Hamlet once said “there are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” That was a very Shakespearean way of saying what we know as humans is limited. There are some things we don’t know and maybe we will never know. But there are also several things you may be surprised to learn that no one actually knows, or at least no one’s sharing the information anymore.
10. The “p” Part of pH Has No Confirmed Meaning
Have you ever had to check the pH of something, like your pool or even your urine? Have you ever bought soap that was pH balanced for your skin? Or low pH bottled water? It pops up a lot in life and refers, in simple terms, to how acidic something is. Lower pH means more acidic and higher pH means more alkaline.
Ignoring for a moment what pH signifies, look at what pH actually means. It’s only two letters so it shouldn’t be entirely hard to suss this one out, but it is. The pH scale was devised by Danish chemist Søren Peder Lauritz Sørensen back in 1909. We know the H represents hydrogen, but that p has left the science world confused.
To most people the “p” refers to power. The Carlsberg Foundation, where the pH scale was created, agrees. “Power of Hydrogen” is their official definition. In German they’d say it means Potenz which, to be fair, translates to power. The French chemists of the world insist it means “puissance” which, again, still means power. Other options include “potential” and “percent.” But we don’t technically know what Sorenson intended it to mean because he never wrote it down.
Power works, but the man also labeled his positive electrode with a lowercase p. A formula was found in his notebooks which discusses hydrogen ion concentrations and the potential of the hydrogen electrode. From this he derived a p+H symbol that was cut down to pH, making the issue as confusing as ever.
9. We Don’t Know the Exact Origin or Meaning of Attila the Hun’s Name
Attila the Hun is one of those larger than life historic figures often named alongside figures like Genghis Khan or Alexander the Great. He ruled a massive empire and was a feared warrior during his time and there is as much or more myth about him than there are facts.
One thing that has been lost is what his name actually means. The origins of the name Attila may be from a pre-Turkic language. Some suggest it can be broken down into two root words which mean “father” and “land,” but that’s just a guess. It could also have been the name of a river or even a word for steel.
The name has been suggested as being Gothic, again meaning “father.” It wasn’t unique to the historical Attila either as there’s evidence of many others having the name before him, just no sign of where it came from or what it meant to the people using it.
8. Jaws Is Not The Name of the Shark; It Means Nothing
A question probably few people have asked after reading the book or seeing the movie Jaws is “what does Jaws mean?” It means the shark, right? Big, fearsome great white shark that eats people with its massive jaws. It’s so obvious you’d never question it. But you should have because Jaws is not the name of the shark.
Author Peter Benchley spent a great deal of time researching his novel. When it was finally ready he and his publisher didn’t have a name picked out for the book. He went through over 100 choices in trying to figure out a name including things like Leviathan Rising, The Stillness in the Water, and The Jaws of Death. They couldn’t agree on anything.
For lack of a better option, when nothing else worked, Benchley finally said “Jaws.” His editor asked what that meant and his answer was “I don’t know, but it’s short; it fits on a jacket, and it may work.”
The name refers in a roundabout way to the shark, sure. But it’s clear it resulted from some word cloud brainstorming and has as much to do with the shark as the word “Boat” or “Danger: would have.
7. Ivar the Boneless’ Nickname Meaning is Lost to History
If you were a fan of Vikings on the History Channel, you may remember a character named Ivar the Boneless, played by Alex Hogh Anderson. He becomes a prominent character several seasons into the show’s run and he’s a fictionalized depiction of the real life Ivar who died in the year 873. (He was also a non-player character in the video game Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, where you might have also learned about him in the last couple years.)
Ivar was the son of Danish King Ragnar Lothbrok and was sometimes called Ivar Ragnarsson. But the name he was most well known by was Boneless. You have to assume any Viking with a nickname like “The Boneless” did something cool to earn it.
There’s a legend that his father bestowed the nickname upon him. Ragnar ignored a prophecy from Ivar’s mother that they needed to hold off before having a child or else it would be born with an illness. Ragnar’s decision caused the child to be born with twisted legs and weak bones. His father gave him the “Boneless” nickname.
In real life, the case is not so cut and dry. The legend of his illness, which may have been osteogenesis imperfecta, is a possible source of the name. The condition, also called brittle bone disease, is what Sam Jackson’s character Mr. Glass has in the movie Unbreakable. But that’s just speculation and there’s no way to know for sure if he had the condition, how severe it was, or if it had anything to do with the name.
6. No One Knows What Nintendo Actually Means
Nintendo is still one of the biggest gaming companies in the world, even though Sony and Microsoft have taken the reins with PlayStation and Xbox in more recent years. You can’t deny the influence of Nintendo or the groundwork it set with the NES back in 1985.
Nintendo is far older than many people realize and was founded in 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi. Back then it was called Nintendo Koppai and sold card games. Koppai referred to the cards.
There’s a popular and widely accepted story that the Nintendo part translated to “leave luck to Heaven.” This comes from breaking down the Japanese kanji into its constituent parts. If you do this, the symbol “ten” can refer to heaven. But it can also refer to a demon from Japanese mythology named Tengu.
Tengu is a demon associated with cards and gambling, the same kinds of cards Nintendo used to make. So the leap from the name to this character, rather than heaven, is easy. And no doubt the fact that “leave luck to heaven” can also be seen as a sort of gambler’s mantra about the luck of the cards being in Heaven’s hands would not have been lost on Yamauchi, either. The double meaning makes plenty of sense.
There are still other ways to interpret the name, including one that would translate to “the company that is allowed to sell hanafuda” cards. The language is pretty fluid in its interpretation when you string different kanji together. Yamauchi never wrote down the “real” meaning anywhere, and even his great-grandson does not know what the name was supposed to mean.
5. Knights Fight Snails in Medieval Art But It’s Not Clear Why
Medieval artwork is unique compared to a lot of what we see in more modern periods. Art from this period was not as concerned with realism and naturalism as later periods were and, for that reason, there is a strange similarity in much of the work. People often have no realistic or identifiable features more complex than something you might expect from a child.
What you can expect in a lot of this kind of artwork are fantastic creatures and battles with knights. One oft-repeated battle is between knights and snails and the reason behind it is mysterious.
There’s not any evidence snails were a menace a few hundred years ago, nor were they any larger than modern snails. The images are remarkably common in the margins of many manuscripts from the era.
One theory why they exist relates to snails representing the Resurrection. Another has them representing a maligned group known as the Lombards. One theory suggests the poor vs the aristocracy, or even one related to sexuality. There are several others and they are so widely divergent that the only clear thing is that no scholars have any idea what they’re talking about. They’re all just guesses.
4. There’s A Line in Dante’s Inferno That Has No Translation
Dante’s Inferno is one of the most well known poems in history. Written in Italian in 1321, it has been translated into multiple languages and studied all over the world. In all that time, and in all translations, one line is often left untouched – Raphèl mai amècche zabì almi.
The line appears in Canto 31 where it’s spoken by a giant named Nimrod who guards the 9th Circle of Hell. English translations will cover what comes before and after but that specific line is rarely ever translated because it can’t be.
Those aren’t real Italian words or words of any language that is easily recognizable. It may resemble some languages but that may have been the point. Dante may have the character speak gibberish here on purpose, a reference to the fall of the Tower of Babel. It may show Nimrod has been driven insane and is just not coherent, too. And it’s possible, as gibberish, they may have been mis-transcribed as well and this isn’t even the way Dante wrote it.
3. The Final Transmission of a Crashed Plane is Still A Mystery
Messages left behind by those who have gone missing can often give rise to long-lasting mysteries. There are still people who are unsure of the meaning behind the word “croatoan” left behind by the Roanoke Colony.
While that mystery has been solved, another similar one has perplexed many. In 1947, BSAA Flight CS-59 was heading from Buenos Aires to Santiago. The flight’s last message, received by a Morse code radio operator in Chile was “ETA Santiago 17:45 hrs. STENDEC.”
The message was sent at 17:41, so it’s not as though the plane was lost in the wilderness, they were four minutes from landing. The last word, however, made no sense. STENDEC has no meaning, in English or any other language.
The operator asked for message clarification and the flight sent the same word two more times. Then the plane vanished.
For 50 years no one knew what happened to the flight until mountaineers discovered it about 50 miles from Santiago where it had crashed. The fate of the flight was finally known, but the mystery of STENDEC remained.
Based on how the plane crashed and the weather, it’s believed that a snowstorm had caused them to lose visuals and the crew had miscalculated how far they were from Santiago.
Several theories exist as to what the message means. The flight’s radio operator was highly skilled, so it’s unlikely he made an error. One suggestion is that the word is an anagram for “descent” and he was suffering hypoxia because of a depressurized cabin. Other theories involve abbreviations, misinterpretations, and missing spaces but none really hold water.
A popular theory is that it’s an acronym that means “Severe Turbulence Encountered, Now Descending, Emergency Crash-landing” which certainly accounts for each letter but would never be used in Morse code because it’s far too hard to interpret and a simple SOS conveys an emergency much easier.
2. The Meaning of Old No 7 on Jack Daniels Bottles Has Never Been Verified
If you’re a fan of Jack Daniels, you may have noticed that the bottles read “Old No. 7 Brand” dead center in the middle of the label. So what does Old No. 7 mean? Not a lot.
Theories as to what the words mean range from the founder’s favorite number, to how many recipes he tried before he got it right. One of the more plausible reasons was discovered by a biographer who noted that Jack Daniels was registered in District 7 for tax purposes. The number was later changed and Daniels kept “old” number 7 in protest. But is it true? Jack isn’t around to confirm or deny and current distillers have no idea, either.
1. We Don’t Know Which State Was The 39th or The 40th
Can you list every state in the order they joined the Union? This is harder to do than some people might think for one very specific reason. It’s unclear which was the 39th state and which was the 40th.
In practical terms this information probably doesn’t matter. But we’re being technical here. In 1889, President Harrison made both states official, along with Montana and Wyoming. North Dakota is most often referred to as the 39th state and South Dakota as the 40th. However, the President shuffled the papers ahead of time and didn’t actually read them, so it’s unclear which state was signed into existence first. It’s a difference of seconds, but it’s still unknown.