Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.03.11
Dear friends,
It's the worst day of the transition to daylight saving time today (US, observed): the first work day after the change. I woke up earwormed with "it's the worst, sleepiest day ... of the year". (I thought A Christmas Carol was a one-off, but evidently, as I learned from that previous link, telling ghost stories was a Christmas activity for the Victorians?)
Also, evidently, if you're the king of England you can have your own time zone in your own castle. (Nobody tell Charles.)
Sometimes when I'm using some absolutely ordinary thing I think, "huh, I wonder if there's a museum for this?" and there usually is! Someday I hope to go to the Thimble Museum in Germany. ('Thimble', in German, is Fingerhut—'finger hat'.)
In the "any attention is good attention" category: If you're a lower-status rapper, getting dissed by a higher-status rapper increases sales of your future albums.
New puzzle word alert: spangram, used to mean "a word that touches opposite sides of the board".
The saola was the first large mammal new to science in more than 50 years when it was identified in 1992. It is the "largest terrestrial animal in the world (of certain existence) that has never been seen in the wild by a biologist". (That 'of certain existence' is absolutely there for the reason you think it is.)
If you have an original unpublished ragtime song, you can enter it in The World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest in Oxford, Mississippi for the chance to win $500 and a trophy.
The Scots form of March "comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb" is "March comes in with an adder's head, but goes out with a peacock's tail."
Stay well!
Your friend,
Erin