æ was a single letter in the Old English alphabet, and was known as the “ashtree.”  Nowadays, it’s commonly referred to as the “ash.”

Because it’s definitely commonly referred to…..

A couple days ago, I mentioned how Martin Van Buren was the first US President to be born an American citizen. 

Though, his patriotism is all a facade.  Van Buren is the only* US President not to have spoken English as his first language.  He spoke Dutch.

*Depending on who you ask, Obama grew up speaking “Muslim”…

It’s kind of embarrassing, but I feel like sometimes people forget that the Bible wasn’t written in English.  The Old Testament was written mainly in Hebrew.  When Jerusalem was taken over by Babylonians, the Jews were exiled to Babylon, where they learned Aramaic.  For this reason, some of the books were written in Aramaic, until eventually the whole text was translated into Aramaic.  Then the Old Testament was translated into Septuagint Greek.  The New Testament was written in Greek, and used the Septuagint Greek translation when referencing the Old Testament.  From there, the Greek was translated into Latin, among other languages.  The first English Bible was translated from the Latin translation of the Greek translation.  Later, the King James Bible was written in English translated from the “original” Hebrew and Greek texts.  Since then more translations have been done, which claim to use the “original” manuscripts.  Nowadays, there are over 200,000 variations of the New Testament.  Yes, a variation could mean something as small as an omitted word, or an alternate spelling.  But when people cling to a text as literal, one word can have huge implications.  This background sets the stage for tomorrow’s post…

About the world’s heaviest pumpkin!!!!!!!

…

The popular font Times New Roman was introduced by the British newspaper The Times in 1931.  It was designed to replace the newspaper’s old font, known as Times Old Roman (duh).  I guess Times Old Roman became Times New Roman after discovering the Font-ain of Youth.   Give me a break.  Fonts just aren’t funny.