Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (48 page)

Explanation:
The Old English word was
ceap
(pronounced “keep”), which meant “to sell or barter.” Because
Cheapside
was a major market where people went to barter for low prices, the word gradually took on a new pronunciation…and meaning.

MAYONNAISE

From:
Port Mahon, Spain (according to legend)

Explanation:
The -
aise
suffix is French for “native to” or “originating in.”
Mahonnaise
was supposedly created to celebrate a 1756 French battle victory over the British on the Spanish isle of Port Mahon.

COFFEE

From:
Kaffa, Ethiopia

Explanation:
According to legend, coffee beans were first discovered in the town of Kaffa. By the thirteenth century, the Kaffa beans had traveled, becoming
qahwah
in Arabia,
cafe
in Europe, and finally
coffee
in the New World.

COLOGNE

From:
Cologne, Germany

Explanation:
Scented water that was produced there beginning in 1709 was named for the city.

DENIM

From:
Nimes, France

Explanation:
The tough cloth used in jeans was also made in Nimes. It was called
serge di Nimes
—later shortened to
di Nimes,
which became
denim.

SLAVE

From:
Slavonia, Yugoslavia

Explanation:
After large parts of Slavonia were subjugated by Europeans in the Middle Ages, a
slav
become synonomous with someone who lived in servitude. Eventually
Slav
became
slave.

LIMERICK

From:
Limerick, Ireland

Explanation:
The town was popularly associated with humorous verses that had five lines, the first two rhyming with the last, the middle two rhyming with each other. The poems became an English fad in the mid-19th century, and people naturally identified them with the town’s name.

HAMBURGER

From:
Hamburg, Germany

Explanation:
People in the immigration-port city of Hamburg—called Hamburgers—liked to eat raw meat with salt, pepper, and onion-juice seasoning, a treat brought to them via Russia that we call
steak tartare
today. A broiled version using chopped meat eventually became popular in America.

TURQUOISE

From:
Turkey/Europe

Explanation:
Another Turkish origin. Turquoise comes from a number of places, but was probably first imported to Europe from Turkey. So it was called
turquoise
, which means “Turkish stone.”

Believe it or not, these laws are real!

It’s illegal to ride an ugly horse down the street in Wilbur, Washington.

It’s against the law to step out of an airplane while it’s in the air over Maine.

If you don’t like a statue in Star, Mississippi, hold your tongue—it’s illegal to ridicule public architecture.

Ninth-grade boys can’t grow moustaches in Binghamton, New York.

It’s against the law to drink milk on a train passing through North Carolina.

Virginia law prohibits “corrupt practices or bribery by any person other than candidates.”

You can’t carry an ice cream cone in your pocket in Lexington, Kentucky.

It’s illegal to spit against the wind in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan.

Goats can’t legally wear trousers in Massachusetts.

In Lawrence, Kansas, it’s against the law to carry bees around in your hat on city streets.

In Washington, D.C., you’re breaking the law if you paint lemons all over your car to let people know you were taken advantage of by a specific car dealer.

If you complain about the condition of the street in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, you can be forced to fix it yourself.

Oregon prohibits citizens from wiping their dishes. You must let them drip-dry.

It’s illegal to swim on dry land in Santa Ana, California.

If you mispronounce “Arkansas” when you’re in that state, you’re breaking the law.

It’s illegal in Hartford, Connecticut, to educate your dog.

You can’t go barefoot in Austin, Texas, without a $5 permit.

It’s illegal to play cards in the road in Somerset County, Md.

Some cultures consider the spider a sign of good luck: “If you wish to live and thrive, let a spider run alive.” This old English rhyme may be a recognition of the important role spiders play in insect control. In fact, that’s what webs—those amazingly beautiful tapestries strung between branches, leaves, doorways, etc.—are for. They’re deadly traps. Here’s some info on the spider webs to make them even more interesting.

W
EB CONSTRUCTION

• Only about half of all spiders spin webs.

• All spider webs are made of silk.

• Although it’s only about .00012” in diameter, a spider’s silk is stronger than steel of equal diameter. It is more elastic than nylon, more difficult to break than rubber, and is bacteria and fungi resistant.

• These qualities explain why at one time web was used to pack wounds to help mend them and stop bleeding.

• Spiders have 1-6 kinds of spinning glands, each producing a different type of silk. For instance, the cylindrical gland produces silk used for egg sacs (males often lack this) and the aciniform gland produces silk used for wrapping prey. Some spiders have glands that produce very fine silk. They comb and tease the fine strands until it’s like velcro—tiny loops and hooks which entrap insect feet.

• Silk is extruded through special pores called
spinneretes
which consist of different sized “spigots.” Silk starts out as a liquid. As the liquid silk contacts the air, it hardens. The spider may need different silk for different purposes. By changing how fast the liquid is extruded or by using a different silk gland, it can control the strength and quality of the silk.

• Why doesn’t a spider get stuck on its own web? The spider weaves in non-sticky silk strands and only walks on those. Also, spiders have a special oil on their legs which keeps them from sticking.

THE WELL-BRED SPIDER

• A spider can often be identified by the type of web it weaves. The ability to weave is inherited, so specific types of spiders build specific types of webs. In addition, individual spiders sometimes develop a personal style; sort of like a signature.

• The spider is a hunter and its web is a snare, designed to hold its prey. So the design of its web and the place where the spider builds it depends on the kind of insects it is trying to catch.

• The determining factor: There are more insects, especially crawling ones, closer to the ground. Strong flying insects are usually higher, so the web is stronger.

WEB-SPINNERS

There are five different types of webspinners.

Cobweb spiders:
(example: black widows),

• Use “trip lines” to snare prey. From their web, several vertical lines are drawn down and secured tautly to a surface with globs of “glue.”

• Some unfortunate insect becomes stuck to the glue and breaks the line. The tension of the elastic trip lines, once released, flings the victim up to the spider waiting in its web.

• Cobweb weavers usually build only one web and so, with time, the web becomes tattered and littered with bits of debris.

Sheet-builders:

• Construct a horizontal mat beneath a horizontal trip line, much like a trampoline under an invisible wire.

• Flying or jumping insects that are stopped midair by the line are flung to the net below.

• As the prey struggles to regain its balance, the agile spider pounces and inflicts a deadly bite.

Web-casting spiders:
(example: ogre-faced spiders)

• Use “web snares” much differently than others: Instead of attaching the web to a bush or wall, the spider carries it.

• The spider uses it much like a fishing net and casts it on passing prey. Each night it hunts. Afterward, it may either tuck the web away until the next day’s hunt, or spin a new one.

Angle lines:
(example: the bola spider)

• It first suspends itself from a trapeze line and hangs there upside down. Then it sends down a single line baited with a glob of glue.

• When an insect moves by, the bola takes careful aim and casts the line toward the moving insect. If successful, it will reel in its prize.

Orb weavers:
(the most familiar webs)

• Spin the largest and strongest webs. Some span more than 1 meter. Natives of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands used the webs of the orb weaving spiders as fishing nets. They were reportedly strong enough to hold a fish weighing as much as a pound.

• These webs are especially tailored to capture flying insects—which is why they’re vertically suspended.

• Many orb weavers meticulously take down their webs each day, and build a new one at night.

• Orb weavers weave such intricate webs that they are often the focus of behavioral studies. For example: two orb weavers went along on Sky Lab II on July 28, 1973. Researchers were interested to know the effects of zero gravity on weaving. After some adjustments, the spiders were able to weave fairly normal webs. One curious difference: the space webs were symmetrical while earth webs tend to be asymmetrical.

WEBFACTS

Experimenters have covered the eyes of web-spinning spiders and discovered that it did not keep them from finding their prey in the web. The secret: a web spinner uses its web as a giant feeler. Based on vibrations it feels in the web, a spider can determine the size and energy of prey, environmental conditions, and even the presence of another spider.

• Male spiders of some species use vibrations to communicate to the female. They strum the female’s web—and must send just the right vibration to convince the female that they are mates…and not dinner.

F.Y.I.:
In old English, the word “cob” meant spider.

With people so nervous about bomb threats these days, it’s inevitable that there are going to be some pretty bizarre false alarms. At the BRI, we’ve been keeping a file on them. Here’s what we’ve collected so far.

A
LIQUOR PROBLEM

Background:
In 1978, security personnel at Pan American Airlines suspected that either maintenance crews or flight attendants were stealing miniature liquor bottles, which cost 35¢ apiece, from airplanes. So they attached a clock device to the liquor cabinet to record the times of the alleged thefts.

False Alarm:
“While airborne,” write Nash and Zullo in
The Mis-Fortune
500, “a flight attendant heard the ticking and thought it was a bomb. She alerted the captain, who rerouted the plane to the nearest airport, where passengers were quickly evacuated by emergency exits. The unscheduled landing cost Pan Am $15,000.”

DIAL B FOR BOMB

Background:
In November 1995, a Royal Jordanian Airlines plane en route to Chicago was forced to land in Iceland when it received a bomb threat.

False Alarm:
It turned out that the culprit was a Chicago woman who was trying to keep her mother-in-law, a passenger on the plane, from visiting her.

HIT OR MISSILE

Background:
On October 17, 1995, Joanna Ashworth heard a thud outside her Level Plains, Alabama, home. “She opened the door,” reported the local Daleville
News Ledger
, “and saw a white object sticking out from the roof of the shed behind her home.” It was an 18-inch missile. She called the police.

      
Level Plains officer Lt. Ralph Reed arrived shortly after 6 a.m. and climbed a ladder to look at the missile….He saw markings that could have been military, so he decided to leave it where it was. “My mother didn’t raise no fool,” Reed said. “I wasn’t gonna touch it.”