Why Americans Zig Zag When They Eat: A Miscellany, by Dana Facaros and Michael Pauls

Retrieved from: my library
1860111742, 2005
Suggested by: me, when I cataloged it
My Ratings: 9 Merit, 10 Interest, 10 Fun

I'm such a sucker for trivia books! And this is like the cream of the crop: current, intellectual, British, funny. Can't go wrong. My only quibble is the lack of an index.

OK, to answer the title's query, forks weren't actually around at all until the early years of the 17th century. We Americans zig zag because we didn't start using them till much later, instead using upside-down spoons to hold our meat down as we cut it up. Then we'd switch hands to scoop up the meat to eat it. I love the fact that the Massachusetts Bay Colony had one fork, kept in the governor's house in a case! Anyway, we just got used to eating this way, much to the disdain of Europeans and Emily Post, who came up with the term "zigzagging."

There is a lot of Stupid Architecture noted in here, and multiple logic problems (created by Lewis Carroll) and Spurious Notices, one of which is as follows, found nailed to a post:

T O T I
E M U L
E S T O *

Other fun facts:

• We aren't the only species to make music; squirrels actually dance with each other when they are kept in cages. There is a pattern to their foot-stomping and movements.
  Royal nicknames are much less amusing than they used to be. My favorite is the Visigoth Queen Ranachilde the Goose-Footed who legendarily had webbed feet.
• The face cards represent actual historical people. Supposedly, anyway. The Queen of Hearts is Judith. Or possible Helen of Troy. The King of Diamonds is Julius Caesar. Some of the other cards also have specific names--the Four of Hearts is called "Hob Collingwood" but no one knows why.
• The history of Spam, which is quite popular overseas. There is a fantabulously horrible-sounding recipe included: "Make one box macaroni and cheese. Mix with one can Spam [I'd assume it should be cubed or something] and one cup Tang orange drink. Enjoy!" Eeeuw.
• A plausible theory of why Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore on election day in 1849.
• The patron saint of lost keys? Zita. The patron saint of migraines? Gereon. The patron saint of procrastination? Expedite.
• Why Lenin's body has remained in such good shape, and where it is now.
• Naked protestors. From Russia. Now in Canada.

My next chore, right now, is to find a picture of St. Expedite for this blog.

* To Tie Mules To