The Saturday briefing
IS THERE anything you are desperately yearning to know? Are there any pressing factual disputes you would like us to help resolve? This is the page where we shall do our best to answer any questions you throw at us, whatever the subject.
HOW long a time lapse was there at the end of the First World War between the countries involved agreeing to the Armistice and when it was officially announced at 11am on November 11, 1918, and how many people were killed during this time?
Christine Palmer, by email BRITISH, French and German officials signed the Armistice in a railway carriage to the north of Paris just after 5am on November 11, 1918, but agreed that the ceasefire would not come into effect until 11am to give time for front-line troops to be informed.
In those six hours, it is estimated that there were almost 11,000 casualties including nearly 2,700 soldiers killed. The last British soldier to die was Private George Edwin Ellison of the 5th Royal Irish Lancers, killed at Mons at 9.30am, just 90 minutes before the ceasefire.
PLEASE could you help me with a question about the letter H. We were always taught that the correct pronunciation was “aitch”. Nowadays many younger people say “haitch”. Why?
Jane Luff, by email I ALSO wince ’orribly when I ’ear people pronounce the eighth letter of the alphabet as “haitch”. But I fear that’s a battle we are slowly losing. Some dictionaries now give “aitch” and “haitch” as an alternative, dating the latter back to the early 19th century (though the early examples in the Oxford English Dictionary seem to be making fun of the “haitch” pronunciation).
A few decades ago, for some unknown reason, “haitch” was common only among Irish Catholics and Australians but it has spread since then and some even say it is easier to teach children their alphabet if you call it “haitch”.
Long ago, when English took such words as “humble”, “herb”, “hotel” and “hospital” from the French, the initial “h” was silent but gradually crept in as the standard pronunciation. A similar thing now seems to be happening with the letter H.
WHAT gives summer rain its glorious smell, especially when there’s been a long bout of dry weather? Does the smell come from the air or from within the ground?
Chris Schuman, Reading, Berkshire IT’S something called “petrichor”, a word coined by Australian researchers in 1964. The smell, they found, was a mixture of plant oils and the chemical compound geosmin, picked up from the soil when it rains.
Raindrops, when they land, trap tiny air bubbles which lift as the raindrops bounce and are spread by the wind. The bubbles then burst in a fizz and tiny liquid droplets or solid particles become suspended in the air in an aerosol-like effect. by THE sun radiates heat and light in all directions from its entire surface. What percentage of this emitted energy actually falls on the surface of the Earth? It must be infinitesimal but is life and death to our planet.
Malcolm Balfour Balsillie, North Shields, Tyne and Wear YOU’RE quite right. The sun is about 93 million miles away so we can think of its energy radiating outwards in a sphere with a radius of 93 million miles by the time it reaches our planet and the radius of the Earth is less than 4,000 miles.
The energy that reaches us therefore works out to be about half a billionth of the total. Our glorious weather in recent weeks just goes to show how incredibly huge and hot the sun truly is (see picture, left). I HAVE been filling glass bottles with tap water with a stopper in the top and keeping them cold in the fridge. Is there a time limit on how long they can be kept?
Ron Harris, Warrington ADVICE given by people who should know about these things, such as water companies, seems to vary over a wide range from one or two days to six months. The shorter estimates seem to be based on the fact that chlorine, which may have been used in water purification, loses its efficacy to kill bacteria within a day or two. But if the bottle is properly sealed and kept in the cool and dark it may be drinkable for up to six months. MY son, who is now 51, seems to remember eating Smedley’s Sausage Rolls from a tin baked at home but I don’t have any such memory. Is he correct and, if so, are they still available? M Budd, Rotherham, South Yorkshire HE’S absolutely correct. There were six sausage rolls to a tin, wrapped in greaseproof paper, ready to be taken out and cooked in the oven. As the nation’s tastes moved from tinned food to frozen or fresh, Smedley’s changed hands several times and the tinned sausage rolls were discontinued in the 1980s. Some of their products, however, have begun to reappear on supermarket shelves so we may yet see tinned sausage rolls again. WHY are theatre performances in the afternoon called “matinées” when “matin” is French for “morning”? M Carter, Truro, Cornwall THE earliest record of a performance being called a matinée was indeed in Paris, in 1826, which was called “matinée musicale” and was in the morning.
The English quickly adopted the word “matinée” and by the second half of the 19th century it had been extended to general theatrical performances in the afternoon.
Somehow, calling it an “apres-midi-ée” doesn’t sound right. DO you know where the expression “Dot and carry one” originated? Lucy Osborn, Ripon, North Yorkshire THE expression dates back to the late 18th century and seems to have been used in two very different senses at around the same time. The first sense was purely arithmetical and referred to adding up columns of numbers, or sums of money, carrying one over to the next column when a certain limit was reached. There was even a poem written to advise children how to add up money, ending: “For every 12 that you had in the pence, You may dot and carry one.”
The other meaning applied “dot and carry one” as a description of people with one leg shorter than the other, or with a wooden leg.
Carrying this idea of an uneven gait to another part of the body, Robert Louis Stevenson, in Treasure Island, has the ship’s doctor saying: “I know my pulse went dot and carry one.” The hiccup of dot and carry one thus applied to anything from turning pence into shillings, hobbling on a wooden leg or missing a heartbeat.