Things that crossed my mind

Back in the 19th century when French was considered sophisticated, English speakers would occasionally use French words or phrases while speaking. So, saying "pardon my French" was a polite way to apologize for using a foreign term that might cause confusion. Sort of humble bragging — "sorry I speak this fancy language you don't know!"

No! A cherry is a drupe, or stone fruit, meaning it has a fleshy part on the outside, and a pit (stone) containing the seed on the inside. Other examples of drupes are plums, peaches, nectarines and even avocado!

This one makes me a bit sad! I thought all the berries are a happy little group of friends; I mean, cherry even rhymes with berry! Super sad and super confusing. This is when I also found out that there is a difference between scientific and culinary classification. Super duper confusing.

Apparently, having a booklet that holds a bunch of entry/exit stamps and visas is deemed quite useful, especially if one travels a lot. Booklets also come with a number of security features (watermarks, special threads, holograms, RFID chips, etc.) which makes them globally recognizable and machine-readable. It would be hard to pack all of this into a tiny, thin piece of plastic like a card. Also: not all countries have fully electronic border systems, the chip can't store visas or stamps (which act as physical proof of movement), and humans haven't actually agreed globally on a singular, chip-only system.

Mosquito bites you, starts filling itself with your blood, and during that process injects saliva into your skin — that saliva is what triggers the immune response that makes it itch.

Also, did you know that only female mosquitoes feed on our blood?

No, not really. Thanks to strict security screening, crew training and in-flight protocols, violent incidents are extremely rare, let alone those ending with someone's death.

A lion was not an animal you could see roaming around in Europe, yet a bunch of noble families and kingdoms chose it as a symbol of power, courage, and authority. Bavaria was ruled by the Wittelsbach dynasty from the 12th to the 20th century, and this family adopted the lion from their ancestral ties to the Palatinate of the Rhine. Munich, the capital city of Bavaria, was founded in 1158 by a guy with a very appropriate name — Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria. In 1255, Munich was chosen as the residence of the Wittelsbach family.

I wonder if they actually knew what a real lion looked like… The overextensive appearance of lions in European heraldry always makes me think of the Lion of Gripsholm Castle (the poor thing looks like a blindfolded child tried to draw a lion).

While he did travel quite a bit, especially for that time (mostly around German-speaking countries, Russia, France, England and the U.S.), he didn't actually visit Egypt, Persia, or any other non-European countries. Instead, he did something a lot of 19th-century composers did — a sort of "fake it till you make it" approach, where composers used stereotypical musical gestures (harmonic/melodic minor scales, irregular rhythms, etc.) to reflect how Europe imagined the East, rather than how it really sounded. That is known as musical orientalism.

The UK punk scene in the 1970s (think Sex Pistols, The Clash) was built around shock, rebellion, and rejecting mainstream norms. Even the "mohawk" in punk wasn't originally meant as a respectful reference to Native Americans, but rather as a creation that looked extreme and confrontational. The hairstyle associated with Native Americans comes from groups like the Mohawk people (part of the Iroquois Confederacy), but the exact tall, spiked, brightly colored punk mohawk did not exist historically in that form. The modern punk mohawk is largely a reinvention, not a faithful reproduction — even the name was popularized later and somewhat inaccurately applied.

In the 19th and early 20th century, a single lens cost much less than two, so if you had problems in one eye only, you'd want to pay for one lens only. At some point monocles became a symbol of wealth and prestige, signifying sophistication and higher education levels.

After WW2 ended, steel could be used to make home refrigerator doors. Then in the '60s, Sam Hardcastle created magnetic letters and numbers for NASA tracking charts and later molded them for ads and souvenirs. Then in the '70s, William Zimmerman patented the idea of using miniature magnets showing cartoon characters.