The good ol’ days

Hesternopothia is a yearning for the “good old days.” It comes from the Latin word hesternus, meaning “of yesterday.” Now, how about the day before yesterday? That’s always been a tricky thing to specify, but in 1647 the writer Nathaniel Ward gave it a try with the word nudiustertian, from the Latin nudius tertius, meaning “it is now the third day.” Unsurprisingly, neither of these words made its way into common usage. Trivia question: “Grandpa (Tell Me ‘Bout the Good Ol’ Days)” was a 1986No. 1hit for which duo? A) Flatt & Scruggs B) The Judds C) The Kendalls D) Sweethearts of the Rodeo

Traverse City, Mich., bills itself as the Cherry Capital of the World. French settlers from Normandy who settled along the St. Lawrence River were the first to plant cherry trees in Michigan. Turns out Lake Michigan keeps temperatures mild enough in winter and cool enough in summer to allow the trees to flourish, and flourish they do. Today some 3.8 million trees in and around Traverse City produce 75 percent of the U.S. tart cherry crop.

We know Thomas Jefferson composed the Declaration of Independence, with plenty of input from John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and other members of the Continental Congress. But the man who actually put pen to parchment and wrote the Declaration of Independence most likely was Timothy Matlack, a Philadelphia merchant/calligrapher and clerk to the Second Continental Congress. If you saw the 2004 film “National Treasure,” you already know this. Historians agree that though it was sketchy on details, the movie got the broad strokes about Matlack right.

In the 1880s, men of the Cree nation hunted bison on central Canada’s vast plains and piled the bones in giant heaps at a location they called Oskana-ka-asateki, meaning “place where bones are piled.” Taking their cue from the Cree, European settlers called the place Pile of Bones — vivid but not appealing. So, in 1882, the burgeoning city in Saskatchewan was renamed Regina, Latin for “queen,” in honor of Queen Victoria.

Biltmore Estate, near Asheville, N.C., the largest private residence built in the United States, was home to America’s first forestry school. Determined to preserve the forest lands in the area — in- cluding the 125,000 acres he owned — Biltmore owner George Washington Vanderbilt hired Gifford Pinchot, an Americanborn, European-trained forestry expert, to manage and maintain the forest. When Pinchot moved to Washington, D.C., to start the U.S. Forest Service, his successor, Carl Schenck, established the Biltmore Forest School to train others in forest management.

Vaquitas are the smallest members of the porpoise family and the smallest of all cetaceans (marine mammals), growing to just 5 feet long and 120 pounds. If you’ve never seen one, there’s a good reason: They live exclusively in the Sea of Cortez, off the western coast of Mexico, where they inadvertently get caught — and die — in commercial fishing nets. For years, their death toll has outstripped their birthrate, and now it’s estimated that fewer than 150 vaquitas survive in the wild. July 7 is International Save the Vaquita Day. Trivia answer: “Grandpa (Tell Me ‘Bout the Good Ol’ Days)” was a 1986No. 1hit for The Judds.