Things I Learned in December

The cubicle did not get its name from its shape, but from the Latin “cubiculum” meaning bed chamber.

A male Brown Thrasher can have more than 2,500 separate songs in his repertoire.

Creede, Colorado, was named for prospector Nicholas C. Creede who later committed suicide because his wife, from whom he had separated, insisted on living with him.

The yield sign was first used in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

In rural Britain and Ireland, most houses had dirt floors until the 20th century. That’s where “ground floor” came from.

Nobody knows for sure what the “tuffet” Little Miss Muffet sat on really was. The nursery rhyme is the only place in historic English where the word appears. 

Queen Anne of Britain (1702-1714) was too fat to go up and down stairs. A trap door had to be cut in her bedroom floor so she could be lowered to and raised from the floor below by pulleys. 

During the first four months of World War II, 4,133 people were killed on the roads of Great Britain due to the blackout restrictions enacted to thwart German bombers.

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