Have you ever heard the saying “everything old is new again?” There are plenty of examples of this being true in the worlds of music and fashion and even artistic movements. New generations rediscover the past and people get to enjoy it all over again. It happens so often that sometimes we don’t even realize things are far older than we thought, things we encounter all the time in our daily lives. Here are ten things that you may not have realized have existed for a lot longer than you’d think.
10. OMG Dates Back to 1917
The abbreviation OMG is so ubiquitous these days it’s actually a brand of candy. The term, short of “oh my God,” has been a staple since other famous abbreviations like LOL and BRB took over electronic discourse because typing whole words takes too much time. So you;d be forgiven if you thought it dated back only a couple of decades and coincided with the rise of the internet or texting.
Though he may not have invented it, the man first known to have made use of OMG was not texting when he did so. It was in a letter he wrote to Winston Churchill back in 1917. He was an admiral from World War One who said to Churchill, “I hear that a new order of Knighthood is on the tapis—O.M.G. (Oh! My God!)—Shower it on the Admiralty!!”
Lord Fisher has a remarkable Naval career and was said to have scored the highest mark ever on his exams. He was also known for his communications skills and his penchant for abbreviations, so it’s maybe not so surprising he coined this one as well.
9. The First Published Alien Abduction Was From the 1800s
Remember alien abductions? They started to rise to prominence in the 1960s and by the 1990s there were whole organizations dedicated to survivors of abductions and alien conspiracy theories. You tend to hear about them less often these days. More than one person has made the observation that UFOs and aliens became a lot less common with the rise of cell phone cameras. And the initial push is often attributed to the rise of science fiction movies which gave us a visual idea of what an alien or UFO might look like. But that wasn’t the actual beginning of things.
People often describe the 1961 abduction of Betty and Barney Hill as the start of the phenomenon, but it was just one of the most famous one. One of the first alien abduction tales dates all the way back to 1896 in California.
According to the local newspaper, the former editor of that paper and a companion were taking a horse-drawn carriage home late at night. They were stopped by three slender beings who stood 7-feet tall. They had no clothes and were covered with something that wasn’t hair or feathers. They had tiny mouths but large eyes. Sounds kind of familiar, right? It’s not a perfect gray alien description made famous in pop culture, but it’s in the ballpark.
According to the tale, they tried to lift the man but were physically unable, and then left in their own vessel at great speed. Take from that what you will.
8. The Concept of the Mile High Club is Older Than Airplanes
These days all we hear about air travel is typically related to poor customer service, bad experiences, and awful prices. But once upon a time air travel was much less complicated and people were focused on sillier things like the poor quality food and, of course, the mile high club.
If you don’t know, that’s the innocent sounding nickname for having sexual relations on an airplane. People have done it before and they will do it again. But most surprising is that the idea itself is actually older than airplanes.
The origin of the idea is even referenced in the James Bond film Moonraker. It dates back to a bet between a Lord Cholmondeley and Lord Derby in 1785. Cholmondeley offered up 500 guineas if Derby could engage in a particular act with a woman “one thousand yards from the earth” in a hot air balloon. No word on if Derby won the bet or not.
7. Mac and Cheese Comes From the 14th Century
Mac and cheese is one of if not the most popular comfort foods in the world. Nearly 9 million Americans eat at least 5 packages of mac and cheese per year. Canadians eat even more of it. In March 2020, 15 million boxes of Kraft Mac and Cheese were sold.
While Kraft Dinner dates back to 1937, macaroni and cheese has been around for much, much longer. And, surprisingly, it’s not an Italian dish as so many pastas are. This one comes straight from England, and a cookbook called Forme of Cury that was printed in 1390. The recipe, for makerouns, is not all that off from what you might do today to make homemade mac and cheese, though it does lack a little flair. You need to make simple pasta noodles, boil them, then layer with grated cheese and butter. It’s about as simple of a version of mac and cheese as you can get.
The original wording is a little difficult for modern English speakers. The first line reads “Take and make a thynne foyle of dowh, and kerue it on pieces, and cast hym on boiling water & seeþ it wele.” But it has been translated so you can make it yourself if you’re so inclined.
6. Rock Paper Scissors Comes From the 3rd Century
What happens when you and a friend have a choice to make and can’t come to an agreement? You settle it like adults. You do Rock, Paper, Scissors. It’s the classic way to determine a winner in any situation relying mostly on chance, fate, or a good understanding of your opponent’s proclivities to come to a decision.
While the game seems like one of those things that became popular in the 60s or 70s if movie are any guide, that’s extremely off the mark. The World Rock Paper Scissors Association, which is a real thing, has the full scoop on their website that delves into the ancient origins of the game.
In reality, Rock, Paper, Scissors can be traced back to the Han Dynasty in China, somewhere between 206 BC and 220 AD. Back then it was known by the name shoushiling which roughly meant “three who are afraid of each other” or “hand command” depending on your source. It wasn’t exactly rock, paper and scissors you were invoking with your hands, that was a later innovation in Japan, but the spirit of the game was the same. In this original version you were playing Frog, Slug or Snake. Snake beats slug beats frog beats snake. Why? Why not?
5. Xmas As a Term for Christmas is About 1,000 Years Old
For years now the idea of a “war on Christmas” rears its ugly head every holiday season. The media trots out the same story about how some nebulous group is trying to destroy Christmas and others seek to preserve it. At the heart of this are stories about how something as innocuous as referring to Christmas as Xmas is seeking to take Christ out of Christmas, literally and figuratively.
Calling Christmas “Xmas” is not a new phenomenon, however, and it also isn’t doing anything to remove Christ. People have been calling Christmas Xmas since at least the year 1100, when it was first used in print. It’s meant to be pronounced exactly the same as Christmas because the X is literally meant to mean Christ.
The New Testament was written in Greek and in that version Christ is spelled with an X – ???????. It was Constantine the Great, Roman emperor from the year 306, who made the shorthand version using just the letter X popular. Early uses of Xmas in print were thought to be shorthand tricks used by scribes saving both time and parchment.
4. Nut Milk is Centuries Old
Head to the grocery store and you’re going to see cow’s milk crowded on the shelves by, almond milk, cashew milk, soy milk, oat milk and more. People love plant milk these days and they’re especially big for vegan coffee drinkers. You know they’re big because there’s even a backlash against them. But that’s just because people are only discovering them for the first time and companies are manufacturing and marketing more than ever before, not because they’re actually new. Nut milk and plant milk in general is over 1000 years old.
Between the 8th and 12th century, recipes for almond milk were published with the intent that it be used to treat people with breathing difficulties. In Europe it became popular with Christians who would give up cow’s milk for Lent.
Soy milk recipes from China have been found dating back to the 1st through 3rd centuries. Coconut milk seems to have been produced 2,000 years ago and maybe as far back as 5,000 years. And the idea of calling these beverages milk is not new either, as that has been going on for centuries as well.
3. Even Ancient Romans Named Dogs Fido
No one names their dog Fido anymore, but it’s one of those stereotypical dog names that will always be associated with the animals. There’s even a cell phone company called Fido, so it’s well adopted. In terms of dog names, you can thank Abraham Lincoln for popularizing it among the American people.
Lincoln had a dog named Fido that was said to be with him pretty much all the time when he was in Illinois. The name itself comes from a Latin word meaning “faithful” or “trusty” which is, of course, a standard descriptor for a dog. So that seems like a reasonable origin for the dog name, right? But it does go deeper as the Romans were naming dogs Fido as well for pretty much the same reason.
2. Cheesecake is 4,000 Years Old
All the world seems to love a good cheesecake. Americans spend about $400 million per year on it. That’s remarkable and goes to show that you can’t beat a classic. That’s because cheesecake is about 4,000 years old. Cheese itself is over 8,000 years old so the innovation took some time. But consider that refrigeration isn’t even 200 years old and both of them have done a heck of a job surviving all this time against the odds.
Cheesecake originally came from Ancient Greece, in particular an island called Samos. Old cheesecake molds were found there by archaeologists. Old recipes from Greece are simple and not all that different from what you’d expect. Things like flour, honey and cheese were mixed together and baked.
Romans took the recipe and made some tweaks to it and for them it was more of a celebratory dish. As their empire spread, so too did the dessert and the many different ways to prepare it.
1. The First Fart Joke Dates Back 4,000 Years
In the world of humor there is an ill-defined barrier between low brow and high brow. Some people like to think certain kinds of jokes are beneath them. That they are low class and lacking in sophistication. But history has shown that low brow humor is enduring humor. Even Shakespeare, Chaucer, Mark Twain and Samuel Beckett made fart jokes. What makes us laugh today made people laugh all the way back to 1900 BC. That was when the first fart joke was made.
The oldest fart joke is, in fact, the oldest joke ever to be found in history and hails from Ancient Sumeria. Inscribed on a stone tablet was the line “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.” You can pause now to slap your knee and wipe the tears of hilarity from your eyes.
The gist of the joke seems to be a standard “women don’t fart” quip, which we can now appreciate has existed for 4,000 years. Feel free to use it as your next ice breaker.