There are few words that carry as much weight in the English language as ‘lord’. Lord is used to describe both God and Jesus Christ in the Bible, where the word is used over seven thousand times. The word also has a myriad temporal meanings – the master, ruler or sovereign of men. The upper chamber of the Houses of Parliament is still called the House […]
Monthly Archives: October 2011
In 1968 John Brunner, a British novelist, worked out that the entire world’s population of 3.5 billion could stand shoulder to should on an island the size of the Isle of Man (572 km²). In 1950 the earth’s 2.5 billion people could have squeezed on to the Isle of Wight (381 km²). He prophesised that by 2010 there would be 7 billion people, and they would fit on […]
All stand, please!
The Russian word for a main train station is Vokzal (воксал). Say it out loud – does it remind you of anything? Say it in a suitably English accent, and it sounds like Vauxhall. Is this a coincidence, or is there an etymological connection between this minor suburban railway station on the London and South Western Railway and the grand Imperial terminii of Tsarist Russia? The most […]
Ticket to Vokzal
Have you ever piled on the pounds after a particularly nasty breakup? Seen your weight increase during periods of stress? It is a concept many will be familiar with. But only in German does the phenomena merit its own word – Kummerspeck. Kummerspeck translates as the excess weight gained from emotional overeating, but, literally translated, it means ‘grief bacon’. Mental Floss have gathered together 29 of […]
Amazing words
More people died in the Siege of Leningrad than the combined World War Two losses of the United Kingdom and United States combined. The Siege, also known as the Leningrad Blockade, lasted 872 days and, according to some estimates, resulted in over a million deaths each from the Red Army and the civilian population. Estimates of total deaths range from 1,117,000 to 4,500,000, but even at […]
The deadliest battle
The American-Canadian border is often referred to as the 49th parallel as it runs for much of its length along the 49th parallel north. It is the longest border between two countries in the world, stretching 8,891 kilometers (5,525 miles) (including the Alaska-Yukon/British Columbia frontier). The continuous border stretches 6,416 kilometres (3987 miles) between Douglas (British Columbia) and Blaine (Washington) on the Pacific coast to Lubeck (Maine) […]
Magic line
Shimla is currently the capital city of Himachal Pradesh. Under its former name, Simla, it was the summer capital of the British Raj. As temperatures and humidity soared on the sweltering plains below, the ruling classes of the sub-continent would head to the mountains, climbing into the cooler climes of the Himilayan foothills. Apparently a slice of Surrey in the foothills, it is an architecturally arresting […]