Ephemera: Known Facts

I had all three girls sleeping simultaneously at nap time today (that never happens), so I thought I'd use the peace and quiet to try to write something. Except that nothing came to mind.

Not wanting to give in to writer's block and let the moment pass, I decided to make a list of random trivia instead, resulting in the following:

Ephemera: Known Facts

• Horizons are always blue. And less saturated.


• Cheese and caffeine often trigger migraines.


• Warm climates tend to have unstable political regimes; the farther you get from the equator, the more stable the governments are likely to be.


• One early printing of the Bible in English accidentally (accidentally?) left out the not in Thou shall not commit adultery. (So much for biblical inerrancy. Check out the link for other fun misprints!)


• The Brothers Grimm of fairy tale fame were also fantastic linguists; they were, in fact, the first to postulate the First Germanic Sound Shift.


• More men than women are colorblind.


• The Spanish kill the bull for the crowd at the end of each bullfight; in Portugal, they merely maim and tease him (then kill him later privately) so as not to appear so "barbaric." (Yeah, good luck with that.)


• A "blue moon" is the appearance of a full moon twice in one calendar month, and isn't really all that rare.


• St. Christopher, popular Roman Catholic patron saint of travellers, was demoted years ago because it's likely he never existed at all.


• St. Jude is the patron saint of lost causes. (For some reason, that's always seemed so romantic to me.)

That's all I got before the Jehovah's Witnesses rang the doorbell and woke the baby. Oh well. (They were actually very nice witnesses, a delight to talk to.) No original or creative writing today, but at least I got my mind going a little. :-)


~RCH~