A: A “turkey” can describe any person or endeavour that doesn’t live up to its promise, but is most commonly used to describe a bad play. In the late nineteenth century, the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas was the busiest season for the opening of new plays, just as it is now for movies. This hurried effort to catch the tourist trade served up disappointments with the same tedium as the turkey served for dinner between the two holidays, and so they were called turkeys.

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Photograph credit: bsabarnowl

Ever heard someone say, “that’s a real doozy”? Did you know that it meant something was incredibly impressive? But why? Let’s look at the origin of this expression:

Q: Why is something incredibly impressive called a “real doozy”?

A: “real doozy” may be an old-fashioned expression, but it still means something remarkable. I twas used to describe one of the most impressive cars ever made. Built between 1920 and 1937, the
Duesenberg was the best and most expensive American car ever built. During the Great Depression, and at a time when a Ford sold for $500, a top-of-the-line Doozy retailed for $25,000. With a custom-built body and a high-horsepower engine, the Duesenberg quickly became a favourite vehicle of the rich and famous. It still is! As one of the most collectible cars in the world, Duesenbergs in mint condition have sold for millions of dollars. Now that’s a doozy!

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Photograph by Osbornb

Ever wonder who it really is…?

Q:  Who is the Thinker in Auguste Rodin’s famous statue?

A:  The French sculptor Auguste Rodin’s statue commonly called “The Thinker” (Le penseur) is one of the best-known pieces of art in the world.  Yet when Rodin (1840-1917) first cast a small plaster version in 1880, he meant it as a depiction of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (circa 1265-1321) pondering his great allegorical epic “The Divine Comedy” in front of the Gates of Hell.  In fact, Rodin named the sculpture “The Poet”.  It was an obscure critic, unfamiliar with Dante, who misnamed the masterpiece with the title we use today — The Thinker.

Rodin’s statue is naked because the sculptor wanted a heroic classical figure to represent thought as poetry.

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Photograph by hemmob

Q: What was the initial purpose of the chainsaw?

A: In unskilled hands, a chainsaw can be dangerous. It might even cut through an arm or a leg. ironically, that was what the first chainsaw was invented for. A German named Bernard Heine (1800-1846) invented an early type of chainsaw in 1830. He called it an osteotome. in those days, before general anaesthetics, surgeons depended on speed to shorten the suffering of patients. The chainsaw was designed to speed up amputations by cutting through bone more quickly than was possible with conventional methods. The device was operated by turning a crank manually, much like you would if you were using a hand mixer. A Swiss German, Andreas Stihl (1896-1973), patented and developed an electric chainsaw for cutting wood in 1926. Three years later he patented a gas-powered model. Stihl is generally regarded as the father of the modern chainsaw.

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Q: Why do the countries Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, and others all end in “stan”?

A: The Middle Eastern suffix “stan” is an ancient Farsi word for “homeland.” Kazakhstan is from the word “kazakh, meaning “free,” while Kyrgyzstan means “home of forty tribes.” Pakistan is an exception. This modern republic took its name from the first letters of Punjab, Afghanistan, and Kashmir, with the suffix “istan” taken from the province of Balochistan. The name “Afghanistan” can be traced to the ninth-century Iranian Emperor Apakan.

Photograph by indigoprime

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Photograph of the New York Stock Exchange by Helico

Q: Why are shares in a company called “stock”?

A: The modern concept of sharing capital ownership was initiated by the Dutch East India Company in 1612, which raised money by selling pieces of the business to the public.  This process gave the Dutch East India Company the ability to grow and share its profits with its “shareholders.”  The original meaning of the word “stock” was the trunk of a tree.  Like that trunk, stock in a corporation supplies the necessities of life to the branches.  This nourishment to any size company is cash.

Stocks and shares are the same thing.  Stock refers to an overall ownership in one or more companies within a portfolio.  Shares signify ownership of one specific individual company.

Today a “stock market” is a place where securities are bought and sold, but the first one in London, England, was a fourteenth-century fish-and-meat market and was so called because it was built on a site formerly occupied by the stocks used for corporal punishment.

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Q:  If it wasn’t the French, then who invented french fries?

A:  The Belgians are crazy about french fries; as a matter of fact, fries are their national dish, and they’ve been eating them with buckets of mussels since the mid-1800s.  The French also claim inventing fries, because to “french” any food means to cut it very thin.  The problem is that the Belgian claim predates the French technique by about fifty years.  Usually this discussion ignores the fact that 40 percent of Belgians speak French, so they can take the credit.

The largest producer of french fries in the world is McCain Foods Limited, a Canadian company in Florenceville, New Brunswick.  McCain has thirty potato processing plants on six continents around the
world.

Photography by rick

and on to one of our favourite condiments…

Q:  What’s the origin of ketchup?

A:  In the 1690s the Chinese mixed together a tasty concoction of pickled fish and spices and called it ke-tsiap.  By the early 1700s, the table sauce had made it to Malaysia, where it was discovered by British explorers, and by 1740, it had become an English staple. Fifty years later, North Americans added tomatoes to the Chinese recipe, and ketchup as we now know it had arrived.  Tomatoes were considered poisonous for most of the eighteenth century because they’re a close relative to the toxic belladonna and nightshade plants.

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Photograph from Alaska by Podknox

Q:  Where is the “Pole of Cold”?

A:  The arctic is not all that cold.  Temperatures at the North Pole average -24 degrees Fahrenheit (-31 degrees Celsius) in the wintertime and get up to 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius) during the summer.  The real cold spot north of the equator is Russia’s “Pole of Cold,” south of the Arctic Circle in Siberia.

Two towns in this area fight to be considered the world’s coldest permanently inhabited communities. Verkhoyansk, population 1,500, has official recognition with a temperature of -93.6 degrees Fahrenheit (-69.8 degrees Celsius).  Oymyakon, a town of 800, created by the Soviet Government to encourage nomadic reindeer herders in the northern Siberia to modernize, claims a reading of -96.2 degrees Fahrenheit (-71.2 degrees Celsius), using methods that did not meet official standards.

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