Asthenosphere, a geologist’s term for the molten layer beneath the earth’s crust, sparks a journey that stretches all the way from ancient Greece to the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Plus: What the heck is a dogberg? It’s when...
Amid court-ordered busing in the 1970s, a middle-school teacher tried to distract her nervous students on the first day of class with this strange assignment: find a monarch caterpillar. The result? A memorable lesson in the miracle of metamorphosis...
A librarian opens a book and finds a mysterious invitation scribbled on the back of a business card. Another discovers a child’s letter to the Tooth Fairy, tucked into a book decades ago. What stories are left untold by these forgotten...
When Julia emigrated to New York City from the Dominican Republic, she noticed that her Jewish friends on Long Island often playfully altered words, repeating a word and adding an SHM sound, such as changing deserve to deserve, schmeserve and cool...
Paul in Centerville, Massachusetts, says his parents, who hail from Brooklyn, New York, always referred to a fire hydrant as a Johnny pump. This term is largely confined to New York City, and may derive from the fact that these sources of water were...
Imagine telling someone how to get to your home, but without using the name of your street, or any other street within ten miles. Could you do it? We take street names for granted, but these words are useful for far more, like applying for a job or...