Today I Learned

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Names like Alfred, Albert and Arthur are all very old English names whose origin goes back to Anglo-Saxon times I think, and they remained popular until about the mid-20th Century, but seem almost to have died out among the generations from the baby boomers onward.

Similarly the female names Joyce, Ada, Doris and quite a few others that were common in my grandparents' time are hardly ever heard today.

I heard about the Coronation Street but I never watched this. I don't know the names of its characters. As for Alfred, Albert and Artur, those are names used in my country as well. Artur is actually a common name, my childhood buddy (age 41) and my dentist (age 56) have this name. It's quite a common name - basically one from our generation but it still remains relatively popular among the representatives of the youngest generation as well. Alfred and Albert are rare names in turn and are the names from respectively my grandparents and my parents generation

Now many names from my grandparents' generation got extremely common in the generation of the current kids/teens/young adults - names like Jan, Antoni, Franciszek, Stanisław and to a lesser extent Leon were the names for someone's elderly grandfather back when I was a girl. And as for female names from that generation, it would be Maria, Zofia, Weronika and Wiktoria - typical "grannie names" - now very, very common among young girls.

"Peterman" is an archaic name for a thief

'Toshers' were pretty dodgy types as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tosher

In Japan during the 1960s there was a doll called Dakochan that was extremely popular. It was an inflatable that could be dressed like a conventional baby doll and its arms could hold and hang onto people and things. Girls and women were especially into the doll, they'd walk around in public with Dakochan hanging onto them like a fashion accessory Since the doll was inflatable it was very light and easy to carry. The doll's popularity spread to other countries as well. This was just one problem: The doll resembled a racist caricature of African people, with jet-black skin and bright red lips, and its most common article of clothing was a grass skirt.

Eventually Japan became aware of how racially insensitive Dakochan was to black people. The dolls still exist, but they've been redesigned to look more like cute, colorful aliens or characters like Astroboy and Mickey Mouse.

Dylan Roof didn't want to be given the autism pardon. He said people would think he was a "weirdo" if he was autistic.

I've had interests or obsessions that are kind of weird, but none of them have had anything to do with white supremacy or Neo Nazism.

It's Dinosaur Day today.

https://nationaltoday.com/dinosaur-day/

I like the triceratops one

Did you know that Ann Elk had a theory about brontosauruses?

I didn't know you could get a Deep Freeze version of Deep Heat until just now

In 1923, American cartoonist H.T. Webster posted a humorous comic that shows comics being made entirely by a machine running on electricity in 2023 while the cartoonist chats to a friend on the phone about taking a fishing trip since he doesn't have to worry about making them himself. Some people believe this 1920s comic predicted AI "Art" in the 2020s.

Of course, it didn't predict that phones would be little handheld rectangles with screens, or that newspapers would become nearly obsolete, or how people would learn how bad smoking is for you (the cartoonist is smoking a cigar, which H.T. Webster switched to from cigarettes when he was 12. He died of a heart attack when he was 67, which may have been at least partly from his being a smoker).

^^ in the beginning of the computer era, there were many theories about what they could do in the future. It's only just now that we have the computational power to make these dreams a reality.

The origin of the teddy bear is intertwined with a specific event involving President Theodore "teddy" Roosevelt and a political cartoon. The story begins in 1902 when President Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear that had been tied to a tree during a hunting trip in Mississippi. A political cartoon by Clifford Berryman depicted this incident, which was then used as inspiration by Morris Michtom, a shop owner, to create a stuffed toy bear and name it "Teddy's Bear".

Today I learned that Fireman Sam was originally a Welsh show. I mean, I knew it was set in Wales but funnily enough I never considered the possibility.

Turns out it originally aired on a Welsh network in the Welsh language. Makes sense, it does sound better in Welsh in my opinion.