Skype

Microsoft announced this past week that their once-popular Skype product would be gone in early May 2025 to focus on its its flagship Teams service. Skype was considered a pioneer in how people communicated online across borders before competition exploded from platforms like FaceTime, WhatsApp, Slack, and Zoom. 

But why was it called Skype?

The name "Skype" originates from "Sky peer-to-peer," which was shortened to "Skyper" and then further shortened to "Skype" because the domain name "Skyper.com" had already been taken.

Uriah Heep

Uriah Heep is an English rock band formed in London in 1969 that became one of the seminal hard rock acts of the early 1970s. 

Their progressive/art rock/heavy metal fusion featured a lot of keyboards and strong vocal harmonies including in the early years' the vocals of David Byron. 

Of their fifteen albums, it was Demons & Wizards that was the most successful. 

One of their radio hits was "Easy Livin'." They were often grouped with Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin as "The Big 4" of hard rock, and although they became more of a 1980s cult band in the United Kingdom and the United States, they still have a significant following and perform at arena-sized venues in the Balkans, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia and Scandinavia.

They have sold over 30 million albums worldwide with over 4 million sales in the U.S.A.

an illustration of Dickens' Uriah Heep

As a four-piece band, they went into the Lansdowne Studios in London under the name "Spice." They changed the name to Uriah Heep, a character from Charles Dickens' classic novel David Copperfield and the change occurred along with the new keyboard-based larger sound. According to biographer Kirk Blows, Dickens was in the news then (December 1969) due to it being the hundredth anniversary of his death.

The character of Uriah Heep is not a pleasant one being the antagonist for the second half of the novel and notable for his "cloying humility, obsequiousness, and insincerity, making frequent references to his own 'humbleness" and his name has become synonymous with being a "yes man."

Perhaps not the best image for a hard rock band, but nevertheless...  

20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection: Best of Uriah Heep

Band site: http://www.uriah-heep.com

Dressed to the Nines

If someone is described as being “dressed to the nines,” as being very well dressed and wearing your best clothes. But why "the nines?"

The idiom goes back to the 18th century when there were no off-the-shelf suits available. If you wanted a suit, you had it custom-made, especially for you. In those days, a suit included the waistcoat so it took nine yards of fabric to complete. back then being dressed to the nines basically meant you were wearing a suit.

Court suit and sword worn by Charles Dickens in 1870.
The design was strictly specified and the suit was made by Charles Smith and Sons.
This is the only known suit worn by Dickens to have survived.