Today I learned that the idiom “stealing thunder” has a surprisingly literal background.

Today I learned “How Great Thou Art”, one of the world’s most well known christian songs, has Swedish roots.

The original lyrics to the original song called “O store Gud” in Swedish, was written by one Carl Boberg after one can assume was a vivid experience of a thunderstorm in 1886. It was later translated into German (“Wie groß bist Du”) in 1907, into Russian in 1927, and that version was picked up and translated into English by a missionary in 1948.

Today I learned that The Beach Boys initially and briefly took on the name The Pendletones. Simply because they loved the Pendleton woolen shirt over a t-shirt and a pair of khakis on the beach.

Today I learned that the first movie ever made features a horse from Stanford, owned by Leland Stanford, in a scene shot at Palo Alto Stock Farm (that would eventually become the site of Stanford University).

Today I learned that a more formal name of the algebraic shape commonly known as the “infinity symbol” is lemniscate. In the context of livestock branding it is also known as a lazy eight but that doesn’t really have the same ring to it.

Today I learned that visually impaired athletes competing in biathlon use camera-based optical sports rifles. Their system uses an audio aiming device that changes the pitch and tone of the sound as the aiming point approaches the center. They aim by sound!

Today I learned that the cotton fishnet shirt known in Jamaica as the mesh marina has Norwegian roots. One Henrik Natvig Brun started developing it in 1921 as a “health vest” to keep troops warm and dry. Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay wore it when they summited Mount Everest in 1953. Bob Marley wore it when he met Eric Clapton in 1975.

Today I learned that the knock-knock joke may have its roots in Act 2, Scene 2 of Macbeth from 1606. While the Macbeth version lacks the (post-1606) punchline, it’s easy to imagine the Porter responding to the knocks by letting hundreds of years of horrible humour into the castle.

Today I learned that the pom-poms common on knit hats has an unexpected history. It was worn by sailors to keep them from bonking their heads in low passageways aboard ships. Kind of like a knitted cat’s whisker for sailor heads.

Today I learned that the uneasy feeling I get from seeing badly rendered humanoids is described in a hypothesis called the Uncanny Valley. It states that there is a valley of revulsion between “somewhat human” and “fully human” as proven in films featuring computer-generated characters ranging from the 2004 The Polar Express to the 2019 rendition of Cats.