25 Christmas gift ideas for women from Pinterest: cozy boxes, unusual gadgets, flowers and bubbles, easy DIY gifts and two lists of odd finds.
25 teacher Christmas gifts from Pinterest: classroom kits, pun gifts, things kids can make, kitchen treats and practical presents, each with the original pin.
25 Christmas gifts for coworkers from Pinterest: pun gifts with printable tags, goodie bags, homemade treats and easy DIY gifts, each with the original pin.
25 Christmas gifts for mom from Pinterest: gift baskets, DIY and homemade gifts, treats from your kitchen and presents to buy, each with the original pin.
25 Christmas gifts for boyfriend from Pinterest: burr baskets, stocking stuffers, DIY gifts and ready-to-buy ideas, each with the original pin.
A parrot that smells of honey, a vulture that dyes its feathers with iron-rich mud, a hummingbird with racquets on its tail: twelve weird and rare birds and the odd things researchers have recorded about them.
Souling and guising are old, but the words trick or treat first appear in Canadian papers from 1917 to 1927. In the 1930s US papers called it a shakedown; by the 1950s it was everywhere.
Orange and black were already “Hallowe’en colors” in 1913 newspapers. A crepe paper company’s yearly Bogie Book helped fix the look, and by 1923 it was simply “the usual way”.
The flying witch appears in church and court writings of the early 1400s; the first known picture dates from 1451. The broom was chosen because it was an ordinary household tool.
In Scotland it was dooking, in a washing tub on the kitchen floor. In Ireland apples spun on a wooden cross with lit candles, and the game named the night: Snap-Apple Night.
Candy corn dates from the 1880s and was sold as Chicken Feed, a farmyard joke in an age when corn was animal food. It only became the Halloween candy in the 1950s.
At Christmas 1862 a London science hall put a ghost on stage with a sheet of glass. Pepper’s ghost ran for fifteen months, earned twelve thousand pounds, and pointed the way to Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion.
The first record of the phrase is a 1921 essay about racing superstitions. The first clear theater use is from 1948, and the John Wilkes Booth story has no evidence behind it.
Fall began as the fall of the leaf in 16th-century England. The British later switched to autumn; Americans kept the older home-grown word.
Roger means the message was received. R stood for received, and from 1927 the US military spelled R as Roger. The alphabet moved on to Romeo, the word stayed.
Nuptial comes from a Latin verb meaning to veil. Roman brides wore a bright yellow veil; the white lace veil took off after Queen Victoria’s wedding in 1840.
Plutarch asked the same question about Roman weddings. His answers: the first Roman brides were carried in by force, modesty, and a sign that the bride would stay. In Rome, the escorts did the lifting.
In 1916 several US states had laws against tipping and critics called it un-American. A Pullman manager explained why it survived; today federal law lets employers pay waiters $2.13 an hour.
The usual story says early Christians crossed fingers as a secret sign. Folklorists call that unfounded: the earliest written record of the gesture dates from 1912, and it is mostly British.
The famous answer is maids dressing rich women. But buttons were rare on women’s clothes before the 1800s, and the left-side rule may only date from ready-made blouses of the early 1900s.
