Those English Just Spell Differently Than We Do

We all know the English spell certain words differently than we do here in the U.S. What is "color" to us is "colour" to them. We "realize" things and they "realise" things. And let's not even get into the different meanings they have for words.

So I wouldn't make a point of pointing out a different spelling except that I recently ran into one that was new for me. And at the age of 56, if it's new to me I'll bet there are a lot of other people who have either never run across it, either, or never figured it out. Actually, now that I say that, it occurs to me I have seen it before but never knew the meaning.

OK, quite beating around the bush. What's the word?

Gaol

Is that a misspelling for the thing the English kick a soccer ball (excuse me, football) through?

No, that's something we know as a "jail." As in "jailbird/gaolbird," or "jail/gaol house rock."

I was reading a collection of pieces by Oscar Wilde and one was entitled The Ballad of Reading Gaol. And I was clueless. Fortunately, my wife lived in England for six months so she clued me in.

Just another "pretty dang interesting" bit of information I've run into.

Want to Pay to Sleep with a Total Stranger? It Used to be the Norm

You've been on the road all day, you're exhausted, and all you want to do is drop into bed and get a good night's sleep. So you check into the hotel and go to your room and . . . there's a total stranger in your bed. Or maybe two of them. What do you do? Why you climb in and go to sleep. That's the way it used to be.

I first ran across this while reading the An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt. Then I ran across it in a book about Abraham Lincoln, The Lincoln Reader. It seems that back in those days it was absolutely normal to share not just your hotel room but your bed with total strangers. Of the same sex, of course.

None of these 200-room establishments with pool, bar, and gift shop. You were lucky if the place had four rooms to rent and you took whatever quarters they had to offer. I guess you just hoped the other guys took their boots off and didn't snuggle up to you too much in their sleep.

Get the News on Your Money

Think about it. A couple millennea ago communication was a little tougher than today. So the Romans came up with an ingenious idea. They printed news on their money. On the back side of their coins, to be exact.

According to Michael Grant, in his book The World of Rome:

. . . in the absence of modern media of communication, the only official announcements which the central government could be sure that very many people would see were those on the enormous network of official coinages that circulated throughout the empire. . . there was no better medium for the diffusion of news . . .

Grant says the Romans might issue as many as 150 new versions of a coin in a year. Nothing different on the front, but the hottest news on the obverse. Pretty dang interesting.