Orthodontic braces are a common fixture in today’s society and it is not rare to see classmates, coworkers, or family members with braces on their teeth. Both children and adults are often seen wearing braces and there are a wide variety of colors available to allow individual customization of them. Although braces are an everyday part of our culture, little is known about their development or origin. In ancient Greece both scholars Hippocrates and Aristotle talked about ways to fix dentals problems including the straightening of crooked teeth. There are a few men who history considers the fathers of orthodontics and they developed their ideas in the late 19th century. The first individual is Norman Kingsley who was a writer, artist, and sculptor but was primarily a dentist. In 1880 he wrote “Treatise on Oral Deformities” which was a major influence on dentistry.
Edward Angle, an American dentist from Pennsylvania at the turn of the 20th century is widely considered the creator of modern orthodontics and his system of classifying dental arches is used all over the world. In 1887 he wrote “Treatment of Malocclusion of the Teeth”. This volume was revised and republished several times and is the cornerstone of modern orthodontics. Angle served as a professor at a couple of medical colleges and in 1900 founded The School of Orthodontia in St. Louis, Missouri. 
Though the term “fossil” – a derivation of the Latin word for “dug up” — was first used in 16th century France, the petrified impressions of centuries old flora and fauna — including some of what later come to be known as dinosaurs — have been known to man, though wholly misunderstood, since the dawn of civilization.
For thousands of years in China, the gigantic remains of prehistoric lizards and mammals were used as the principle justification for the existence of dragons and even prescribed as a folk medicine. Meanwhile, in the West, scholars from Aristotle to Leonardo da Vinci concluded that fossils were indeed proof of ancient life, while less sound conclusions — such as that fossils were evidence of a long extinct race of giants and the Biblical flood — were propagated by thinkers seeking to reconcile natural science with theology.
One such theorist was the first curator Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, Robert Plot, who in 1676 sketched what he thought to be the thighbone of a colossal man. Though his initial supposition was incorrect, Plot’s discovery would eventually lead to the classification of the first dinosaur genus ever to be categorized by man: megalosaurus.
Over the next century, the number of accidentally discovered fossils from around the world soared upwards, until it became clear that the hugely proportioned remains could not belong to any extant species. In 1796, French naturalist Georges Cuvier was the first to put forward that such animals had been “destroyed by some kind of catastrophe” and were something heretofore unknown to the human race: extinct. Not did his work fly in the face of creationism and a supposed Great Chain of Being dictated by God alone, but also laid the foundations for the theory of evolution that would soon be popularized by Charles Darwin in the second half of the 19th century.
Cuvier spent the rest of his career cataloguing as many of the bygone creatures as he could locate, including the first pterodactyl and mosasaur, as well as Robert Plot’s aforementioned megalosaurus. While he did speculate that there had indeed been an “age of reptiles” before man when giant saurians roamed the Earth, it wasn’t until 1841 that British scientist Richard Plot, drawing Culvier’s conclusion, realized that some fossils were so different that they deserved a distinct name. He subsequently dubbed this kingdom of extinct reptiles “Dinosauria” – meaning “terrible lizards” – and cemented the credibility of a new scientific field — paleontology – in the minds of the general public.
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Beginning in the 12th century, Arab physicians began to prescribe their patients a most unorthodox remedy: the ground remains of mummies procured from Egyptian tombs.
Mummy powder proved so profitable that soon after its introduction, Egyptian tombs were ransacked not only for the riches they might contain, but also for bodies that might be processed into the expensive folk medicine. It wasn’t long before the practice of applying mummy powder was incorporated into medieval Europe’s catalog of dubious medical practices. By the 16th century, the product had become so commonplace in both Europe and the Middle East that the once seemingly endless supply of authentic, mummified Egyptian cadavers quite literally dried up.
Mummy powder, however, was not the only everyday use of the Egyptian dead that arose before the dawn of modern archaeological preservation. In the 16th and 17th centuries, pulverized mummy was the key ingredient in a popular shade of brown artist’s pigment, and preserved human and animal remains of Egyptian origin were used in the production of this “mummy brown” paint until the early 20th century.
Whether this statement was merely jest on the part of the American literary icon, well known for his sense of humor, has been the subject of debate ever since it was published. What is known, however, is that the supply of authentic Egyptian corpses by the beginning of the 1800s was so small only that upper crust Europeans could afford to purchase one whole. In the wake of Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt, it became vogue amongst the aristocracy to hold “unwrapping parties,” where carefully preserved corpses would be haphazardly stripped of their bandages, so that revelers could gaze upon the millennia-old face concealed beneath them. Small burial ornaments concealed in the linens would then be dispensed to partygoers as souvenirs, while exposure to air caused the delicate bodies to crumble into dust, never to be seen again.
We have all been told to “sleep tight” at some point in our lives by a relative and we know they are telling us that they hope we get a good night’s sleep but where does that phrase come from? As with most phrases and sayings there are a couple of different ideas on the actual origin of the phrase and the less exciting one almost always is the most accurate. One of the most widely accepted origins is the days when a mattress was supported on the frame by a series of ropes tied across the frame similar to the hammock we are familiar with. This rope platform would support the mattress which was usually made of straw, pine needles, or reeds and the ropes supporting the bed would loosen and sag over time and they would have to be tightened in order to provide decent sleep. According to some, the ropes would be loosened in order to get rid of guests who had overstayed their welcome. Beds like this did exist which is not in dispute and there are some examples on display at various museums and historical houses. The phrase “sleep tight” referring to making sure the ropes were tight is an explanation often given by tour guides and is supposedly ‘common knowledge’ among historians.
The second explanation is that the phrase “sleep tight” is a holdover from the 18th and 19th centuries when tightly meant soundly, well, or properly according to the Oxford English Dictionary. So according to them the saying “sleep tight” is the equivalent of saying sleep well and does not refer to a specific type of bed at all. The phrase appears in the mid-19th century at a point when the rope style beds were not as common. This explanation is not as interesting or exciting which probably makes it correct since that is the way it seems to work with the phrases we know well but don’t really know where they came from. 
With summer comes the baseball season and all the excitement of following a national pastime with a long history. The games and the players are closely followed and allusions are always made to great plays and champions of previous games. We may also follow with curiosity how the spectacle has altered over time and how the uniforms of our favored players have changed as well.
Early baseball teams distinguished themselves from one another by the color of their stockings as opposed to distinct markings or insignia on their outfits. This did change over time as characteristics such as checks or pinstripes, monogramming, scripted lettering, numbers, player’s names, color trims, and other details evolved and were incorporated into the costumes. Over the last century the advent of television and its impact on popular culture has added to the hype of sports brands and their marketing. These influences have promoted some of the changes in the baseball uniform and extended the characteristics of the uniform further into our daily culture. Today baseball fans are extensions of their favorite teams by wearing their favored uniforms and exhibiting to the world the strength of their association with a monogram, a color, a number. 
