Useless Facts on Names of People, Places And Things
Maine is the only state in the United States whose name has one syllable.
Battleships are always named after states, submarines after fish, cruises after cities, and destroyers after naval heroes.
What have the following towns in common: Dayton, Atlanta, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Jacksonville, Norfolk, Bangor, Hartford, New Haven, Phoenix, Stamford, Urbana, and Newark? They are all towns in New York State.
The initials BVD, which have come to stand for men's underwear in general, stand for the names of the three men who originally manufactured BVDs-Bradley, Voorhies, and Day.
The official name of India is not India. It is Bharat.
The first letter of every continent's name is the same as the last: AmericA, AntarcticA, EuropE, AsiA, AustraliA, AfricA.
Muhammad is the most common name in the world.
The word “Nazi” was actually an abbreviation. The party's full name was the Nazionalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.
Cotton Mather, famous American clergyman, had an odd first name. His father had an even odder one: Increase.
Until 1796, there was a state in the United States called Franklin. Today it is known as Tennessee.
Their real names:
- Hieronymus Bosch—Hieronymus van Aken
- Sandro Botticelli—Alessandro di Mariano dei Filipepi
- Anthony Burgess—John Wilson
- El Cid—Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar
- Joseph Conrad—Charles Edouard Jeanneret
- Marie Corelli—Mary Mackay
- Donatello—Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi
- George Eliot—Mary Ann Evans
- Anatole France—Jacques Thibault
- Maxim Gorky—Alexey Peshkov
- Lenin—Vladmir Ulyanov
- “Baby Face” Nelson—Lester Gillis
- George Orwell—Eric Blair
- Ellery Queen—Frederic Dunnay and Manfred B. Lee
- George Sand—Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin, Baronne Dudevant
- “Dutch” Schultz—Arthur Flegenheimer
- Josef Stalin—Josef Dzhugashvili
- Emanuel Swedenborg—Emanuel Swedberg
- Tintoretto—Jacopo Robusti
- Jules Verne—L. M. Olehewitz
- Voltaire—Francois Marie Arouet
The blazer jacket is named for a British ship, H.M.S Blazer. The ship's captain insisted that his crew always wear blue jackets with metal buttons, even for casual duty.
Benito Mussolini was named after a Mexican revolutionary and liberal statesman, Benito Juarez.
The name “pumpernickel” was coined by Napoleon's troops during the Napoleonic Wars. His men complained that although they were often poorly fed, there was always bread for Napoleon's favorite horse, Nicoll. Thus the word “pumpernickel” was coined—pain (bread) pour (for) Nicoll.
The following are all names of men who have played major league baseball:
Eli Grba, Malachi Kittredge, Tacks Neuer, Prince Oana, Orval Overall, Ty Pickup, Squiz Pillon, Shadow Pyle, Ossie Schreckengost, Tony Suck, Clay Touchstone, Coot Veal, Yats Wuestling, Ad Yale.
When the planet Uranus was discovered by Sir William Herschel in 1781 it was named “Georgium Sidium” in honor of King George III of England. For many years the planet was known as the “Georgian.” Not until 1850 was it christened Uranus in accordance with the tradition of naming planets for Roman Gods.
Named after:
- Bloomers were the brainstorm of Amelia Bloomer, who caused a scandal by wearing trousers that exposed two inches of her ankles.
- The braille reading system is named for Louis Braille. Blinded in an accident at age three, Braille became one of the most brilliant prodigies of his time and invented his fmous reading method while still in his twenties.
- The chesterfield settee is named after a nineteenth-century Earl of Chesterfield.
- The derrick is named after Thomas Derrick, a seventeenth-century English executioner-hangman whose association with the gallows gave his name to the crane.
- The doily is named after a Mr. Doiley, a seventeenth-century linendraper in London.
- The guillotine is named after Dr. Joseph Guillotin. Guillotin did not invent the deadly mechanism—it had been in use for centuries before his time—but suggested it in the eighteenth century as a humane method of execution.
- The Norfolk jacket is named for a nineteenth-century Duke of Norfollk.
The Oscar film trophy is named after Oscar Pierce, a wealthy Texas farmer. Before the trophy had any name at all, Pierce's niece, then serving as librarian for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, commented that the statue reminded her of her Uncle Oscar. A newspaper columnist overheard the chance remark and subsequently wrote that “employees have affectionately dubbed their famous statuette 'Oscar.'” The name stuck.
The peach Melba is named after Dame Nellie Melba, an Australian operatic soprano, for whom the dish was first created.
The saxophone is named after Antoine Sax. Born in Belgium, Sax invented a number of unusual-sounding brass instruments, all of which he named after himself. Besides the saxophone, he created the saxhorn and the saxotromba.
The silhouette is named after Etienne de Silhouetee, a French author and states man who reputedly was highly skilled at the art of cutting profiles out of paper.
The tam o' shanter is named for the hero of Robert Burns's poem of the same name.
Wellington boots were the invention of Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington.
The town of Modesto, California, was named in honor of its founders, who were too “modest” to name it after themselves. The town of Tarzana, California, is named for the fictional character Tarzan, having been the home for many years of Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of the Tarzan saga.