32 Things You Likely Didn't Know

2. Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.

4. A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.

8. During the chariot scene in "Ben Hur," a small red car can be seen in the distance (and Heston's wearing a watch).

9. On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily! (That explains a few mysteries....)

11. Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.

12. The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.

13. There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with orange, purple and silver.

14. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan. There was never a recorded Wendy before.

15. The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin in World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

16. If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death. (Who was the sadist who discovered this??)

17. Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to s-l-o-w film down so you could see his moves. That's the opposite of the norm.

20. The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

21. The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was Victrola, so the called themselves Motorola.

23. By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.
24. Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.

25. Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.

28. An old law in Bellingham, Washington, made it illegal for a woman to take more than three steps backwards while dancing!

30. The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from public libraries.

31. Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in
May and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting
to smell so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.
Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.
* * * * * *
Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the
house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons
and men, then the women and finally the children-last of all the
babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone
in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water."
* * * * * *
Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood
underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the
dogs, cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof.
When
it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and
fall off the roof. Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."
* * * * * *
There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This
posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could
really mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a
sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy
beds came into existence.
* * * * * *
The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt.
Hence the saying "dirt poor."
* * * * * *
The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when
wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on the floor to help keep their
footing. As the winter wore on, they kept adding more thresh until when
you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. A piece of
wood was placed in the entranceway. Hence the saying a "thresh hold."
* * * * * *
In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that
always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things
to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat.
They
would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold
overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food
in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, "Peas
porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."
* * * * * *
Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special.

When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off.
It
was a sign of wealth that a man "could bring home the bacon." They would
cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew
the fat."
* * * * * *
Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content
caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning
and death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400
years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
* * * * * *
Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of
the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or "upper
crust."
* * * * * *
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would
sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along
the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They
were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family
would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would
wake up. Hence the custom of holding a "wake."
* * * * * *
England is old and small and the local folks started running out of
places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the
bones to a "bone-house" and reuse the grave. When reopening these
coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the
inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they
thought they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it
through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.
Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard
shift") to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the
bell" or was considered a "dead ringer."

14. The name Wendy made up for Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie.

Per The Straight Dope:

J. M. Barrie did not invent the name Wendy for his 1904 play Peter Pan, the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up (the book form of the story, Peter and Wendy, was published in 1911). He did popularize it, though. Barrie apparently was inspired to use the name by a young friend named Margaret Henley, the daughter of writer William Henley. Margaret, who died around 1895 at age 6, called Barrie her "friendy." Since she couldn't pronounce her Rs at the time, the word came out "fwendy," or "fwendy-wendy," in some versions of the story.

But we have absolute proof that there were earlier Wendys, thanks to the just-released 1880 U.S. Census and the 1881 British Census (available here). These documents show that the name Wendy, while not common, was indeed used in both the U.S. and Great Britain throughout the 1800s. I had no trouble finding twenty females with the first name Wendy in the United States, the earliest being Wendy Gram of Ohio (born in 1828). If you include such spelling variations as Windy, Wendi, Wenda, and Wandy the number triples.

As to the origins of said name, websites here and here make the claim that Wendy is a derivative of the name Gwendolen or maybe Gwendolyn. Looking further, I chanced upon World Wide Wendy, a site dedicated to, well, all things Wendy. On this site, Doctor of Folklore Leslie Ellen Jones discusses the possible Welsh origins of the name Gwendolyn and its derivative Wendy. In both the English and U.S. Census, however, the name Wendy is also used as a male first name, so I suspect further research may be required.

Of course, if you go back a few centuries and head east a mite, we have the Chinese emperor Wendi of the Sui dynasty (541-604), and before that the Great Emperor Wendi of the Han dynasty (179 BC-157 BC). But that's stretching it a bit far, don'tcha think?

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