Kilroy Was Here

The WWII generation is getting smaller, but they will know about the phrase "Kilroy was here" which was well known during and after WWII.  But for younger readers, the phrase and its origin might be unknown.

Its origins are debated, but the phrase and the distinctive accompanying doodle of a bald-headed man (sometimes depicted as having a few hairs) with a prominent nose peeking over a wall with the fingers of each hand clutching the wall — became associated with American soldiers during World War II.

It became what we would term today a "meme" though that term didn't appear until 1976.

The legend was that "Kilroy" was a shipyard worker during the war who worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy. His job was to go around and check on the number of rivets completed. He would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn't be counted twice. When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would erase the mark.

To keep things more honest, he started to put his check mark on each job he inspected, but added 'KILROY WAS HERE' in king-sized letters next to the check, and eventually also added the sketch of the face with the long nose peering over the fence and that became part of the Kilroy message.

Kilroy's inspection "trademark" was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships the shipyard produced. It connected with servicemen and they picked it up and spread it all over Europe and the South Pacific.

Before the war's end, "Kilroy" had been everywhere from Fort Dix, New Jersey, to Berlin and Tokyo. It was somewhat mysterious but clear that Kilroy had "been there first."

At the war's end, in 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Franklin Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam conference.  The first user was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide (in Russian), "Who is Kilroy?"

In 1946 the American Transit Association, through its radio program, "Speak to America ," sponsored a nationwide contest to find the real Kilroy, offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself to be the genuine article.

Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroy from Halifax , Massachusetts had evidence of his identity. To help prove his authenticity, James Kilroy brought along officials from the shipyard and some of the riveters. He won the trolley car, which he gave to his nine children as a Christmas gift and set it up as a playhouse in the Kilroy yard in Halifax , Massachusetts.

In the United Kingdom, the graffiti is known as "Mr Chad" or just "Chad", and the Australian equivalent to the phrase is "Foo was here". 

In the 1950s, even non-soldiers took up the phrase and added the graffiti logo in unlikely places. Legend has it that it appears atop Mt. Everest, on the Statue of Liberty, the underside of the Arc de Triomphe and that it is scrawled in the dust on the moon.

It was engraved into the WWII Memorial in Washington, DC.

The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread

Although it is fading from usage these days, the phrase that something is "the greatest thing since sliced bread" is a fairly common idiom in America meaning something is a great new invention.

The actual sliced bread was sold first in 1928. Before that, most people baked their own bread, or bought from bakers in solid loaves.

Then along comes Otto Frederick Rohwedder, a jeweler from Davenport, Iowa, who had been working for years to perfect his bread slicer.

When he tried selling it to bakeries, they rejected it claiming that pre-sliced bread would get stale and dry before it could be eaten.

He tried some solutions like a crazy idea to keep slices together with hatpins and then hit upon wrapping the sliced bread in waxed paper.

He finally got a baker in Chillicothe, Missouri to try out the slicing and wrapping machine.They ran ads in the daily newspaper "Announcing: The Greatest Forward Step in the Baking Industry Since Bread was Wrapped — Sliced Kleen Maid Bread."

Sales were great. Customers loved the convenience and the consistently sized slices.

Please and Thank You

In English, we say these words all the time (hopefully!) and we teach our children them at an early age, but did you ever wonder where these two courtesies originated?


I discovered the etymologies of “please” and “thank you”in an unlikely place - a book titled Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber . Graeber is an anthropologist and the book goes against conventional wisdom by showing that before there was money, there was debt.

But, on to the words...

Our English “please” is short for the phrase “if you please” and “if it pleases you to do this.” It is the same in most European languages (French si il vous plait, Spanish por favor).

Graeber says that its literal meaning is “you are under no obligation to do this.”  When someone says "Would you please hold the door open for me?" you are under no obligation to do so. Well, maybe there a "social obligation" but this little informal order isn't quite an order with that please attached to it.

I would not have guessed that the English, “thank you” derives from “think.  In fitting with Graeber's actual book topic,  the original idea was to mean “I will remember what you did for me” and in other languages (Portuguese obrigado for example) it is frequently like the English “much obliged” which does imply that "I am in your debt.”

The French merci is even more obvious coming from “mercy” (as in begging for mercy).

Related phrases are “you’re welcome,” or “it’s nothing” (French de rien, Spanish de nada) suggests that there is no debt.

Graeber points out that in history “please” and “thank you” only came into common usgae  with the commercial revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and mostly among the middle classes. It became part of the languages of shops, and offices, and later spread to general usage.

Franz Ferdinand

Franz Ferdinand is a Glasgow-based indie rock band formed in 2002. The band is composed of Alex Kapranos (lead vocals and guitar), Bob Hardy (bass guitar), Nick McCarthy (rhythm guitar, keyboards and backing vocals), and Paul Thomson (drums, percussion and backing vocals).

The band's name origin is probably better known more Europeans than Americans. Franz Ferdinand (18 December 1863 – 28 June 1914) was an Archduke of Austria-Este, Austro-Hungarian and Royal Prince of Hungary and of Bohemia, and from 1889 until his death, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. His assassination in Sarajevo precipitated Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia. This caused the Central Powers (including Germany and Austria-Hungary) and the Allies (countries allied with Serbia or Serbia's allies) to declare war on each other, starting World War I.

Kapranos has said in an interview that they viewed his assassination as a turning point - "perhaps the real start of the 20th century."

The band first experienced chart success when their second single, "Take Me Out"from their debut album, Franz Ferdinand. They won the 2004 Mercury Music Prize, and two BRIT Awards in 2005 for Best British Group and Best British Rock Act. NME named Franz Ferdinand as their Album of the Year. From the album, three top-ten singles were released: "Take Me Out", "The Dark of the Matinée", and "This Fire".

With their three studio albums, the band sold over three million albums worldwide in 2009. Their latest studio album Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action
is out later this month.

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Hookers

A euphemism is a generally innocuous word or expression that is used in place of one that may be found offensive or suggest something unpleasant.

A "sex worker" might be considered one euphemism for a "whore."  The "oldest profession" has attracted a number of terms: "Prostitute", "whore", "strumpet", and "harlot." A "streetwalker" solicits customers on the streets or in public places, while a "call girl" makes appointments by phone.

The use of the word "prostitute" without specifying sex is commonly assumed to refer to a female, so terms like "male prostitute" or "male escort" are therefore often used to identify males. Those offering services to female customers are commonly known as "gigolos" and those offering services to male customers are "hustlers" or "rent boys."

Another term for a prostitute is hooker. One popular origin story connects "hooker" with Joseph Hooker, a Union general in the American Civil War. His personal reputation was as a hard-drinking ladies' man, and his headquarters was known for parties and gambling, and his name is often associated with the slang term for prostitute, But the word "hooker" has been documented to appear with that meaning in print well before he became a public figure.

The more likely etymology of the term is from the concentration of prostitutes around the shipyards and ferry terminal of the Corlear's Hook area of Manhattan in the 1820s. These prostitutes came to be referred to as "hookers".

If you want to make a field trip, the original location of Corlears Hook is now obscured by a shoreline landfill. It was near the east end of the present pedestrian bridge over the FDR Drive near Cherry Street, but you can make a trip to Corlear's Hook Park at the intersection of Jackson and Cherry Streets along the East River Drive.

To class up this post a bit, here is Femmes de Maison
by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, c. 1893–1895

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