Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was as white as snow,
And every were that Mary went,
The lamb was sure to go.
It followed her to school one day;
That was against the rule;
It made the children laugh and play;
To see the lamb at school.
And so the teacher turned it out;
but still it lingered near;
And waited patiently about;
Till Mary did appear.
Mary Had a Little Lamb is based on a true event.Proof.
The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan. There was never a recorded Wendy before. Proof.
The Brothers Grim (Jacob and Wilhelm), never wrote the fairy tales they are famous for. They merely collected them.
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon.
The little dog laughed to see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.
Hey Diddle, Diddle comes from the court of Queen Elizabeth I. The queen is said to have teased her courtiers, much the way a cat teases a mouse. She herself was very fond of dancing to the tune of a fiddle. One of her courtiers was nicknamed “Moon” and another “Dog.” Moreover, Elizabeth had a lady in waiting known as “Spoon.” One day, we are told, a gentleman of the court known as “Dish” eloped with Mistress Spoon.
The name for Oz in The Wizard of Oz was thought up when the author, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N and O-Z, hence “Oz.”
The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens, was published in serial form in 1841, readers all over Britain and the United States followed the progress of the heroine, Little Nell, with the same fervor that audiences today follow Harry Potter. When the ship carrying the last installment approached the dock in New York, 6,000 impatient fans onshore called out to the sailors, “Does Little Nell die?”
Author Robert May considered the names of Reginald and Rollo before he settled on “Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer.”
The children’s nursery rhyme, “Sing a Song of Sixpence” was used by pirates as a coded message. Proof.
TASER– The taser was invented by a fan of Victor Appleton’s adventure novels featuring Tom Swift, sort of a techno-genius cousin of the Hardy Boys, and its name stands for “Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle.”Proof.
