The Wise Book of Whys (2 page)

Why the Mass Avoidance of Some Business is called “Boycotting”

This term wa
s named after a nineteenth century Englishman, Captain Charles C. Boycott (who originally had the surname “Boycatt,” but the family changed the spelling when he was nine years old). If you guessed that at a certain point Captain Boycott became quite unpopular with the masses, you’re correct.

Shortly before Boycott would find himself boycotted, the situation in Ireland was that just .2% of the population owned almost every square inch of land in Ireland. Most of the owners of the l
and also didn’t live in Ireland but simply rented their land out to tenant farmers, generally on one-year leases.

In the mid-nineteenth
century, many of these tenant farmers banded together with three goals: “Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure, and Free Sale”. One particular organization that emerged in the 1870s pushing these “Three F’s,” among other things, was the Irish National Land League.

This brings us to September of 1880. The leader of the Land League, Parliament member Charles Stewart Parnell, was giving a speech to many of the members of that organization. During the speech, after the crowd, in true mob-like fashion, expressed that any tenant farmer who bids on an evicted neighbor’s land should be k
illed, Parnell humbly suggested that another tact should be used.

Rather than murder the individual, he
proposed it would be more Christian to simply “shun him on the fair green and in the market place, and even in the place of worship, by leaving him alone, by putting him in moral Coventry, by isolating him from the rest of the country, as if he were the leper of old – you must show him your detestation of the crime he committed.”

Essentially, they were to be boycotted, but they didn’t have that term yet, though they wouldn’t have to wait long. The first documented reference of “Boycott” being used as a verb was just two weeks after that speech.

At the time, Captain Charles Boycott, now retired from the military, was working as a land manager for the third Earl of Erne, John Crichton. The harvest that year wasn’t turning out well for many farmers, so as a concession to tenants, Boycott decided to reduce their rent by 10%. Rather than accept this, his tenants demanded a 25% reduction, which Boycott’s boss, the Earl of Erne, refused. In the end, 11 of the Earl’s tenants didn’t pay their rent.

Thus, a mere three days after this speech, Boycott began the process of serving eviction notices to those who hadn’t paid, sending out the Constabulary to do this
. Needless to say, this did not go over well with the already riled up masses.

Upon the tenants realizing eviction
notices were going out, the women of the area began throwing things such as rocks and manure at those delivering the notices until the Constabulary left without being able to serve all the notices to the head of the households, which was required by law for the eviction notice to be considered served. Without the notices delivered, nobody had to leave their homes.

Next, the teaming masses decided to use Parnell’s proposed social ostracism against Boycott and anyone who worked under him
. Soon, those who worked under Boycott began leaving his service, often with those workers being coerced and threatened by others until they, too, joined in the ostracizing of Boycott.

This ultimately left Boycott with a large estate to manage, but no workers to farm the remainder of the crops
. Other businesses also stopped being willing to do business with Boycott; he couldn’t even buy food locally and getting it from afar was difficult as carriage drivers, ship captains, and letter handlers on the whole wouldn’t work with him.

In late November, this led to Boycott being forced to leave his home, fleeing to Dublin
. Even there, he was met with hostility and businesses that were willing to serve him were threatened with being “boycotted.”

The practice of boycotting spread
, and within a decade whenever a business did something to the dislike of the Irish National Land League, the business would quickly find themself boycotted, with the name for the practice sticking due to the wide publication of Boycott’s plight in the news. By 1888, just eight years after Boycott was first boycotted, the word even made it into the
New English Dictionary on Historical Principles
, better known today as the
Oxford English Dictionary
.

The word spread to other European
languages and quickly made it over to America when Captain Boycott visited friends in Virginia, attempting to do so in secret -registering under the name “Charles Cunningham.” The newspapers caught wind of his arrival anyway and widely publicized his history, which got the term firmly planted in American English as well.

Why The Speed of Seafaring Vessels is Measured in Knots

How fast you’re going while out floating on the big blue can be notoriously tricky to judge if you’re just eyeballing it. One method used to get around this issue was introduced in the sixteenth century using a “chip log” or “log-line.”

In a nutshell, this method used a plank of wood (usually wedge shaped and weighted on one end so it would float perpendicular to the water to increase drag) tied to a long thin line that had knots tied at evenly spaced intervals.

The wood would be tossed into the water and the line let out while a sailor used a sand-glass to time the number of knots let out in the given timespan. As for the interval and the time-span, this varied somewhat in the beginning, but for reference, one mid-eighteenth century version (attested in
A Voyage to South America
by Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa) had the knots at 1/120th of a mile with a 30-second timer.

This has all since been standardized based on the nautical mile (tod
ay equaling 1.852 kilometers). One knot then equals one nautical mile per hour. In landlubber terms, this is about 1.15 miles per hour or 1.852 kilometers per hour. More pertinently, this is equal to 1/60th a degree of latitude or longitude or one minute of arc (assuming the Earth is a perfect sphere, which it’s not -being squashed at the poles and bulging in the middle -but this is a good enough approximation). Thus, if you were traveling at one knot, it would take you approximately 60 hours to go 1 degree of longitude or latitude.

So, today, if you’re using a 28-
second timer, to get your accurate speed in knots, you need to have the interval of knots at 14.4018 meters (47 feet, 3 inches). The number of knots that are unrolled during that span is your speed in knots.

Why “Auld Lang Syne” is Commonly Sung on New Year’s Eve

This tradition is mostly thanks to Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadian Band
. While their work is largely unknown by those born in the last few decades, the band has sold over 300 million records to date. Guy Lombardo himself has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and he was once the “Dick Clark” of New Years before Clark and his “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” attempting to appeal to younger audiences, started supplanting “Mr. New Year’s Eve,” Guy Lombardo.

It was in 1929 that Guy Lombardo and his band took the stage at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City on New Year’s Eve
. Their performance that night was being broadcast on the radio, before midnight Eastern-time on CBS, then after on NBC radio.

At midnight, as a transition between the broadcasts, the song they chose to play was an old Scottish folk song Lombardo had first heard from Scottish immigrants in Ontario. The song was Auld Lang Syne
.

Previous to this, there are several documented instances of others singing this song on New Year’s Eve, going
all the way back to the mid-nineteenth century, but it wasn’t anywhere close to the staple it would soon be after Lombardo’s performance.

The next year, and every year thereafter
, all the way to 1976, with Lombardo dying at the age of 75 in 1977, they played it at midnight on New Year’s Eve at first broadcast out on the radio and later on TV. Thanks to “Mr. New Year’s Eve” and his band, it’s still tradition to this day.

Why Cashews are Not Sold to Consumers in Their Shells

Cashews are a member of the same family as poison ivy, Anacardiaceae. Like poison ivy and many other members of the family, part of the cashew plant contains an oily chemical called urushiol, which is a strong irritant for most people and can even be fatal for some if ingested.

In cashews, the urushiol is found not only in the leaves, but also in a layer of oil between the shell and the cashew seed
. Needless to say, shelling cashews is something that needs to be done very carefully and not by consumers.

Despite the need for care in shelling cashews, it’s still often done by hand, much to the chagrin of the workers involved, particularly in poorer nations where safety equipment is often lacking
.

From the above
, you might be wondering why you can purchase raw cashews. It turns out, even so-called “raw” cashews are not actually raw. Eating true raw, unprocessed cashew seeds would result in you ingesting some of this urushiol, which, as mentioned, can potentially be fatal. Thus, the seeds must either be roasted at high temperatures to destroy the offending oil or, in the case of “raw” cashews, usually steamed and/or boiled in oils.

Why Some English Speaking Countries Pronounce “Z” as “Zed” and Others as “Zee”

The vast majority of the English speaking world pronounces “z” as “zed
.” The primary exception, of course, is in the United States where “z” is pronounced “zee.”

The British and others pronounce “z
,” “zed,” owing to the origin of the letter “z” -the Greek letter “Zeta.” This gave rise to the Old French “zede,” which resulted in the English “zed” around the fifteenth century.

As to why people in the United States cal
l “z,” “zee,” this is likely simply adopted from the pronunciation of the letters “bee,” “cee,” “dee,” “eee,” “gee,” “pee,” “tee,” and “vee.”

The first known instance of “zee” being recorded as the correct pronunciation of the letter “z” was in Lye’s New Spelling Book, published in 1677
. There still was a variety of common pronunciations in North America after this, but by the nineteenth century, this changed in the United States with “zee” firmly establishing itself thanks to Daniel Webster putting his seal of approval on it in 1827, and, of course, the
Alphabet Song
copyrighted in 1835, rhyming “z” with “me.”

Because of the
Alphabet Song
, the pronunciation of “z” as “zee” has started to spread, much to the chagrin of elementary school teachers the English-speaking world over. This has resulted in them often having to re-teach children the “correct” pronunciation of “z” as “zed,” with the children having previously learned the song and the letter the American English way from such shows as
Sesame Street
.

Naturally, kids are generally
resistant to this change owing to the fact that “tee, u, vee, w, x, y and zed, Now I know my A-B-Cs, Next time won’t you sing with me” just doesn’t quite sound as cohesive as “tee/vee/zee/me.”