Things you were shockingly old when you learned

the difference between a sickle and a scythe

From Middle English sythe, sithe, from Old English sīþe, sīðe, siġði (“sickle”), probably from Proto-West Germanic *segisnu (“sickle”). Germanic cognates include West Frisian seine (“scythe”), Dutch zicht (“sickle”), German Sense (“scythe”). Related to saw, which see.

The silent c crept in the early 15th century owing to pseudoetymological association with Medieval Latin scissor (“tailor, carver”), from Latin scindere (“to cut, rend, split”).

i never have thought about this

Things you were shockingly old when you first thought about

Bikini Kill went to Evergreen State College, meaning that "went to school in Olympia" in Hole's "Rock Star" was meant literally.

TESC is my alma mater, too, but sadly Hole never sang about me.

did you sing about hole tho

The 57 in the Heinz Ketchup slogan is essentially meaningless.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/there-never-were-57-varieties-heinz-ketchup-180965158/

it means the ketchup was made up of the blood of 57 diff people when originally made

.

"Electric Avenue," in Eddy Grant's song of the same name, is not just a cool-sounding place made up for the song; but it is a real street in Brixton, and the song is partly about the 1981 Brixton riots.

I learned that last year.

Maya Rudolph was in The Rentals. I had NO idea.

tf

I learned about "Electric Avenue" just last year too. Since 1983 I had thought it was a metaphorical place, something like Alphabet St. or Easy Street

Both of these things! That's cool about Electric Avenue though - I had always just assumed it was a state of mind.

And of course so named because it was the first market street in London (Britain?) lit by electric lighting.

was hoping people died trying to walk on the street unless they grounded themselves

There's more of 'em than you'd think!

https://i.imgur.com/i5exh6l.png

DEALING IN MULTIPLICATION
https://i.imgur.com/ckAaw4m.png

Also one in Venice, CA.

On an Eddy Grant tip, I only recently learned that he wasn't the lead singer in The Equals.

I thought Tony! Toni! Toné! was the name of a Tone Loc album until I was like 18

Nice.

Cait O'Riordan's name is not pronounced like 'Kate' but more like 'Coyt'

Jason Patric is Jackie Gleason's grandson

I thought it was pronounced 'cat'. xp

I watched a video where two men kept saying Coyt like it was fine and normal and she seemed ok with it.

https://youtu.be/0eOrpnRM5co

It's pronounced like Kuyt, you have to be Dutch to pronounce correctly.

tbf if we were saying it wrong I'm sure she would have spoken up recently

Steve Roach was a Motocross racer before he started making ambient music.

I watched a video where two men kept saying Coyt

I'd say the first fella was saying something more like "caught", which is what I'd expect.

she seemed ok with it

Ah now I'd say if there was one fight she's given up on...

should i trust macgowan pronunciation it's the only time i've heard then name aloud

tunny is tuna

Well over one million West Europeans responded to economic adversity in the seventeenth century by migrating to find a better life abroad. So many Scots left the kingdom to make a living in Poland in the seventeenth century that the Poles invented the word szot (Scot: meaning 'tinker'); and, in all, between 1600 and 1650 perhaps 100,000 Scotsmen, or one-fifth of the kingdom's adult males, went to live abroad.

There was a semi-famous Napoleon era Russian general descended from those Scots.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Andreas_Barclay_de_Tolly

I was reading about that recently.

I was reading up on the events that led up to the March on Washington in 1963, and found an entry about the Baldwin-Kennedy Meeting, where James Baldwin hosted an off-the-record meeting with Bobby Kennedy, hoping to explain to the attorney general some of the causes behind recent civil unrest.

That in itself was an eye-opener, with Kennedy later saying the room seemed "possessed." But for the purposes of this thread, it was the last name on Baldwin's invited guest list that made me go wha?

David Baldwin, James Baldwin's brother
Harry Belafonte, singer and activist
Edwin C. Berry, director of the Chicago Urban League
Kenneth Clark, psychologist, activist, and founder of Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited
June Shagaloff, Education Director of the NAACP (attending in an "unofficial capacity")
Lorraine Hansberry, playwright best known for A Raisin in the Sun (1959)
Lena Horne, musician, actor and activist
Clarence Benjamin Jones, advisor to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and civil rights lawyer
Jerome Smith, Freedom Rider associated with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
Rip Torn, a young white actor

Ahaahhaha Fuck Yes

There was a semi-famous Napoleon era Russian general descended from those Scots.

And the composer Tadeusz Baird? Unless Baird is a Polish name too.

Tadeusz Baird was probably a descendant of some Scottish Baird, but no documents have been found to confirm this. We do know that his father, Edward Jan, was born in Poland in 1884, in Aleksandrów Kujawski (commune of Służewiec). His grandfather Józef (a railway worker) died in Warsaw in 1903. Tadeusz Baird also had Russian blood in him from his mother’s side. His mother, Maria Popov (born in 1894 in Yekaterinburg) was a daughter of Alexander Popov (director of a bank in Yekaterinburg) and Elisabeth née Shchepanov.

http://www.baird.polmic.pl/index.php/en/biography/childhood-and-family

tolstoy is a bit of a dick about Barclay de Tolly in War and Peace (for daft Russian nationalist reasons - de Tolly being a German speaking lutheran and non-Russian)

That Shirley Jones was David Cassidy's actual stepmother and Shaun Cassidy's mother.

(In fairness, The Partridge Family was just slightly before my time.)

I didn't know this either

I'd been aware of Blossom Dearie long before seeing the name Blossom Seeley.

I think I vaguely thought Seeley might have been playing off Dearie's popularity, but it actually Seeley was 30 years earlier.

that the duo that used to make me laugh in the Sonic Drive-in commercials are world class improv actors

https://www.tjanddave.com/

TBF only TJ is one of the Sonic guys. But yes, they are truly top of the heap.

The other guy in the Sonic commercials is Peter Grosz, writer for "The Colbert Report" and "Late Night with Seth Meyers" and a regular panelist on "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me."

Best one was where Peter got the slushies from the window and handed one to T.J. and handed one to the guy in the backseat and T.J. was "WAIT HOLD ON ! "

Never heard about Aristotle's wheel paradox before. It's a good one!

https://mathworld.wolfram.com/images/gifs/AristotlesWheel.gif

A propos paradoxa, I only recently heard about Buridan's ass.
http://evaero.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/donkey.jpg