Sometimes it’s the little things that jump out at me and stick with me. Here are a few of the interesting little tidbits I’ve picked up along the way.
The Vikings put a board on the side of their ships to help steer the ship. Since most of their sailors were right handed, they put it on the right side of the ship. The board was known as a styra bord. That’s where the word starboard comes from.
When the Vikings put into port, they usually put the left side of the ship against the dock. That became known as the port side.
In the same book, I learned that there is a river in England called the Cam River. A place where there was a bridge over the Cam River became known as Cambridge.
The S in Harry S Truman doesn’t stand for anything. S is his middle name. His parents wanted to use his middle name to honor one of his grandfathers, but they couldn’t decide which one. Both of their names started with S, so they made his middle name S and honored both of them.
In the Middle Ages, England ruled Dublin, Ireland and its hinterlands, which were known as the Pale. Territories outside of that were ruled by tribal kingdoms. That’s where the expression “beyond the pale” comes from.
The expression “crossed the Rubicon” refers to the point of no return. It dates from the Roman Empire. As a Roman general, Julius Caesar conquered the territory of Gaul, which is pretty much modern day France. The rulers in Rome feared him and didn’t want him to return to Rome, so they ordered him to stay put. Gaul and Italy were separated by the Rubicon River. If Caesar crossed the river into Roman territory it would be an act of treason, but he believed that if he stayed put they would destroy him. He thought long and hard about it and made his decision. He crossed the Rubicon. Caesar’s action plunged the Roman Empire into 3 years of civil war, which Caesar ended up winning.
The German title of Kaiser and the Russian title of Tsar are derivatives of Caesar.