Today’s first archival tidbit comes from What’s the Difference?

After the commonwealth of Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, several northwestern Virginia counties went ahead and seceded from the seceders, choosing instead to stay in the Union. Those counties formed the state of West Virginia, feeling no compunction to keep the commonwealth label.

Ever wonder where the term “Uncle Sam” came from? Well, we did — yesterday, in fact — over an early-morning bowl of Trader Joe’s whole-wheat “o”-shaped cereal. (Nasty stuff, that.) After choking down our nourishment, we resolved to find out.

Interestingly enough, the most widely-accepted story of the term’s origin (there are several) involves similarly inedible rations. During the War of 1812, a New York meat-packer named “Uncle” Samuel Wilson had a supply contract with the Army. He shipped the meat, salted, in barrels marked “U.S.,” which the soldiers and teamsters who transported them joked were the initials of “Uncle” Sam himself. So the government-supplied meat — and thenceforth, anything else marked “U.S.” — was said to be courtesy of Uncle Sam.

If you don’t believe us, just ask the 87th Congress of the United States, who in 1961 adopted a resolution “saluting Uncle Sam Wilson of Troy, New York, as the progenitor of America’s National symbol of Uncle Sam.” Another story, about which neither the 87th nor any other Congress has rendered its opinion, posits that “Uncle Sam” was a creation by Irish immigrants who referred to the US by its Gaelic acronym, SAM; “United States of America” translates to Stáit Aontaithe Mheiriceá in Gaelic.

Also notable: the recruitment poster featuring the best-known image of Uncle Sam (above) was painted in 1917, and is derivative of a British recruitment poster from 1914 (below).

According to ShopperTrak, this upcoming Saturday will be the busiest shopping day of 2006. “Super Saturday,” they call it. I will continue using “December 23rd.” Here’s the complete list:

1. Saturday, December 23
2. Friday, November 24 (Black Friday)
3. Saturday, December 16
4. Friday, December 22
5. Saturday, December 9
6. Tuesday, December 26
7. Thursday, December 21
8. Saturday, December 2
9. Saturday, November 25
10. Wednesday, December 20

Plan your last minute shopping accordingly. Or just print out little pictures of what you plan to get that special someone, stuff that in an envelope, and hit the stores at a more convenient time in ‘07.

One memorable gift my wife recently received was a back massager, from an agency her company works with. It’s surprisingly fantastic. Anyone get any really impressive — or, better yet, really lousy — corporate gifts this year?

It’s often said that our schools are not teaching enough about the history of facial hair among presidential candidates, so it’s good to see some heroes out there who are willing to present this very important info. A few quick facts:

• The 1860 election is often remembered as the one that set the trend of presidents with facial hair. However, while Lincoln did have a beard by the time of his inauguration, he was actually clean shaven at the time of the election. But by 1864, Lincoln had a full beard and won again.
• William Howard Taft was the last man with facial hair to become President.
• Thomas Dewey was the last major candidate to have facial hair. Dewey and his mustache lost to Truman in 1948. Since then, every serious candidate has been clean shaven.

Link via Neatorama

Funny/disgusting shirt idea from Glarkware. I imagine it’s not the sort of diet Jared can endorse, but it definitely made me grin. Link via Boingboing.

It’s time for another whimsical Tuesday Turnip Google search wherein I type a random phrase and we see what kind of interesting factoids “turn-up.”

Today I typed in “common 100 years ago” – unearthing the following curious entries:

• Niacin deficiency, known as pellagra, was common 100 years ago but today is extremely rare.
• Smoking is no more acceptable than chewing tobacco and spitting on the floor - a habit that was very common 100 years ago and would horrify people now.
• Plans have been announced to save the British short story. The genre, common 100 years ago, is now, like the red squirrel, a seriously endangered species, according to its supporters.
• The count began in 1900, when ornithologist Frank Chapman organized a bird census to protest the indiscriminate shooting that was common 100 years ago.
• Essay tests were common 100 years ago, but they were too expensive to give to everybody everywhere. That’s why they were replaced by machine-scored multiple choice tests.
• “Some seven men form an association”, in the rarely-performed Gilbert & Sullivan operetta Utopia Limited, is often quoted by legal writers as evidence that corporate fraud was as common 100 years ago as it is today.
• While ‘one-stop shopping‘ was quite common 100 years ago with general stores dotting the landscape, we have slowly evolved to a retail dynamic that specializes along category lines.
• Rather than roll dice, toss coins, or pick balls from urns–methods that were common 100 years ago–today they often use random numbers drawn from a table or generated by a computer.
• Single parenting was just as common 100 years ago as today [ed note: say wha?]
• Illegitimacy and extra marital affairs were just as common 100 years ago as they are today, our forebears were just more adept at keeping them secret.

Forget Nostradamus! If you’re looking for some serious insight into the future, perhaps we should all be turning to Dime Magazine, a basketball/lifestyle publication that seems to be far better at predicting the future than any crystal ball. Case in point: Their August cover featuring a glossy pic of the Denver Nuggets’ Carmelo Anthony putting up his dukes and talking freely about how he’s been training to box in the off-season. Of course, as AdFreak puts it, the conceit is“somewhat embarrassing in light of Anthony’s sucker punch on Mardy Collins during the Knicks/Nuggets game on Saturday night.”  In any case, with their newfound credibility, I for one will be inspecting Dime closely for any insight they have on the ’08 Presidential Election, what lottery numbers to buy, and where I’ve placed my missing socks. Tip via AdFreak.

Seeing Apocalypto and its cast of dentally-bejeweled and cranially-reshaped Mayans got me thinking about body modification nowadays — how far have we come since then? Perhaps that’s a matter of opinion, so take a look at some of these contemporary body mods and tell us what you think.

Extraocular implant

An extraocular implant is a cosmetic implant involving a tiny piece of decorative jewelry which is implanted within the superficial, interpalpebral conjunctiva of the human eye. This procedure was developed in 2002 by the Netherlands Institute for Innovative Ocular Surgery and is marketed there under the name JewelEye. The procedure is completely legal in the Netherlands, as long as it is performed by a licensed ophthalmologist under sterile conditions. (But somehow, its being “completely legal in the Netherlands” doesn’t make me feel any less squeamish about it.)

Breast ironing
As much as this reminds us of female genital mutilation, the women of Cameroon who do this to their daughters do it for a supposedly altruistic reason: to protect the girls from early marriage or, worse, rape. The breasts are flattened in an attempt to make them less sexually attractive, and the grisly thing is that there’s no one way to do it — some practitioners use hot irons, others grinding stones, pestles or belts. A recent study by a German NGO has found that one in four Cameroonian women have undergone the modification, which has probably contributed to elevated levels of breast cancer in that country.

Neck elongation

A dying tradition among some Southeast Asian and African women (notably the Padung people), these so-called “giraffe women” begin adorning their necks with heavy coils at five years old, which are augmented until they weigh up to 11 pounds. Various origins of the custom are cited, ranging from protection against tiger attacks to symbols of wealth and status, but nowadays the Padung work foremost as tourist attractions. (Before a recent police raid, there had been charges the exotic tribespeople on show were being held virtual prisoners by Thai entrepreneurs. Most of the Padaung are in three border camps in the northwestern province of Mae Hong Son. An estimated 10,000 Thais and foreigners visit those camps each year, paying an entrance fee that allows them to photograph and mingle with the smiling, colorfully attired long-necked women and girls.)

Scarification
This technique uses scar tissue produced by the body to form designs, pictures, or words in the skin. Scars are most often formed by cutting or branding the skin. Therefore, unlike tattoos, scarifications are a product of one’s own body. Of course, scarification isn’t nearly as popular as tattooing, so if you’re looking into it, you’ll really have to search to find someone qualified to do it. (Mental_floss tip of the day: your frat buddy who bends metal clothes hangers into greek letters and heats them on the stovetop? He’s probably not qualified.)

Tongue forking
The tongue is divided from the tip toward the back of the tongue for about 3 to 5 cm (1-2 inches), according to patient preference. The result is a bisected tongue, not unlike that of a lizard’s. Who on earth would ever have something like this done? Just ask Eric “the Lizardman” Sprague, who also sports sharpened teeth and full-body green scale tattoos.

Today’s second archival tidbit comes from our world famous Swimsuit Issue (volume 2, issue 5):

Picasso sometimes painted in the nude and left his door open so that the women in his boarding house could admire him.

Critiquing Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” choice has been an annual sport since the feature began in 1927. Judging from its controversial choices, it’s obviously not a popularity contest: 1938’s winner was Adolph Hitler and 1939’s was Joseph Stalin; Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini won in 1979. But this year’s “person” may be the magazine’s most controversial choice yet — partly because, in this humble blog’s occasionally-esteemed opinion, it’s a total cop-out.

The winner? “You.” As in the “You” of YouTube and the implied “You” of MySpace, Wikipedia and all the social networking/”You”-ser generated content sites that have transformed the internet in the past year or so.

“It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes,” says Time magazine’s Lev Grossman. “It’s a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter.”

Time’s criteria for choosing their annual person (or “person,” in this case) is that “who most affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill.” So, hmm — under those criteria, perhaps “You” could be considered a legitimate contender. But really, in a year so filled with horrible, world-rocking tragedies, they picked … the internet?