Pooh Stinks in a Rose Bed Too

"Reprinted from "Contrary by Popular Belief" by Joey Green (Broadway Books), with permission. Copyright 2005 by Joey Green. For a copy of the book, go to this Amazon link.

As revealed in previous posts in this series, most people would be surprised just how much of our written history is nothing but a bunch of ... well ... POOH!

Some of the facts we've been taught reek so bad, not even a bouquet of roses can provide relief for the olfactory senses.

So be careful where you step and you may want to use some clothes pins because some of these are real stinkers!

{ Dungarees Did Not Originate in America }
Dungaree cloth was developed in Dungri, India, a suburb of then Bombay, as early as the 17th century. Denim, also developed in the 17th century, originated in Nimes, France. Called serge de Nimes in Europe, the name was pronounced as denim in the U.S.

In the 1860s, a Jewish tailor named levi Strauss, who had been making overalls from canvas for miners in California's gold rush, switched to denim, dyeing the fabric indigo blue to hide stains and making the sturdy pants even more popular.

{ Never Never Land is a Real Place }
Never Never Land is Australian slang for the Australian outback. Visitors to those vast, desolate regions vowed "never never" to return.

Depicted in the 1908 book We of the Never never, by Mrs. Aeneas Gunn, the outback southeast of Darwin became known as Never Never Land.

Peter Pan, the play by James M. Barrie, opened in London in 1904 and followed Peter's adventures in Neverland (not Never Never Land). The 1911 book version (originally titled Peter and Wendy) and Walt Disney's 1953 animated movie Peter Pan also refer to Neverland.

People have come to incorrectly use the names "Neverland" and "Never Never Land" interchangeably.

(Any reference to a certain ranch owned by a certain low-life scumbag child molester has been omitted to respectively honor his passing.)

{ Camels Do Not Store Water in Their Humps }

Camels, known by the nomadic desert dwelling bedoins as the ship of the desert, do not have a reservoir for liquids in their hump. The hump is a food reserve made up primarily of fat.

By storing most of its body fat in the hump, the camel can lose heat freely from the rest of its body without having to perspire much, thus conserving water.

A camel can go for days or even months without water because they retain ureaa and do not start sweating until their body temperatures reach 115 degrees Farenheit.

{ The Statue of Liberty is Not in New York City }

The Statue of Liberty actually stands in New Jersey on Bedloe's Island, which was renamed Liberty Island in 1956.

Although the island sits in New York Harbor, it is within Jersey City's waters. An 1834 compact with the State of New Jersey gives the State of New York control over the island.

Sales tax charged on the island and state income taxes paid by the families who live there go to the State of New York. A Jersey City power company provides the power to the island.

(The above POOH was "borrowed" from the Random House publication "Contrary to Popular Belief" by Joey Green.)

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