Did you know? #2

M

an first believed that a person's soul resided in the head and that a sneeze was actually allowing some of your life to escape.

You know how unsanitary things were back then, so with all the sneezing and then the dying, this just reinforced the belief.

With the teachings of Aristotle & Hippocrates in the 4th century, people began to understand that sneezing was actually the body's way of expelling foreign matter that had gotten into the nostrils.

The Romans then decided that a sneeze was the body's attempt to exorcise a demon or sinister spirit.

When someone sneezed, the Romans said something like "Congratulations" or "Good luck to you".

The actual Christian version of "God Bless You" began in the 6th Century by Pope Gregory. At that time, a plague was raging through Italy with the first symptom being a lot of sneezing. The plague acted so quickly, that very soon after someone started sneezing, they died.

Pope Gregory began appealing to the healthy people to pray for the sick. He insisted that phrases like "May you enjoy good health" be replaced with "God Bless You!"

If no one was around, the sneezer had to say "God help me!"

With so much death being associated with sneezing, this is also where the phrase "Not to be sneezed at" began.

Sneezing ain't no joke.



For the good of your fellow humans, please cover your mouth and nose when sneezing.

As an interesting experiment, every time I hear someone sneeze this coming week, I'm going to say "Congratulations! You just exorcised a demon. Praise the Baby Jesus!" (with a serious Southern accent, of course).

I just want to see what they'll do.

:-)

So I bought this book

A

ctually I think I got it for free in the giveaway bin outside of McKay's (a store where you can turn in your old CDs, Books, Video Games & DVDs for $$$ or store credit). It's called "Panati's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things" by Charles Panati.

I intended to use it for a weekly post "jump off" point, kind of like CardioGirl's Question of the Week. (I keep stealing crap from her blog. She should take it as a compliment.☺)

So here's the first installment of Did you know?

The origin of the "Knock Wood for good luck" superstition began in 2000 B.C. in North America by the American Indians.

The Native Americans believed that boasting of a future event (like winning a battle or a great harvest, for example) basically insured that it wouldn't happen. In order to negate the "bad juju", they touched the bark of an Oak Tree.

The Oak Tree was chosen because, apparently, the oak tree was most often the tree struck by lightning and they assumed that the Sky God lived there so they appeased him for bragging by knocking on -

...

This is how you can tell that I live with a 14 year old. I was about to say "by knocking on his wood" but I could hear Evan in my head saying "Heh heh, you said 'his wood'"

*rolling eyes*

Whatever, now you know where the superstition came from.

You're welcome.

☺