The use of Ms. as a title for a woman who is either married or not goes back a lot further than you may think. The Oxford University Press found an example printed in a newspaper in 1885.

Ever since “Ms.” emerged as a marriage-neutral alternative to “Miss” and “Mrs.” in the 1970s, linguists have been trying to trace the origins of this new honorific. It turns out that “Ms.” is not so new after all. The form goes back at least to the 1760s, when it served as an abbreviation for “Mistress” (remember Shakespeare’s Mistress Quickly?) and for “Miss,” already a shortened form of “Mistress,” which was also sometimes spelled “Mis.” The few early instances of “Ms.” carried no particular information about matrimonial status (it was used for single or for married women) and no political statement about gender equality. Eventually “Miss” and “Mrs.” emerged as the standard honorifics for women, just as “Mr.” was used for men (“Master,” from which “Mr.” derives, was often used for boys, though it’s not common today). While “Miss” was often prefixed to the names of unmarried women or used for young women or girls, it could also refer to married women. And “Mrs.,” typically reserved for married women, did not always signal marital status (for example, widows and divorced women often continued to use “Mrs.”). The spread of “Ms.” over the past forty years both simplifies and complicates the title paradigm.

But the term goes back even further, as Ms. was used on a tombstone in 1767 for Ms. Sarah Spooner, which may be a case of saving room. Link -via TYWKIWDBI

These parakeets belong to Inner Huckleberry, who submitted this rad photo to Cute Overload, where you can get a closer look. Link

The following is an article from Uncle John's Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader.

Everyone fantasizes about accidentally uncovering a treasure. Pompeii and Herculaneum were such treasures. They existed for a thousand years until, in one brief moment, they disappeared. Here's the story of how they were lost... and found.

(Image credit: Flickr users Simon & Vicki)

VESUVIUS BLOWS

Two thousand years ago, the prosperous cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum thrived near Rome, 10 miles from the foot of the volcano Mount Vesuvius. Vesuvius hadn't exploded for over 1,000 years; no one even knew it was a volcano. Then on August 24 in the year 79 A.D., it erupted, completely burying both cities under mountains of ash-Pompeii and Herculaneum were lost.

Mount Vesuvius continued to erupt sporadically over the centuries that followed, each time adding to the volcanic debris that covered the former town sites; each layer leaving the two cities more hidden than before. Four hundred years later, the Roman Empire collapsed, and legends about the two cities went with it. For 15 centuries, they lay forgotten and undisturbed, their stories untold.  Then clues about their existence began to turn up. For example, around 1594, a Roman architect named Domenico Fontana was digging a canal to supply water to a rich man's home when workmen uncovered pieces of ruined buildings and a few ancient coins. But nothing much came of the discovery.

RUMORS OF TREASURE

(Image credit: Flickr user Bill McIntyre)

In 1707 part of Italy came under Austrian rule, and Prince d'Elboeuf came to command the cavalry. He heard rumors of treasures being brought up from underground, so he promptly purchased a large parcel of land in the immediate vicinity. Over the next 30 year, he had shafts and tunnels dug and uncovered vases, statues, and even a number of polished marble slabs-once the floor of the theater in Herculaneum-all of which he used to decorate his villa.

Word of the prince's finds spread, and other treasure hunters came looking. When the first skeleton-complete with bronze and silver coins-was unearthed in 1748, treasure fever hit hard. For the next several years, artifacts were continually looted from the area. But it wasn't until 1763, when workers unearthed an inscription reading "res publica Pompeianorum"-meaning "the commonwealth of Pompeians"-that the ancient city was identified.

American comic books mostly concentrate on adventure, especially the adventures of super heroes. Japanese manga magazines, on the other hand, tackle a wide variety of subjects that you'd never expect to be shown in graphic form. The magazine called Young Jump published a manga version of the history of the Ig Nobel Prizes (covered previously at Neatorama). Only excerpts are online, and the text is in Japanese, but you can get a idea of how wacky the story is. The above panel shows one of the developers of the Bow-Lingual, a device that translates a dog's barks, accepting an Ig Nobel prize along with his son dressed as a dog. Link to part one; link to part two.

Have you ever seen a squirrel like this? You might, in the forests of India. This is Ratufa indica, or the Malabar Giant Squirrel. They grow up to 16 inches long, and that doesn't count the tail! Learn more about the Malabar Giant Squirrel at The Ark in Space. Link

(Image credit: Wikimedia user Bishancm)

When is a zebra not a zebra? When it's a zebra crossing, but that's only part of the story. A public safety advertising campaign in Russia hopes to draw motorists' attention to pedestrians crossing the road by using zebras.

Only, police in the Russian capital could not get any zebras - so they painted black stripes on white horses instead.

They paraded the horses over crossings, forcing motorists to slow down and read road safety messages.

Thousands of pedestrians die in road accidents in Russia every year.

Perhaps they got the idea from a zoo in Gaza. Link to story. Link to video. -via Arbroath

Previously: The Only Zebra in Gaza

This morning I cooked a pound of bacon for breakfast. I'm glad I didn't go with the sausage instead, because it was only later that I found out that today is International Bacon Day!

International Bacon Day or Bacon Day is an unofficial observance, often celebrated on the Saturday before US Labor Day  (the first Monday of September). Some cultures, however, celebrate on December 30th, while others celebrate the day on the first Saturday in January after the new year.

Bacon day celebrations typically include social gatherings during which participants create and consume dishes containing bacon, including bacon-themed breakfasts, lunches, dinners, desserts, and drinks. Bacon Day gatherings may also include the consumption of soy bacon or turkey bacon.

How will you celebrate this auspicious occasion? Link -Thanks, Clarabelle!

Bacon mania is nothing new -bacon skates were in use in 1931!

So, yes, this photo was taken in November 1931 in Chehalis, Washington at the town's Egg Festival. The occasion was a try to break the world record for largest omelette. Two women tied bacon to their feet and skated around the warming skillet to grease it. Then a team of chefs cracked and beat 7,200 eggs and made a breakfast delight.

See more pictures at The Atlantic. Link -via Everlasting Blort

(Image credit: The University of Washington Libraries)

Two goats were stranded for two days when they wandered onto the supports beneath a 60-foot-high train bridge connecting the Signal Peak coal mine to Broadview, Montana. Sandy Church of the Rimrock Humane Society answered the call to rescue the goats.

“We have absolutely no idea how or why these little critters would go out on this bridge,” Church said. “The only thing we can figure is it happened at night and they were unsure of their surroundings. Once morning came, they were too scared to walk back where they came from.”

Church called associates and brainstormed how to get the animals down. Freeman kept watch over the animals, while the deputy handled traffic.

Byron Kinn, surface superintendent for Signal Peak Energy, came to the bridge, checked out the situation and said the mine had equipment that could reach the animals. Mine boss John DeMichiei signed off on the plan and the goats were rescued by about 1 p.m., Church said.

http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/article_de41e93c-b62c-11df-8fb3-001cc4c03286.html -via J-Walk Blog

The Rimrock Humane Society posted a video of the rescue. Link

Happy Labor Day Weekend! If you've been busy getting ready for relaxing holiday, you might have missed some of our exclusive offerings this week, so here they are again.

We learned some Animal Name Origins, courtesy of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.

From the Museum of Possibilities, Steven Johnson expounded on our habit of dining in our cars in Driven to Eat.

Beer Facts from Around the World illustrated how, despite our differences, people in most countries love beer.

From mental_floss magazine, we had Meet the Beatles Covers about how four of their iconic album covers came about.

At NeatoBambino, Tiffany has some advice on Enrolling Your Kids In Chinese School, like how to and why you should.

Thanks for lending your creativity to Mal and Chad's Fill in the Bubble Frenzy! Congratulations to Sheepishlion, who filled in the bubble with "Echo!" and won a cool Cthulhu as a Teenager shirt.

At the Neatorama Facebook page, you'll find a lot more than just links. For example, dozens of people shared fond and not-so-fond memories of their first car.

If you're looking for some topical reading for Labor Day, may I suggest Meet the People who Make Your Clothes and Luddites and the Original Rage Against the Machine. Of course, you'll find more at the Best of Neatorama page. Have a great weekend!

Unspoken social rules make normal interaction with other people difficult -especially with someone you really don't want to interact with in the first place. Or if you like the other person, but have nothing to say. And there are other situations that can become painfully awkward. You've been there. I certainly have. Link

People (and cats) love Roombas, but they were always better at entertaining us than cleaning our floors. Two new competitors, the Neato (for carpets) and the Evolution Mint (for bare floors) clean in a way far different from the Roomba's random movements.

Eventually it cleans every part of the room—but the anti-Roomba crowd claims that it does so unevenly, going over some parts of a room many times while cleaning other spots just once. A more systematic approach could yield greater efficiency: If a robot cleaned each part of the floor just once, it would have a lot more battery power to clean more forcefully and could clean more quickly, to boot.

That's the theory behind both the Neato and the Mint. "We clean your floor the way a Zamboni would, or the way you would," says Max Safai, the CEO of Neato Robotics. The Neato uses several different sensors to create an internal map of a room. Based on this map, it will first clean the room's perimeter before going back and forth within the perimeter in a systematic way.

See videos of both the Neato and the Mint in action at Slate. Link

(YouTube link)

Wait for it.... -via Arbroath

Margarine is a substitute for butter, which makes it a fighting word for the dairy industry. Butter producers and margarine producers battled back and forth for the better part of a century to capture the market for spreading our bread.

Butter was big business, and the notion that a cheaper substitute, even one made in part with milk, might storm the market terrified dairy farmers. They didn’t take the threat lying down, though, and convinced legislators to tax margarine at a rate of two cents per pound—no small sum in the late 19th century. Dairy farmers also successfully lobbied for restrictions that banned the use of yellow dyes to make margarine look more appetizing. By 1900, artificially colored butter was contraband in 30 U.S. states.

Several states took even more extreme measures to turn consumers away from margarine—they required the product to be dyed an unappealing pink color.

The margarine industry fought back, however. Read the whole sordid story at mental_floss. Link

New York artist Sally Davies bought a plain hamburger Happy Meal from McDonalds. She didn't eat it, but took pictures of it every day -for 137 days so far. The project will likely continue at least until the meal starts to look different. Link -via Cynical-C