I wonder how people got the idea in the first place.

Yes, it's bogus, as I explained in the intro, but it has been a widely held belief for thousands of years.

I live in Urbana (Champaign) and teach at the University of Illinois, so we're pretty close.

Thanks for the link Alex. Neatorama readers are most welcome to come and ask questions at Beautiful English any time, and some have taken advantage of the offer already with really interesting and challenging queries.

I hear ya talkin diva.

Modest attempt at humor.

Not trowels. What do I mean? Hoes?

Garden tools, right. The beetle bodies are shovels and the heads are trowels.

I know what you mean, Tim. I'm very queasy about the idea of hunting narwhals, even if you are from an indigenous people.

REALLY disturbing. Yeccchh.

It could also have been a certain amount of social awkwardness. People didn't usually refer to women by their first names. It was impolite. And he couldn't call her Mrs. Charbonneau when there were two of them...

People with a really low sense of humor can check out my alternative interpretation at my home blog.

That would be great wouldn't it? Bringing back Kite's invention for wilderness survival use. Obviously the Leyden jar wouldn't work too well in a backpack, but there are better battery packs available now -- ones that aren't made of glass.

That's like, if somebody said "I discovered a great new restaurant," and somebody else said, "No you didn't. The owners already knew where it was." It's two different uses of the word.

"the kangaroo was not ‘discovered’ by Cook. It was already well known by the local residents at the time of Cook’s arrival in 1770."

Well, duh!