The Blog of Answers
Are you a trivial pursuit geek, a general know-it-all, or a mere genius by chance? Maybe all three combined? We’re putting together quizzes for you to test your knowledge (or superhuman abilities) and show off to your friends! Check out the Quiz Yourself page for a new quiz (with more coming soon!).
Photograph by Alaskan Dude
Q: Where did the expression “bite the dust” come from?
A: We probably all heard “bite the dust” for the first time while watching an old Western B movie when a cowboy hero does away with a pesky varmint to impress the schoolmarm. The phrase was first used in English literature in 1750 to imply wounding or killing by satirical novelist Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) in Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, his translation of the original French novel by Alain-Rene Lesage: “We made two of them bite the dust and the others betake themselves to flight.” The inspiration for the expression can be traced back to the Bible in Psalm 72: “They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him and his enemies shall lick the dust.”
Photo by modomatic
Jukeboxes first appeared in restaurants and bars in the late 1930s. Juke is an African word meaning “to make wicked mischief” and came directly from American slaves, who described the illegal brothels or bootlegger shacks where they could occasionally escape their cruel lives with a jar of moonshine as “juke-joints.” Juke had an exotic and forbidden appeal, which inspired the name jukebox.
The ultra-conservative view of those who propose extending the welfare state is that they are “bleeding hearts.” That expression entered politics in the 1930s and by the 1990s “my heart bleeds for you” had become a general put-down. It comes from the Middle Ages, when a social conscious group known as the Order of the Bleeding Heart was formed to honour the Virgin Mary, whose “heart was pierced with many sorrows.”
Images from Mike Licht, NotionCapital.com
A “bender” is a prolonged, irresponsible, and dangerous bout of drinking, which took its name from the patrons of London, England alehouses during the 1850s. To promote drinking, it was common for a tavern to offer patrons all they could drink for a tuppence a day, so sixpence was good for three days. The six pence coin, which was worth about a quarter, was nicknamed a “bender” because if it wasn’t phony it could be easily bent. Since this bendable coin guaranteed three days of libation, the subsequent binge became known as a bender.
The average person spends two weeks kissing during his or her lifetime. The romantic or erotic kiss is a sensual genetic memory search for compatibility, whether on the lips or elsewhere, and is revealed to the brain through smell and taste. Kissing originated from prehistoric mothers breast-feeding, then chewing and pushing food into their infants’ mouths with their tongues. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) described the kiss as “an unconscious repetition of infantile delight in feeding.”
Photograph by David Chief
Smell is the primary ingredient of the kissing ritual for some cultures, such as the Inuit, who believe that exhaled breath reveals a person’s soul. Exchanging breath in this sense is a spiritual union. This concept has parallel in Christian dogma (Genesis 2:7), which reveals that God infused the spirit of life into his creatures by breathing into them.
[Excerpt taken from Now You Know - The Big Book of Answers by Doug Lennox]
Did you know that you can find Doug Lennox in recent Labatt commercials aired on television? The author of the Now You Know series is actually “that guy” in this recent commercial from Labatt. Check it out!
Did you know that you can find Doug Lennox in recent Labatt commercials aired on television? The author of the Now You Know series is actually “that guy” in this recent commercial from Labatt. Check it out!
