Mental Floss: Instant Knowledge (41 page)

(the one behind the dictionary)

USEFUL FOR:
chatting up librarians and copy editors, and making friends at the spelling bee

KEYWORDS:
Webster, dictionary, spell-checker

THE FACT:
Noah Webster was never fondly referred to as “The Godfather of Spelling,” but he did offer Americans a spelling (and pronunciation!) resource they couldn’t refuse.

A schoolteacher, Webster started out writing spelling books, which soon blossomed into an obsession with standardizing American spelling and pronunciation and distinguishing it from the British. During the 20 years it took him to compile the 70,000-word
American Dictionary of the English Language
, published in 1828, Webster was strongarming prefixes and suffixes in a constant attempt to break words to his own will. He forced
musick
to
music
, carefully urged (for its own good)
centre
to
center,
and—although there were no witnesses to it—changed
plough
to
plow
and
colour
to
color
. Unfortunately, he was so busy instilling order and structure to the language that he never got around to changing words like
bureaucracy
to something a little more phonetically friendly.

(and why you can’t see your bride)

USEFUL FOR:
bridal showers, blind dates, and wedding receptions

KEYWORDS:
here comes the bride

THE FACT:
It’s a common American tradition: Keep the glowing bride in hiding on the morning of her wedding so that the groom can be all the more awestruck by the sight of his woman in white. Sounds sweet, but its origins aren’t quite so tender.

For hundreds of years, fathers arranged the marriages of their daughters by offering money to young men. However, if Daddy’s Little Girl wasn’t exactly fit for the cover of
Maxim
, Daddy might decide to search for prospective grooms in nearby towns, for obvious reasons. When these men showed up on their wedding day—not having seen their future bride before—it was common for some of them to flee the scene. So the tradition that it’s “bad luck” for a man to see his bride before the ceremony really started out as just insurance for her dad.

USEFUL FOR:
barroom banter, Halloween chatter, and making small talk with the person waxing your back

KEYWORDS:
hairy, hairball, or Henderson

THE FACT:
Forget your cousin Sal and his hirsute offspring, the Ramos Gomez clan of Mexico currently holds the Guinness record for world’s hairiest family.

Five generations of this family’s members suffer from hypertrichosis, or “werewolf syndrome,” which causes thick hair to grow over the entire body (98 percent of it, to be exact), including the face, ears, and neck. Brothers Larry and Danny Ramos Gomez are the most well known of the family, as they travel the world performing their duties as professional trampoline acrobats—an occupation no doubt made appealing by the fact that it’s actually weirder than having hair all over your face. But Larry and Danny wanted a profession that wasn’t contingent on their appearance. In the 1990s, producers at the
The X-Files
offered them guest-starring roles, but they declined.

USEFUL FOR:
cocktail parties, nerdy dates, and proving that Polly doesn’t want a chauvinist

KEYWORDS:
birds, chicks, or sensitive males

THE FACT:
White-fronted parrots are something of an anomaly in the animal kingdom. For one thing, they may be the only species (besides humans) to engage in what is essentially the act of “kissing”!

Before mating, the male and female birds will lock beaks and gently flick their tongues together. If that goes well, the males will make the bold move for “second base,” which involves regurgitating food for his mate in a generous show of affection. How sweet! Native to Mexico and Central America, white-fronted parrots were also totally ahead of us with the whole “two-income marriage” deal. Along with various species of the albatross, penguin, ostrich, and other large birds, white-fronted parrots generally lay a solitary egg, with both the male and the female taking turns incubating it. Once the chick hatches, both parents feed and otherwise care for the young bird.

(and how much wood they chuck)

USEFUL FOR:
impressing biology teachers, nerdy dates, and tongue-twisted third-graders

KEYWORDS:
Woodchuck cider, Groundhog Day, or beavers

THE FACT:
So how much wood would a woodchuck chuck? Probably none.

Woodchucks aren’t particularly tree-oriented, and while they can climb to find food, they prefer being on the ground. In fact, they actually got the name “woodchuck” from British trappers who couldn’t quite wrap their tongues around the Cree Indian name, “wuchak.” More commonly (and accurately) known as groundhogs, these animals are closely related to squirrels, marmots, and prairie dogs, with whom they share an affinity for burrowing. And while they aren’t so prone to chucking wood, a burrowing woodchuck
can
chuck dirt, in the form of tunnels that can reach five feet deep and as much as 35 feet in length. Based on that number, New York State wildlife expert Richard Thomas calculates that, if a woodchuck could chuck wood, it could chuck as much as 700 pounds of the stuff.