Random Thursday

Let's take another trip into Weird But True by Leslie Gilbert Elman and see what fascinating new facts we can learn about letters and such. Yeah, it's a weird one that is focusing on letters of certain words. Let's see what this is all about!

Since this is the first time I wrote a post with the new Blogger interface, I realized it totally f***ed things up! Not only is one of my fonts gone and replaced with one of the same name but is actually freaking TIMES NEW ROMAN again, they also took away several colors that I used. I think they cut 25% of the color choices. Since I am now forced into this new format beyond my control, I have to readjust a few things.

(image borrowed from Etsy)

According to the Official Word List approved by the National Scrabble Association for tournament play, there are seventeen 3-letter words that end in "u." AAmong them is "ulu," which is a type of knife used by Eskimo women to clean and skin fish and is the only 3-letter word with two u's.

I did not know that was a word at all!

(image borrowed from Wikipedia)

In 2006, the revised Official Word List was issued to include 101 two-letter words accepted in Scrabble tournaments in the US. Among the accepted words are "za," a shortened name for pizza, and "aa," a type of lava.

Za I knew, but not aa!

(image borrowed from Hobby Lobby)

The symbol for potassium on the periodic table is the letter K. This name comes from the Latin word kalium which comes from qali, the Arabic word for ashes.

FUN FACT: One would think potassium would be marked with the letter P, but when potassium was discovered in 1807, the periodic table already had a P, which stood for phosphorous, which was discovered in 1669.

I always wondered why potassium got a K! Lol.

(image borrowed from Science Photo Library)

In 1898 Scottish chemist, Sir William Ramsay and English chemist Morris M. Travers (pictured) discovered krypton. But by then K was already spoken for, much like P was spoken for when it came to potassium. Krypton then received the symbol Kr.

FUN FACT: Krypton comes from the Greek word kryptos which means "hidden."

(image borrowed from Wikipedia)

Superman first made his appearance in Action Comics #1 in June 1938. As we know, Superman came from the planet Krypton. No one really knows why Jerry Siegel and Jose Shuster--the creators--chose to name Superman's home planet after an odorless, colorless gas.

Perhaps they threw a dart at the periodic table and it landed on Kr! LOL!