h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I thought I'd start a thread where people could post interesting stuff they'd only just found out. F'rinstance I just found out at the weekend that "didgeridoo" is an Irish word. It has no root in the language of any of the Aborignal tribes of Australia but is believed to come from the Irish "dudaire dubh" which means "black pipe player". It would make a certain amount of sense as lots of Irish convicts were shipped over when Oz was a penal colony but I still think it's slighly mad!




Source: Irish Independent

That's fantastic! Quite possibly my new favourite fact.

I found out, but not recently, that the word "Hello" was invented for answering before and didn't exist earlier. Until it was invented you'd have had to resort to "Ahoy-hoy".

I was very pleased to find out that leatherback turtles eat jellyfish. I'd always liked the turtle as an animal, but even more so from now on.

...that the word "Hello" was invented for answering the telephone.

I heard it wasn't *invented* for the telephone. It had been around as a sort of nonsense expression, for showing surprise and the like (as in "Hello! What's this?!" and the policeman's favourite "'ello, 'ello, 'ello...") but had more or less fallen into disuse when it was revived to be used for answering the phone.

Nearly sure I read this in Bill Bryson's 'Mother Tongue'

It was hullo in surprise, and 'ello 'ello 'ello is, I'm told from the 20th century, devised for some police-related sketch.

Ah! Y'see I always thought 'Hullo' was just an odd some-sort-of-English-accent way of saying 'Hello'

So did I. The things you get round to knowing...