Newer Than They Think: Difference between revisions
m
Mind poison. (joke)
m (Mind poison. (joke)) |
|||
| (17 intermediate revisions by 5 users not shown) | |||
Line 2:
So you've run across a trope or story element that seems [[The Oldest Ones in the Book|unspeakably old]]. It simply drips with antiquity and grandeur, so you assume that it must have been around since the first caveman. But then you research it a little more, and discover... that it was invented by a [[Los Angeles]] advertising executive in 1989?
Congratulations: You've learned that some things are [[Newer Than They
It may also tie into [[Our Monsters Are Different]], as many "standard rules" seem like they should come from folklore and legends, but really come from more recent media. The development of [[Tabletop Games|fantasy RPGs]] has been a major mover in both tropes, as RPG creators have freely raided, adapted and bastardized from folklore and literature in order to fill their manuals, scenario books and bestiaries.
Some [[
Compare [[Lost in Imitation]] (well-known elements of a story are a lot more recent than the story itself), [[The Newest Ones in the Book]]. Convincingly well-done [[Retraux]] is a common factor in this trope.
Contrast [[Older Than They Think]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Animals ==
* Camels weren't introduced to [[Ancient Egypt]] until fairly late in the New Kingdom, and then only as a source of milk, meat, and hair, not as beasts of burden or riding animals.
Line 29:
* That rabbit that is found everywhere in Europe and a pest in Australia was originally an endemism of the Iberian Peninsula. The Romans, who introduced it in other places for hunting purposes, didn't even have a specific word for "rabbit", using terms like "Small Hare" or "Digging Hare" instead. The first domestic rabbits appeared only in the Middle Ages.
* Rats were not always living in nearly every part of the world, and were not always [[You Dirty Rat|looked down upon]]. The most familiar species, the [[Non-Indicative Name|Norway rat]], [[Misplaced Wildlife|came from northern China]] into Europe near the end of the Black death. It was the Indochinese black rat that came first, in the 1st century.
== Dress and Costume ==
Line 36 ⟶ 35:
** The strict regulations on headgear and facial hair in the US military that essentially barred Sikhs from service were only imposed in the 1980s. Before that, many Sikh males volunteered for or were drafted into the military.
*** The regulations were not, however, intended to exclude Sikhs or other ethnic/religious groups from military service. It turns out, in a world where biological or chemical warfare attacks are a possibility, that facial hair makes it very difficult to obtain an efficient seal on gas masks.
* The tradition of the "white" wedding dress originated in 1840, when [[
** In Sweden the traditional color for a wedding dress was black. That didn't change until the 1920s.
** White was the primary color of wedding gowns in the early 1800s, although probably owing to the fact that evening gowns of that era were also primarily white. Silver was sometimes used, especially after the wedding of Princess Caroline of Wales in 1816.
Line 69 ⟶ 68:
** Likewise, the "ploughman's lunch", supposedly the traditional midday meal of the hardy rustic English labourer, was invented in 1960 by the Milk Marketing Board in order to sell cheese.
** Recipes for traditional British puddings involving sugar or its byproducts (treacle, molasses) are likely no older than the 18th century, when imports from the West Indies made it available to those other than the very wealthy.
* Similarly, ''okonomiyaki'', a crepe-like Japanese fast/comfort food, is often incorrectly thought by Western anime fans to be an example of "classic" Japanese cuisine dating back centuries. In fact, it was invented in Hiroshima in the months after the atomic bomb, made up of a combination of local ingredients and relief supplies brought in by the occupying Allies thrown together and cooked quickly to provide a cheap, filling meal. Even today, the "definitive" commercially-created okonomiyaki sauce includes ingredients ''so'' alien to Japanese cuisine (like dates) that Otafuku, the manufacturer, has had to create a museum display to explain what they are to the average Japanese.
* Lager was first made during the 1800s, and didn't displace ale as the most common beer style until the 20th century. (India pale ale has a similar history.)▼
* General Tso's Chicken was invented in the 1970s by a New York-based chef named Peng Chang-kuei. Even better, the recipe everyone knows as General Tso's Chicken is actually a later ''modification'' of Peng's original made by other chefs over the next five or ten years.
▲* Lager was first made during the 1800s, and didn't displace ale as the most common beer style until the 20th century. (India pale ale has a similar history.) This is primarily because the variety of yeast used to create lager is the result of an accidental mutation, and simply didn't ''exist'' before then.
* The reputation of crappy American beer is a very recent one. Until World War 1 U.S. beer was typically very good, not surprising considering most major brewers were of German or Dutch origins. Wartime grain rationing and the Prohibition movement resulted in the Wartime Prohibition Act, limiting beverage alcohol to no more than 2.75% alcohol content. After WWI ended and Prohibition began, many brewers went out of business. Those that survived could only produce "near beer", with an alcohol content capped at one-half of one percent. Franklin Roosevelt signed an amendment to the Volstead Act legalizing 3.2% beer, which became the common American beer strength. And then World War 2 came around, and rationing of grains caused many breweries to switch to half rice formulas which remained after the war.
** Budweiser only became the "King of Beers" in the late 1950s, when a prolonged strike at the major Milwaukee breweries (including Pabst and Schlitz) enabled St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch to gain crucial market share, which it has held ever since. Budweiser itself originated as a Prohibition-era "near beer".
Line 82 ⟶ 83:
** Gummi worms, however, are very recent, having only been invented in 1981.
* Many fruits and vegetables have only existed in their modern forms for a few centuries.
** The banana as we know it today was first grown in 1836; earlier bananas were tougher and starchier (essentially plantains), full of [[wikipedia:File:Inside a wild-type banana.jpg|seeds]] and unappetizing when eaten raw. The "Cavendish" banana, which comprises most bananas eaten in North America today (elsewhere, they're called "tourist bananas"), only dates to the 1950s, when the then-prevalent Gros Michel banana became nearly extinct due to Panama disease, and may give way to "Goldfinger" bananas in the near future if the same blight ends up devastating Cavendish crops, as
** The modern-day strawberry was cross-bred in the early 18th century from varieties that would be unrecognizable to grocery shoppers today.
** Carrots were white, pink, red, purple, and yellow historically; orange carrots were deliberately bred in the Netherlands only in the 17th century, as orange is the Dutch national color (like red, white, and blue for America and France).
* Chocolate chip cookies were not invented until
** Speaking of chocolate, solid chocolate was formulated in 1847
▲** Speaking of chocolate, solid chocolate was formulated in 1847, before that it was only available as a drink.
* Chicken Tikka Masala, widely thought of as the quintessential Indian dish and often assumed to be traditional, was invented in a curry restaurant somewhere in Britain around 1970. It was specifically tailored to English tastes, being milder and creamier than most other food from the Indian subcontinent.
* Fortune cookies, far from being a Chinese tradition, are based loosely on Japanese omikuji senbei (rice crackers with fortunes inside), and are thought to have been introduced at the San Francisco Exposition's Japanese Tea Garden (which still sells them today) around 1890.
Line 93:
* Tiramisu, a very popular Italian dessert, was first made around 1982, although some place it around the 1960s-70s. Still, it's a lot newer than most people think.
** Some traditions put it as far older than that, though, with some claiming it was created during the founding of Siena, or when Cosmo III visited.
* While it is true that whale meat has been consumed in Japan for centuries, it was generally regarded as a low-class, minority food, the preserve of coastal peasants. It only became prevalent across the country during [[WWII]], when the government were forced to turn to whaling as a general food supply. And it was only much later, after many years of post-war shortages, that the people acquired a taste for it and made it popular.
** However, whale meat is expensive and not sold as much, hence it's not really popular as a food in Japan anymore.
*
* Mongolian
* The Greek dishes [[Hollywood Cuisine|most widely known to tourists]] (e.g. Mousaka, Tzatziki and Souvlaki) are actually not exactly traditionally Greek—and also not exactly ''not'' traditionally Greek, either. You see, these dishes were not widely-known in what is now Greece until the early 20th century. However, they were widely prepared by ethnic Greeks living in Asia Minor, which was widely known to be a culinary melting pot, with a unique multiethnic cuisine formed out of it. This cuisine was brought to Greece by these ethnic Greeks in the "population exchanges" with Turkey <ref>In which by mutual agreement, Greece deported most of its ethnic Turkish and other Muslim population to Turkey and Turkey deported most of its ethnic Greek population to Greece.</ref> in the 1920s. These dishes—which are the culinary equivalents of mutts, possibly with partial Greek ancestry—were mostly popularised by Nikolaos Tselementes, a renowned Greek chef of the same period.
* Although wines have been produced in the Champagne region of France since Roman times, the sparkling version only became popular in the 1700s, due to British influence. The bubbles were initially considered a wine fault (due to the lower temperatures relative to the Burgundy region, where their styles of grapes and production methods came from). Dom Perignon (yes, he's a real person) spent most of his life actually trying to get rid of the famous bubbles.
Line 102:
* [[wikipedia:Banoffee pie|Banoffee pie]], an English dessert, wasn't invented until 1972.
* Vana Tallinn (Estonian for "Old Tallinn") is a liqueur that is frequently believed to be a traditional or even ancient Estonian product - but it has only been produced since the 1960's.
* A great deal of traditional East European food is based on
== Literature ==
* [[Inner Monologue|Stream-of-consciousness]] in writing was first used in 1888 in Edouard Dujardin's ''Les Lauriers sont coupes'' (although ''[[Anna Karenina]]'' (1873–77) contains some proto-examples).
* The [[An Aesop|Aesops]] in [[Aesop's Fables]] were not made explicit and clear when the stories were first written, let alone when they were first told.
* The prose poem ''Desiderata'' has been widely attributed to being [http://www.fleurdelis.com/desidera.htm found in an old church and dated 1692], but was actually written by Max Ehrmann in 1927. The 20th-century English it's written in kind of gives it away.
**
* Lower-case letters were first developed in the 8th century, as a kind of shorthand used by bureaucrats who worked for Charlemagne. Documents and literary works older than this were written IN ALLCAPS ONLY.
** He created what we now know as minuscules, but ancient Latin had two different cursive forms prior to that, which the same intended effect.
Line 154 ⟶ 152:
** Ditto "Flower of Scotland". Passed down amongst patriotic Scots over the centuries? Nope—written in 1965.
* Despite its current popularity in folk music, widespread use of the [[wikipedia:Bodhrán#History|Bodhrán]] as a musical instrument may be no older than the 1960s.
* Ever wonder why you don't see people sing "Happy Birthday" in TV or movies that often? It's because until 2016 [[Happy Birthday to You|it
* The hymn "The Old Rugged Cross" was written in 1912.
* And "How Great Thou Art" was written in 1953. (It's set to an old Swedish melody, though.)
Line 168 ⟶ 166:
** Likewise, you'd be excused from thinking the Silversun Pickups were a '90s alt-rock band thanks to their similar style, but they only formed in 2002, releasing their first album in 2006 and seeing "Lazy Eye" chart in 2007.
* Lots of people are shocked to learn that "Long Black Veil" isn't a traditional ballad, but was written in 1959 by country songwriters Marijohn Wilkin and Danny Dill. Dill himself called it "an instant folk song."
== Mythology and Folklore ==
Line 235 ⟶ 232:
* The word "[[The Fundamentalist|fundamentalism]]," as a byword for religious fanaticism, dates only to 1920. You wouldn't know this from how frequently it's applied to people living before this era.
* The stories of a beautiful woman luring boatmen to their doom at Lorelai on the Rhine river, while widely accepted to be ancient folklore, was actually first created by German author Clemens Brentano in 1801.
* Although the Golem has been an element of Jewish folklore for multiple centuries, one of the most famous elements of the story, that of the Golem rescuing Jews from a blood libel in 16th century Prague, was [https://web.archive.org/web/20130621192043/http://www.traditiononline.org/news/originals/Volume%2036/No.%201/The%20Adventure%20of%20the.pdf more or less created] in a 1909 novel by a Rabbi Yudl Rosenberg. Rosenberg basically did a [[Literary Agent Hypothesis]] in which he claimed he was editing a much older work found in a (nonexistent) library and skillfully mixed in actual sources/traditions with elements of his own invention. While the novel is little known today, it was really influential and pretty much all subsequent tellings of the Golem legend contain facets original to Rosenberg.
** The Golem being Newer Than They Think ties into the same being true of Frankenstein (see above). There is a popular assertion that Shelly was influenced by the Golem story. However, while both do fit a theme of "alchemists creating an [[Artificial Human]]", the more direct/actual connection between the stories is that [[The Golem|a film of the Golem story]] was made shortly before Whale' Frankenstein movies and was a direct stylistic influence.
* The idea of a [[Princess Classic|saintly and innocent princess]] in fairy tales was largely the result of 19th century writers trying to make everything nice for the children. Older fairy tales would have their heroines be at least a bit more active.
Line 252 ⟶ 249:
== Proverbs and Superstitions ==
* "The greatest thing since sliced bread" implies that sliced bread is an old, old concept. Pre-sliced loaves have been around only since 1928: [https://web.archive.org/web/20111120034733/http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/03/07/slicing-bread-by-machinery/ See the astounding announcement] from ''Modern Mechanics''!
** [[The Simpsons (animation)|Abe Simpson]] recalls, in his childhood, his father talking about America as if it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, adding that "Sliced bread had been invented the previous winter." Given that article's publishing date and Abe's record in [[World War Two]], the comment was probably much more accurate than the [[Gag Series|writers intended]].
** The phrase itself came about as soon as the 1930s; when it was originally used, it meant the "greatest new thing in a series of wondrous new technological developments". It would be like saying how something is the "greatest thing since the iPod" or "greatest thing since HDTV" today. The fact that the phrase stuck around longer than its cultural context is just one of those happenstances of history.
Line 316 ⟶ 313:
== Technology ==
* [[Clean Pretty Reliable|CPR]] and mouth-to-mouth have only been around in any recognizable form since the late 1940s, and didn't become standard medical techniques for another decade. (Witness an episode of ''[[Quantum Leap]]'' where a crowd stands dumbfounded as Sam performs mouth-to-mouth on a nearly drowned boy, circa 1954. In ''[[Back to The Future]] Part II'', Marty tells a crowd in 1955 that he knows CPR and gets the reply "What's CPR?". An episode of ''Eureka'' has Alison perform CPR in 1945 on a wounded soldier while everyone around her assumes she is kissing him.) Contrast the actually made-in-[[The Sixties]] [[Star Trek: The Original Series]]' [[Mighty Whitey]] [https://web.archive.org/web/20100722013249/http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/enterprise/star_trek_the_original_series_8.php?page=4 episode], which features whatever-they-did-before-CPR.
** Similarly, the Heimlich maneuver was first described circa 1974. It was likewise used anachronistically by Sam in an episode of ''[[Quantum Leap]]'', on [[Historical In-Joke|Dr. Heimlich himself]].
* The first practical chastity belt wasn't invented until the late 1500s. And they were [http://www.occasionalhell.com/infdevice/detail.php?recordID=Chastity%20Belt never very common] even then.
Line 350 ⟶ 347:
* "Flying saucer" wasn't coined as a term until 1947, when an Air Force pilot named Kenneth Arnold spotted a formation of UFO's and coined the term in an interview. Interestingly, the term was used to describe the objects' ''movement'' - "[like a] saucer skipping over water" - rather than shape (he described the shape as crescent-like). That's right, the image of the circular flying saucer is really a result of [[Memetic Mutation]].
** Ironically, "UFO" has come to mean "flying saucer", but in its original USAF coinage [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|means precisely what it says]]—an airborne phenomenon, apparently a material object and hence apparently flying, which for the moment at least cannot be identified. Thus the report of a UFO by one of the Apollo 8 astronauts wasn't nearly as exciting or significant as commonly supposed.
*** Exploited by [[Bastard Operator From Hell]] — one of numerous strange clauses in his (and PFY) contract is "[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/14/bofh_2006_episode_23/ extortionate penalty payment for remaining at work after a UFO sighting in the vicinity of the building]".
* The words "schadenfreude" and "[[Angst]]" have only become part of the English lexicon
* The affirmative "OK" dates to the early 19th century, and [[wikipedia:Okay|is of uncertain etymology.]]
** And the variant "A-OK" was popularized by a NASA public affairs officer during the Mercury program.
* The term "Ivy League" wasn't used until the 1930s; its origin is uncertain. It initially
* The greeting "hello" is an Americanism, dating to 1840. It did not become popular until the invention of the telephone.
** "Hullo", on the other hand, is derived from German "hallo" and has been around in English much, much longer. Not that anyone really says it anymore. Or, if anyone ''was'' to say it, they'd be accused of "mispronouncing" the word—or, worse yet, speaking "improperly". (Harry Lime still uses it in ''[[The Third Man]]''.)
Line 372 ⟶ 370:
Children no longer mind their parents,
every man wants to write a book,
and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.}}
:Then comes the line that this saying is from an Assyrian tablet dated 2,800 BC. Guess what? [[wikipedia:Assyria|Assyria hadn't even existed at that time!]] The earliest mention of this saying is from '''1924''' book by an American priest ([http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?view{{=}}image;size{{=}}100;id{{=}}mdp.39015001674079;page{{=}}root;seq{{=}}94;num{{=}}76 proof link]). And most probably he just made the whole thing up.
** Well, some sources claim the source an Egyptian writing. The [https://web.archive.org/web/20131030032045/http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/texts/ipuwer.htm source], however, while speaking of corruption, doesn't quite match.
* The word "halitosis" was in fact made up by the manufacturers of Listerine mouthwash in 1921 so that they could have a disease responsible for bad breath which their disinfectant formula
** Not only the word, but practically the very ''concept''. While people obviously always understood the idea of funny-smelling breath, it wasn't seen as a big deal until Listerine came along and invented an all-new social paranoia. A similar example of evil genius was pulled off by the
*** And they tried it again with
** Similarly, a Gilette campaign invented the idea that women should have hairless legs and armpits.
* The term "Byzantine Empire" was actually popularised in the nineteenth century and was only first used in 1557, a full century after Constantinople had been conquered by the Ottomans. In its time it was known as the "Empire of the Greeks" to outsiders, and went under a number of names to its inhabitants (including "Roman Empire", "Empire of the Romans", and "Romania").
Line 386 ⟶ 384:
* The practice of referring to the lost skyscrapers of the World Trade Center as the "North Tower" and "South Tower" only became commonplace in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. While they stood, the Twin Towers were generally known as Tower 1 and Tower 2.
* Here's a Newer-Than-They-Think [[Catch Phrase]]. A common [[Memetic Mutation]] regarding [[Statler and Waldorf]] is their trademark laugh, rendered as "dohohohohohoh". If you watch footage of Statler and Waldorf under their original performers, the laugh was a very different "heheheheheh". The laugh we're familiar with first surfaced in ''[[The Muppet Christmas Carol]]'' in 1992, after Jim Henson and Richard Hunt had died.
== Games ==
* [[Mahjong]] (a.k.a. Mah-Jong, Mahjongg etc.) is commonly supposed to be centuries if not millennia old, and even to have been invented by <s>[[Confucius]]</s> Kongzi, but no evidence of it predating the 1880s can be found. The solitaire game [[Shanghai (video game)|Shanghai]] (often [[Non-Indicative Name|miscalled]] "Mahjong" (eg. "Mahjong Titans" in [[Microsoft Windows]] Vista and later) because it's played with the same tiles), which likewise has spurious antiquity claimed for it, was invented by Activision in the
* While earlier variants appeared in France as early as the late 19th century, the first example of the game now known as Sudoku was [[wikipedia:Sudoku#History|invented in Indiana in 1979]].▼
▲* [[Mahjong]] (a.k.a. Mah-Jong, Mahjongg etc.) is commonly supposed to be centuries if not millennia old, and even to have been invented by <s>[[Confucius]]</s> Kongzi, but no evidence of it predating the 1880s can be found. The solitaire game [[Shanghai (video game)|Shanghai]] (often [[Non-Indicative Name|miscalled]] "Mahjong" (eg. "Mahjong Titans" in [[Microsoft Windows]] Vista and later) because it's played with the same tiles), which likewise has spurious antiquity claimed for it, was invented by Activision in the 1970s.
▲* While earlier variants appeared in France as early as the late 19th century, the first example of the game now known as Sudoku was [[wikipedia:Sudoku#History|invented in Indiana in 1979]].
== Other ==
Line 400 ⟶ 397:
*** The aforementioned [[Take That]] is, more specifically, referring to the Confederate motto, ''[[Pretentious Latin Motto|Deo Vindice]]'' ("God is our vindicator/champion", or more loosely, "God is on our side.")
** However, "In God is our trust," is a line in verse 4 of the Star Spangled Banner, dating back to the War of 1812.
* The idea that houses built on [[Indian Burial Ground
** Well, the Navajo have always thought building where someone died or was buried is a bad idea, and before contact the only burial grounds they ''could'' build on would be Indian ones...
* The standard [[Pirate]] accent dates back to the 1950 movie ''[[Treasure Island]]'', when Robert Newton used his natural Cornish accent to play Long John Silver. The association of English rural accents with seafaring arguably goes back to Lord Nelson, whose contemporaries noted his heavy Norfolk accent, and Cornwall has been known for producing large quantities of pirates since the [[Middle Ages]], but ''Treasure Island'' brought the accent into pop culture, as well as popularising the phrase "ARRRRHHHH!". For reference, "Arrrh" was the southern English equivalent of the Northern "Aye" until universal education started.
Line 406 ⟶ 403:
* The "tradition" of the diamond engagement ring is sometimes thought to have been the result of a 1940s de Beers ad campaign, but this is not the case. The tradition actually began decades earlier, in the immediate post-World War I era; an expensive ring was intended as insurance that the man actually meant to marry the woman, and wasn't proposing just to get sex ([[Serious Business]] at a time when single women had literally no access to birth control and unmarried mothers were thought of as worse than street whores). De Beers merely piggybacked onto a trend that was almost universal by the time their first ads ran. They did however create the idea that an engagement ring should cost two months' salary.
** As well, most of the ideas surrounding the ring were at the very least played up and at the worst invented whole-cloth by De Beers' advertisers over the succeeding decades. See the idea that the size of the rock matters, the idea that selling or trading in an old engagement ring is bad luck, etc. Most [[Egregious]] is De Beers completely making up the "rule of thumb" that a ring should cost the man two months' salary (in an effort to make it impossible to have one standard-sized ring that was "good enough").
*** Not to mention the idea that you should be buried with your diamond jewelry, in order to destroy the second hand diamond market and prop up the artificial scarcity. [
*** Before that time a common engagement gift—not necessarily a ring—was acrostic jewellery: where the initials of the set gems spelled out words or names. REGARDS rings (Ruby, Emerald, Garnet, Amethyst, Ruby, Diamond, Sapphire) are acrostic jewellery, for example, although many rarer and unusual stones are required to fill other letters. Actual ''wedding'' bands, however, have reportedly been around since the Medieval period.
*** De Beers' real achievement was "a diamond is forever". This advertising campaign effectively destroyed (OK, vastly reduced) the supply of second-hand diamonds, which helped them keep their prices high.
Line 449 ⟶ 446:
** As one newspaper article pointed out, this is something of a historical reversal, given the association of Red with the political left.
** Political commentators these days exploit different connotations that suit the new colour scheme: red with "redneck" and "red-blooded male" stereotypes of conservatives and their supporters.
** This association causes some confusion with correspondents in Commonwealth countries, where "Tory blue" is the conservative colour.
*
** The "Kraut Western" ''[[Winnetou]] I'' (1963) was followed by ''Winnetou II'' (1964) and ''Winnetou III'' (1965), but all three movies were based on Karl May [[Winnetou|novels of the same names]].
* The name of the film of the play ''[[The Madness of George III]]'' was changed to ''[[The Madness of King George]]'', so that an international audience could have some idea that it's a [[Gorgeous Period Dress]] movie. The star, Nigel Hawthorne, liked to joke that it was changed so [[Eagle Land|Americans wouldn't think it was a sequel]].
Line 491 ⟶ 489:
* The [[Rainbow Motif|"seven colours of the rainbow"]] as we know them derive from Isaac Newton's experiments in optics in the 1670s, where he first observed the spectrum of sunlight split by a prism. Finding that his numerological theories worked better with a seven colour spectrum, he convinced himself that the area between blue and purple was an entirely separate colour, which he named [[wikipedia:Indigo|"indigo"]] after the blue dye.
** Actually, because indigo is so indistinguishable from blue and purple, it is possible that Newton's "blue" referred to cyan and his "indigo" referred to our blue, which would make more sense. It would also make indigo not being perceived as a real color Newer Than They Think.
** Colours in the rainbow are arbitrary - red-yellow wasn't recognized as "orange" until the 1500s (which is why people with orange hair are called "redheads"), and the Japanese put the colour "kimidori" between yellow and green.
* The AD dating system was not devised until AD 532, and not widely used until the 9th century AD. Before that, Christians often dated from the supposed date of the Creation (5492 BC), the supposed birth of Abraham (2016 BC), and many other epochs.
** If they dated years that way at all: many just used terms like "the 18th year in the reign of King Whatshisface". (This convention was used in dating British legislation until quite late in the reign of [[Queen Victoria]].)
Line 498 ⟶ 497:
* The name "Oscar," although dating back to an ancient Irish name meaning "friend of deer", was almost unknown until <s> [[Napoleon Bonaparte]]'s grandson</s> Charles XIV's son became King Oscar I of Sweden in 1844.
** There also was an Old English Oscar, usually interpreted as equivalent to the German name Ansgar - both meaning "god-spear" - and part of a whole group of Germanic names beginning "Os-", notably Osmond, Oswald, and Oswin. Saint Ansgar or Oscar (801-865), first archbishop of Hamburg and Bremen, was known as the "apostle of the North". The name Oscar was popularized in the late 18th century by James MacPherson's literary forgery ''Ossian'', which was where Frenche General Bernadotte, later King Charles XIV of Sweden, got the idea to name his son Oscar.
* The popularized act of kissing the ring of a Mafia Don does not seem to have any basis in reality prior to 1972 movie [[The Godfather]]. It is said that it was barely practiced in real life even after that, except amongst posers. Kissing a bishop's ring or the Pope's Fisherman's Ring
* In the musical ''[[The Music Man]]'', Harold Hill refers to "Captain Billy's Whiz Bang", which was a joke magazine that didn't exist until World War I. However, the show is set in 1912.
* Many younger ''[[Doctor Who]]'' fans are surprised to discover that the ''Doctor Who'' [[Christmas Episode]] is only a 21st-century revival phenomenon. (There was one before in 1965, but at that time British TV didn't usually do "event" television at Christmas and broadcast whatever shows were normally scheduled with a Christmassy twist.)
| |||