04 November

The Historic Reason Why Brits Put Milk in Their Tea

True tea is made of the same plant no matter where on Earth you drink it, but tea preparations vary around the world. While the Chinese and Japanese generally prefer their hot tea without dairy, a splash of milk in your afternoon cuppa is quintessentially British. Britons may take milk in their tea for the flavor today, but that wasn’t the original intention.

03 November

20 Words Merriam-Webster Is Adding to the Dictionary in 2021

The lexicographers working for Merriam-Webster aren’t snobs about words. They understand better than anyone that language is constantly evolving, and even the silliest slang deserves a spot in the dictionary if it’s used widely enough. After closely monitoring changes in the lexicon, Merriam-Webster added 455 terms to the dictionary in October 2021.

02 November

Top 10 things to know about the Day of the Dead

Though related, the two annual events differ greatly in traditions and tone. Whereas Halloween is a dark night of terror and mischief, Day of the Dead festivities unfold over two days in an explosion of color and life-affirming joy. Sure, the theme is death, but the point is to demonstrate love and respect for deceased family members.

01 November

How the TV Dinner Revolutionized American Life

The TV dinner isn’t exactly a beloved part of American cuisine. The frozen meals-in-a-tray have been the butt of countless jokes since their introduction in the 1950s. Even regular consumers of the product usually buy them for the convenience, not the taste.

30 October

Halloween: A mix of ancient traditions

In Celtic tradition, Samhain marked the day that summer was coming to a complete close. The harvest was ending and the throngs of winter were near. The shadowy winter was a time associated with death followed by eventual renewal. Celts believed that this was the night where the veil between the living and the dead was lifted and the spectral past returned to the Earth.

29 October

7 Highly Intriguing Victorian Halloween Traditions

Leave it to the Victorians to celebrate Halloween in style. Their 19th-century aesthetic resulted in what we consider today to be strange societal quirks, from bizarre jobs (like leech collector) to fun slang (sad people “got the morbs”) to highly impractical fashion (toxic dyes and flammable fabrics were often the price of beauty).

27 October

How Fonts Affect Learning and Memory

Whenever you read a given text, your brain processes the visual stimuli to create meaning and understand the content. Chances are, you don’t pay much attention to the way the information is presented in the material — particularly the font choice — because your main objective is reading comprehension rather than aesthetics.