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Reflections
'Werewolf of London' sounds better than 'Lycanthrope of London' : Reflections : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, Illinois'Werewolf of London' sounds better than 'Lycanthrope of London'
| 3/15/2012
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While it's not spring yet, we can nearly see it from here. This year, the spring equinox takes place at 2:14 a.m. on March 20.
Early spring is a dreary time here in northern Illinois, mostly notable for the mud and cold rain, mixed with a few diehard blizzards that sweep down from the Great White North.
March, in fact, is the month we get a significant amount of snow each year. Back in colonial times those hardy folks who decided to explore out here in Illinois knew that the best time to travel was in the winter when all the regions numerous swamps and marshes were frozen solid. That eliminated the hordes of biting insects, and also made it possible to snowshoe right across country. Illinois' Native Americans, of course, weren't so silly as to try to travel during that time of year; they sensibly waited until things warmed up and dried off.
Back in our great-grandparents' day, it wasn't a whole lot easier to travel cross country this time of year, what with the region's dirt roads turned to bottomless mudholes. They could travel by rail, of course, but not everyone could. Take mail carriers, for instance. They were tasked with delivering the mail six days a week on rural routes that spanned several miles, and they had to do it despite rain, sleet, and snow-all of which frequently fall on the same day in March. But deliver the mail they did in a tradition that exists up to this day.
Here at the Matile manse, we eagerly watch for the mail each day, hopeful that it will contain one or two nuggets of information that I can pass along to you. And, in fact, I've managed to make quite a collection of this and that gleaned from here and there, which I will now transmit:
The technical name for a werewolf is lycanthrope. The word is derived form the mythological Greek King Lycaon, who was turned into a wolf by Zeus. Which just goes to show, never trust a Greek God. Anyway, lycanthropy is a mental illness wherein a person imagines he or she is a wolf. By the way, the next full moon is, oddly enough, today, March 8.
Technicolor, a patented process for making motion pictures in color, was developed by Herbert Kalmus in the early 1900s. The first full-length Technicolor feature film was "The Gulf Between," which, believe it or not, appeared in theaters in 1917.
The heaviest rain ever recorded for one day occurred at Foc-Foc on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. From January 7 to 8, 1966, 71.9 inches of rain fell thanks to Cyclone Denise.
The largest measured hailstone to fall in the U.S. fell on Vivian, S.D., on July 23, 2010. It measured eight inches in diameter, and was 18.625 inches in circumference.
Keeping with our weather theme, the driest place on earth is in Antarctica in an area called the Dry Valleys. They are really dry, too. They haven't had even a sprinkle for the last two million years. The driest inhabited place is the Atacama Desert in Chili. They seem not to have had any measurable rainfall from 1570 to 1971. Oddly enough, though, thanks to our rapidly changing weather, that region got 31.5 inches of snow in July 2011.
In 1314 King Edward II of England banned soccer because of excessive noise. It might have been one reason Edward was deposed by his wife, particularly if she was a big fan. Three subsequent English monarchs also banned the game, but it managed to survive until the first official rules were drawn up in 1848.
The most abundant bird in the world is the red-billed queleas found in Botswana. The estimated breeding population is 1.5 billion, or so it says here.
It seems the second most popular sport in India-next to soccer-is arm wrestling.
In colonial America, particularly in New England, kids weren't allowed to play with toys on Sunday. The exceptions were toy Noah's arks, which were nicknamed the Sunday Toy. It was once the most popular toy in both North America and northern Europe.
The most complex language may be the language of the Inuit people of North America and Greenland. It has 63 forms of the present tense and simple nouns may have up to 252 inflections.
The total number of letters in the Bible is 3,566,480.
The U.S. Congressional Medal of Honor was authorized on July 12, 1862 during the Civil War.
Human hair, if left uncut, will usually grow to a maximum of two to three feet.
There are 200 to 400 billion stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy. And there are an estimated 100 to 200 billion galaxies in the universe.
In 1910, the U.S. was the 12th nation in the world to officially charter the Boy Scout organization. Boy Scouts were first established in England in 1908.
Before finally settling down in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Congress met at 10 different spots in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York and New Jersey.
The world record for the largest chicken was set by an Australian rooster named Big Snow in 1992. And the record still stands.
The words to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" were written by Julia Ward Howe after visiting army camps around Washington late in 1861.
The name Catherine can be traced back to the Greek word katharos, meaning pure and unsullied.
Finally, it's not only Scotland where bagpipes are popular. People in France, Ireland, India and Spain also play the pipes. The ancient Romans used a form of bagpipe that was used in Persia, Turkey and Palestine.
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