles (28 km), most of which run under the English Channel. Trains that run 100 miles per hour (161 km/hr) take just 20…

When you drop a straw into a bottle of soda, that straw is filled with air. As you put the straw into your mouth and start sucking in, you begin by sucking the air out of the straw, creating a vacuum, or airless space, inside the straw. Since air pressure is at work all around…

The Crabeater Seal is the most numerous seal species in the southern ocean with a population nearing 50 million. It is the second most numerous large species of mammal on Earth, after humans, but there are much fewer than the 1.3 billion domesticated cattle in the world. More than one in every two seals in…

Many qualities define a planet, but not all planets meet all criteria. A planet is a body that revolves around a star. It does not generate light, but reflects the light of a star. While stars appear as points of light through a telescope, planets look like disks. The word planet comes from the Greek…

Among the students of Socrates was one named Antisthenes, a man who, as time went on, never abandoned the teachings of his master, but, rather, extended them and applied them to a philosophy of his own devising. But because his mother was not an Athenian by birth, Antisthenes was obliged to meet his own students…

Microwaves can pass through glass and plastic, but they can’t pass through metal. Strangely, they also can’t get through a hole that’s significantly smaller than their wavelength, so the fine metal mesh keeps them inside the oven, while letting some light out. In other words, your microwave oven is safe and your brain won’t fry…

Magnets are attracted only to other magnets. A piece of iron contains billions of tiny magnets, but copper and aluminum don’t. The only thing that the pole of a magnet will attract is the opposite pole of another magnet. It’s exactly the same as with electric charges: The only thing that a positive electric charge…