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

Let's just look it up in the "Diccionario del Español del Vado del buey"

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No! We will not let you go!

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The Old English for sheep was something like 'owis', deriving from the (supposed) proto-Indo-European root, which also gave rise to the Latin 'ovis'. 'Ewe' is the only word in English which still represents this root, 'sheep' being of unknown Germanic origin.

Akshully.. English deriving from Germanic probably means that archaic 'sheep' was probably something like 'sceop', rather than 'owis'. But only in Germanic, the other IE languages had variants of 'owis/ovis'.

Mozart was actually given the name Wolfgangus Theophilus, meaning lover of god of loved by god, which can be translated into either Gottlieb or Amade

The deceased gentleman known as Paracelcus was in fact named Auroleus Phillipus Theostratus Bombastus von Hohenheim.

Java and Javascript are named after the coffee the developers drank while working on it.

And Java became synonymous with a type of coffee because the Dutch established coffee plantations on the island during the 18th century.

The last book banned by the U.S. Federal government is Fanny Hall (in 1963 under the altered title of John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure).

Here's to hoping it remains the last.

You and me both.

Jakarta used to be known as Batavia.

Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can't say
People just liked it better that way

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works
That's nobody's business but the Turks

So take me back to Constantinople
No, you can't go back to Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works
That's nobody's business but the Turks


-TMBG

There's city in New York State called Batavia. When I was a kid, whenever we heard it mentioned on the Buffalo news, we thought it was where Batman was born.

The first union Soldier to enlist in the Civil War was from Batavia.

-Why did Constantinople get the works-

I always thought that song was dumb

They didn' credit Byzantium

Quoting from the documentary I'm currently watching (the name of which I can't repeat because of the nanny filter):


...The acronym "Fornication Under Consent of King" was first used in Playboy Magazine in 1970.


To summarize... the origins of the word are NOT from an acronym.

Seriously!


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Almost 10% of the population of England and Wales listed in the Domesday Book were slaves.

Count zero is wrong.

The acronym was used a number of centuries ago when young ladies were tied up and had their heads shaved in the village square, while wearing a sign it was For Unclean Carnal Knowledge.

Wrong again:
http://www.snopes.com/language/acronyms/fuck.asp

To quote another sexual reference...Bugger!

Add to that the fact that extra-marital sex (No, that does *not* mean spending more time than average with your spouse!) was a sin, but pre-marital sex was commonplace in medieval times. A peasant needed to know that his wife could provide him with sons, so he'd make sure he could get her pregnant before he married her. The sex was consensual, anything else was rape.

Not *quite* true CD... the ability to provide sons was only really that much of a concern for the nobilty who needed someone to pass titles, lands and money to when they died. The peasants were mostly having pre-marital sex because it was fun, and thanks to Common Law were considered as being mostly married but without the actual ceremony.

Incidentally, Common Law Marriage was got rid of with the introduction of the 1753 Marriage Act... but despite this there are a lot of people who still think it's a valid legal arrangement and tend to be very surprised when they discover that, no, living with your partner for ten years *doesn't* give you the same rights as a married couple.