“Whoever said that History was boring!” is a piece that was sent to us as an anonymous work. After receiving an email from Janice F. commenting on the falsity of the origins and urging us to encourage critical thinking, we dug deeper to find out more about each of the origins listed. We probably should have done that right off the bat. Thanks Janice! Some were terrible and some were not too far off. Here’s what we found:


Assertion:
*Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

More Reliable Source:
“The carrying of flowers by the bride has its roots in ancient times when it was believed that strong smelling herbs and spices would ward off and drive away evil spirits, bad luck and ill health. Garlic and chives were also popular for the same reason. During Roman times, this tradition was extended, with the bride and groom wearing floral garlands signifying new life and hope for fertility. The bouquet in particular symbolized a women in bloom. During Victorian times, flowers took on an additional significance as lovers would send messages to each other using different flowers, with each flower having its own meaning.”
Source: WeddingGuide UK
Read more about Wedding Traditions

Assertion:
* Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then! the women and finally the children Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water."

More Reliable Source:
“When the proverb Don't throw the baby out with the bath water or its parallel proverbial expression To throw the baby out with the bath water appear today in Anglo-American oral communication or in books, magazines, newspapers, advertisements or cartoons, hardly anybody would surmise that this common metaphorical phrase is actually of German origin and of relatively recent use in the English language. It had its first written occurrence in Thomas Murner's (1475-1537) versified satirical book Narrenbeschwörung (1512) which contains as its eighty-first short chapter entitled "Das kindt mit dem bad vß schitten" (To throw the baby out with the bath water) a treatise on fools who by trying to rid themselves of a bad thing succeed in destroying whatever good there was as well. “
Source: Wolfgang Mieder - Department of German and Russian -University of Vermont
Read the entire essay at: "(DON'T) THROW THE BABY OUT WITH THE BATHWATER": The Americanization of a German Proverb and Proverbial Expression*

Assertion:
*Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and off the roof. Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."

More Reliable Source:
“How many explanations would you like? I have found at least five. The most favoured one in the references I have found is mythological. It seems that cats were at one time thought to have influence over storms, especially by sailors, and that dogs were symbols of storms, often accompanying images and descriptions of the Norse storm god Odin. So when some particularly violent tempest appeared, people suggested it was caused by cats (bringing the rain) and dogs (the wind). “
Source: The Bristol Evening Post
Read the entire article at: World Wide Words: Raining Cats and Dogs

Assertion:
* There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

More Reliable Source:
“In the earliest days of the European castle, the lord and his family slept in the great hall, along with all their servants. The noble family's sleeping area was usually at one end of the hall and was separated from the rest by simple curtains. In time, castle builders constructed separate chambers for the nobility, but though lords and ladies had their bed(s) to themselves, attendants might share the room for convenience and security. For the sake of warmth as well as privacy, the lord's bed was curtained, and his attendants slept on simple pallets on the floor, on trundle beds, or on benches.”
Source: Medieval History
Read the entire article at: The Bad Old Days:Canopy Beds


Assertion:
* The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying "dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet , so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they adding more thresh until when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway.
Hence the saying a "thresh hold."


More Reliable Source:
“C T Onions in his Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology says that the first half is from an Old English word for “thrash” or “thresh” meaning “tread” or “trample”. However, the second half of the word is, he says, simply not identifiable. After this amount of time we just don’t know where the “–old” part comes from.”
Source: ABC Classic FM
Read the entire article: Word of the Day-Threshold


Assertion:
*In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, "Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."

More Reliable Source:
Although the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes dates this rhyme circa 1760. It doesn’t make a reference tot the origin. Since I know that many cultures carry a “base” over to future days on many dishes. This origin appears credible to me. I’m 1/2 Italian and we carry over our tomato sauce to the next pot, and that base sauce is highly priced as “seasoned.”


Assertion:
*Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special! . When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat."

More Reliable Source:
“The Inuit Eskimo used to chew pieces of whale blubber almost like chewing gum. The blubber took quite some time to dissolve, so it helped pass the time and also gave the energy required to fight the cold.” Hence the term “chew the fat.”
Source: The Tribune - Roots
Read more origins: Beginnings

Assertion:
*Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

More Reliable Source:
“As the tomato arrived in Europe the plant became associated with poisonous members of the Solanceae family, specifically henbane, mandrake and deadly nightshade, to which it bore more than a passing resemblance. “
Source: tomatoesareevil.com
Read the entire article: tomato history - the evil origin (highly entertaining)


Assertion:
Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or "upper crust."

More Reliable Source:
This is an interesting case. The Word Detective sets aside to debunk this origin, but in the process, in our opinion, substantiates it instead. Their explanation includes: “The term "upper crust," referring literally to the upper portion of a loaf of bread, is indeed very old, dating back to at least 1460.” They then go on to say: “But the metaphorical use of "upper crust" in its modern sense of "the aristocracy or the wealthy class" seems, as Mr. Bryson says, to have first occurred in early 19th century America, and was widespread enough by 1848 to be included by John Bartlett in his seminal "Dictionary of Americanisms" published that year. And the term simply refers to the "upper layers" of society in an economic sense, not to the perceived superiority of any portion of a loaf of bread.” However, this doesn’t mean that the term wasn’t originally based on the earlier literal term related to bread, that was by their own admissions active in language as early as 1460.


Assertion:
* Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a "wake."

More Reliable Source:
We couldn’t find a substantiation of the interaction of lead and ale or whisky, however, the rest of the explanation is close: “The practice of Waking the dead used to be the custom in most Celtic countries in Europe for mourners to keep watch or vigil over their dead until they were buried - this was called a 'Wake'. “
Source: Castles to Shamrocks
Read the entire article: Wakes
Find More Information: Google Answers - Origin of “wake”

Assertion:
*England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a "bone-house" and reuse the grave When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered a "dead ringer."


More Reliable Sources:
We have been unable to confirm that the term “saved by the bell” originated in the 1500s. More commonly it is a boxing term from the 1930s that references the ability to save an opponent that was getting a bad beating by ringing the bell to stop the fight. However, while we were on vacation in New Orleans this last year, we took a graveyard tour, during which it was explained that in New Orleans they actually did have a bell that could be rung in the case of a premature burial. However, this tradition would probably have dated from the late 1800s or the early 1900s.

The graveyard shift is thought by many to refer simply tot he spookiness of working the late shift 12 -8, when very few people were around. However, I think it’s not a good explanation of the term. It is also known as the “graveyard watch.” This starts to get closer to the correct origin, I would think. The caretakers of the graveyards were required to be extra vigilant during the late night hours, when grave robbers would dig up the dead in search of treasure, or bodies that could be sold to the medical profession for research. Therefore the caretakers were on a graveyard watch during those nighttime hours. When people started working in the factories during the late shift, they adopted the term and changed it slightly to the graveyard shift.

The origin and explanation of a “dead ringer” is way off. “The adjective dead means 'perfect, absolute, exact, utmost', in reference to death being the final step in life. Without the adjective "dead," the noun ringer just means 'a double or counterpart'. So dead ringer means 'exact double'.”
Source: Random House - Words @ Random
Read the entire article: dead ringer, doppelgänger