Ovicaprids and the Pope Lick Monster

This one came from my wife’s research on Western Africa.  Apparently, it is very difficult to tell the difference between a goat and a sheep from only archaeological remains, so they have taken to just referring to them as ovicaprids (and sometimes, less satisfyingly, as caprovines).

This of course got me thinkings about goat-sheep monsters, and a Google search very quickly got me to the Pope Lick Monster, a part-man, part-sheep, part-goat creature that lives under the railroad trestle at Pope Lick Creek  in Louisville, Kentucky.  According to legend, it is either a circus freak seeking revenge, or a reincarnated farmer who sacrificed goats in an ill-conceived deal with Satan.  The monster hasn’t killed anyone, but according to the local news, at least four people have died looking for him (the train tracks, contrary to public opinion, are still active.

Vaccine

The first known purposeful vaccine was for smallpox, appropriately considering how long the illness had been a scourge for humans. NPR’s Planet Money had a history of the vaccine, including the surprisingly obvious etymology of the name.

The Chinese, in the 1500s, discovered that shooting ground up smallpox scabs up a person’s nose gave could give them a weaker version of the illness followed by immunity. As knowledge about this spread along the silk road, it was called insufflation (the process of blowing something up a body cavity!). Inoculation or variolation came later in Turkey by scraping an infected needle along the arm.

King George III sponsored The Royal Experiment, which offered several death row prisoners the opportunity to try the inoculation — if the prisoner survived, they were pardoned. After success there, and subsequent success with babies, it became a fashionable for the wealthy to receive treatment. The only catch…you sometimes got smallpox, and sometimes spread it.

Enter Edward Jenner in 1796 who picked up on the folklore that milkmaids who contracted cowpox didn’t contract smallpox. Jenner recognized the danger of using cow-to-human transfers, but used cowpox from a milkmaid (Sarah Nelmes) and scraped it onto an 8-year old boy, James Phipps — the first vaccine was born. His process Variola vaccina earned the name from the Latin word for cow: vacca!

Istanbul

It is easy to imagine that one learned everything there is to know about the naming of Istanbul from They Might Be Giants. A quick check of the lyrics, however reveal that, no, I’ve learned almost nothing from that song other than it was once Constantinople. Certainly, not even that it wasn’t even the original name of the city, which was called Byzantium from its founding around 660 BCE (named eponymously after some dude named Byzas).

After Constantine made it the Eastern Capital of the Roman Empire, he renamed the city Nova Roma, but everyone seemed to ignore that and call it Constantinople. In 1453 (on of those years you’re just supposed to know), the city is sacked by the Ottomans, and (I thought), became known as Istanbul.

Turns out, I was wrong. The name Constantinople stuck around for another 270 years, at least in the West, and it doesn’t officially switch to Istanbul until 1923 with the founding of the Turkish Republic, when it also ceased to be the capital (the US State department made it their policy to use the new name in 1930). Again, I thought this was part of the attempt to rid the city of its European influences, but it turns out the name Istanbul is probably Greek anyway, coming from the Greek “eis ten polis” meaning, “to the city.” The name was used for some time to refer to the specific part of the city on the walled peninsula. Interestingly, Wikipedia says there are Turkish folk tales of the names having Islamic origins.

Also mentioned in the Wikipedia entry is that as of 2009, the Turkish government said referring to Istanbul as Constantinople during the 1453-1923 period is not okay.

Concupiscent

adj. lustful or filled with sexual desire.

Widdershins

A delightful Scottish word that means counter-clockwise, or the direction against the rising of the sun.  Because it was considered lucky or wise to follow the path of the sun, to travel widdershins was considered unlucky.  The Scots seem to use it in place of counter-clockwise, but it comes up often in pagan witchcraft for the use of dark or harmful magic.

The word comes from old German, literally meaning “against the way.” It’s Scottish opposite is “deisul.”

I came across the word in the British writer M.R. Carey’s The Boy on the Bridge. 

Cyclopean

Built from or relating to an ancient masonry made up of no mortar and giant irregular blocks.

According to Webster’s, the name comes from the architecture in ancient sites like Troy and Mycenae where the design was so puzzling that it was suggested that only a race of Cyclops could have such strength to build this.

The word features prominently to describe the architecture of the fictional city of R’lyeh, resting place of Cthulhu.  The angles of the city were said to make no sense.

Opsimath

A person who begins to learn or study late in life, from the Greek opsé for late.

Just a great word I picked up from the great podcast A Way With Words.

Witness Mark

The opening of the new podcast S Town begins with the description of clockmakers trying to repair clocks without knowledge of their service history.  The clockmaker must look to clues in the material, dings, screw holes, small pieces of evidence to show what work has been done.  These are witness marks.  Trace physical evidence that signifies past work or how things fit together.

These marks can be intentional — used in surveying to indicate boundaries, or trailblazing to indicate a path.  In engineering and construction, witness marks tell a person how pieces are meant to fit together (think the notches in IKEA furniture).  Obviously, witness marks are the stuff of criminal forensics.

I like to think of this phrase more metaphorically.  What are the witness marks we all have in our lives, be they physical scars on our body or emotional marks that tell of our past. To paraphrase Wallace Stegner, this word is too pretty for just metal.

The Negro Motorist Green Book

A travel guide published from 1936 to 1966 by New York City mailman Victor Hugo Green. Later called the Negro Travelers Green Book, or just the Green Book, it was designed to help Blacks travel safely during the Jim Crow era.

Derek Bentley

Derek Bentley was a 19-year old British man hanged for the murder of a policemen during a robbery in 1953.  The case was noteworthy because it was Bentley’s partner, Christopher Craig, who shot the officer after Bentley, who had been detained, said “Let him have it, Craig.” There was some debate if Bentley was telling Craig to shoot or turn over his gun.

Ironically, Craig, who was sixteen, was ineligible for the death penalty while it was mandated for Bentley.

The unique situation, and further questions about Bentley’s mental ability, led to a 45-year campaign to pardon Bentley.  In 1998, the Court of Appeals rescinded the conviction.

I had only known the case from Elvis Costello’s 1989 “Let Him Dangle,” but only recognized it was a real story after hearing it mentioned again in Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen.