Things I Didn’t Know

Courtesy of Bill Bryson’s, At Home: A Short History of Private Life:

• Out of the thirty thousand types of edible plants thought to exist on Earth, just eleven—corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, cassava, sorghum, millet, beans, barley, rye, and oats—account for 93 percent of all that humans eat, and every one of them was first cultivated by our Neolithic ancestors.
  

In early 19th century England, men dressed like the peacocks they are or, at least, should be.

• Pantaloons were often worn tight as paint and were not a great deal less revealing, particularly as they were worn without underwear. . . . Jackets were tailored with tails in the back, but were cut away in front so that they perfectly framed the groin. It was the first time in history that men's apparel was consciously designed to be more sexy than women’s.
  

I do believe that, if men were to return to this method of sartorial expression they’d much more effectively show off their worth, their potential studliness. This would be of major league benefit to the likes of the minikin dicked Cruz, Graham, Cotton, Hawley and the dimwitted racist fucks in trucks driving around DC showing the world that they’re nothing more than blithering morons, tantruming like entitled fucking twat-headed teens. Instead of loud, ignorant, bullying bullshit bin-brains in ridiculously tricked out pickups (with nutz of course) and gun racks, we could witness their flash fashion statements, point and have a fine laugh at their empty codpieces (and blighted "brains").

I say, put em all in pantaloons and let’s see what they’ve got!

Did you know that:

• The dining table was a plain board called by that name. It was hung on the wall when not in use, and was perched on the diners' knees when food was served. Over time, the word board came to signify not just the dining surface but the meal itself, which is where the board comes from in room and board. It also explains why lodgers are called boarders.
  

• A plumped feather bed may have looked divine, but occupants quickly found themselves sinking into a hard, airless fissure between billowy hills. Support was on a lattice of ropes, which could be tightened with a key when they began to sag (hence the expression "sleep tight”).
  

• The Old English word for a slave was thrall, which is why when we are enslaved by an emotion we are enthralled.
  

• boudoir, literally ‘a room to sulk in’, which from its earliest days was associated with sexual intrigue.
  

A room for brooding, pouting AND engaging in some hot and sneaky liaisons? Every home should have one!

Where does the word cabinet come from and why does it mean two entirely different things? The word itself is thought to have come from either a French word (cabine) or an Italian word (gabbinetto), both meaning "small private room” or a"case for safe-keeping" (of papers, liquor, etc.). The word gradually evolved to mean a piece of furniture that does this.

• In England the cabinet became the most exclusive and private of all chambers—the innermost sanctum where the most private meetings could take place. Then it made one of those bizarre leaps that words sometimes make and came to describe (by 1605) not just where the king met with his ministers, but the collective term for the ministers themselves. This explains why this one word now describes both the most intimate and exalted group of advisers in government and the shelved recess in the bathroom where we keep Ex-Lax and the like.
  

• 
  Smallpox was so called to distinguish it from the great pox, or syphilis.

• Curiously, the one service room not named for the products it contains is dairy. The name derives from an Old French word, dey, meaning maiden. A dairy, in other words, was the room where the milkmaids were to be found, from which we might reasonably deduce that an Old Frenchman was more interested in finding the maid than the milk.
  

Me? When I head to Dairy Queen or Dairy Freeze I am MUCH more interested in a cup of vanilla soft-serv dipped in a glorious coating of butterscotch sauce.