[Hildy]

Just a little late Saturday Night fun.

[krb]

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

That may be a good example of a misplaced modifier. I can see how a good fart in a space suit may harm the astronaut, but I can't see how it harms the suit. A pig lives in its own slop! :-)

[Jay D. Dyson]

33. James Cagney NEVER uttered the phrase, "You dirty rat" in any of his movies.

[js1138]

Number 8 i supposedly intrue, and I doubt if 6 is true.

[Jay D. Dyson]

34. Hillary Clinton is living proof of Hitler's love of Water Buffalo. (Believe it or...laugh your heiny off?)

[EternalVigilance]

16. If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.

That explains why James Carville is a teetotaler...

[Our man in washington]

#20 and #24 are both false.

[squidly]

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

I don't doubt that an allied bomb killed an animal at the zoo, but I wonder how they are sure it was the first bomb.

[Swordmaker]

A duck's quack doesn't echo. No one knows why.

Per "Ask Yahoo!" - We hate to break it to you, but all our sources say a duck's quack echoes just like any other sound. There doesn't seem to be anything special about the noise, except that it has mysteriously produced this persistent bit of folklore.

That intrepid tester of suspicious stuff, Cecil Adams of the Straight Dope, assigned it to one of his researchers. She disproved the myth herself in 1998 with a few friends, a duck, and a large courtyard conducive to echoes. Sure enough, the quack echoed (once they figured out how to make the duck quack, that is). Likewise, the good folks at the premiere urban legend resource, Snopes.com, have personally experienced the quacky echo of talkative ducks.

The MadSci Network suggests an explanation for this common misconception. An echo is caused by sound waves reflecting off a hard surface. Higher frequency sounds reflect better and create stronger echoes. Perhaps some ducks have quacks without a lot of high frequency components, resulting in very faint echoes.

Physlink.com explains how an extremely clever duck might avoid creating an echo at all. If the distance between the duck and a reflective surface falls exactly at one of the nodes of the quack's sound wave, sound will not be reflected back, thus no echo. The duck could also use partially reflective material and some sound wave measurements to prevent a quack from echoing, much in the same way the military hides aircraft from radar. However, we suspect Daffy and his pals aren't quite that sophisticated or conniving.

[SAMWolf]

Thanks Hildy. Picked up a few fun facts.

[onyx]

Fabulous post, Hildy! A most welcome diversion!

I have my doubts about #24, but I can attest to #4 --- I hope that doesn't tell you too much about me! ;-)

[Redcloak]

27. Sherlock Holmes NEVER said, "Elementary, my dear Watson."

On Star Trek, Capt. Kirk never said "Beam me up, Scotty."

[big bad easter bunny]

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."

[South40]

If #5 is true, having a female ferret for a pet would be a temporary thing.

[hole_n_one]

6. A duck's quack doesn't echo. No one knows why

QUACK

[baseballfanjm]

Hate to crash the party, but I can recall a few of these being disproven on Snopes.com, a great website I might add. Sorry.

[Swordmaker]

Re: Oscars made of wood in WWII due to metal shortage... partially true.


Oscar Deviations
Source: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

The original Oscars were cast in bronze. After a few years, the Academy switched to britannium to make it easier to apply a smooth finish.

In the early years, the Academy gave child winners miniature Oscars.

In 1937, ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy, Charlie McCarthy, won an Oscar for special acting: a wooden Oscar with a moveable mouth.

In 1938, the Academy honored Walt Disney with one full-size Oscar and seven miniature statuettes for "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."

During World War II, Oscars were made of plaster due to the metals shortage. Winners were allowed to turn in the plaster statues for gold ones when the war ended.

[Michael.SF.]

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.

This version of "Rule of thumb" has be refuttedas being a creation of the feminist movement to illustrate the historical oppression of women.

Alternate, more likely version: The width of a man's thumb was considered to be the equivalent of one inch and was thus used for measuring purposes, when a measurement was not deemed to be critical, but merely a close approximation.

[cyncooper]

Some of these I'd heard before, but not that the name Wendy originated in Peter Pan.

How interesting, if true.

[Swordmaker]

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?

[petuniasevan]

5. A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate

Also true of Vulcan males.