Here are ten interesting words related to particular relationships with time:

1. nudiustertian
adj. of the day before yesterday

2. ereyesterday
adv. on the day before yesterday

3. yestreen
n. yesterday evening

4. yesternoon
n. yesterday at noon

5. pridian
adj. of or relating to the previous day

6. yestern
adj. of yesterday

7. hesternal
adj. of yesterday

8. yesternight
adv. last night

9. hodiernal
adj. of or belonging to the present day

10. overmorrow
adv. on the day after tomorrow

From Futility Closet

A 1996 study examined the cognitive effects of Greek affiliation during the first year of college. Statistical controls were made for individual pre-college ability and academic motivation as well as gender, ethnicity, age, credit     hours taken, work responsibilities, and other factors. Data showed that men who were members of fraternities had significantly lower end-of-first-year reading comprehension, mathematics, critical thinking, and composite achievement than their peers who were not affiliated with a Greek organization. Sorority membership also had a negative effect on cognitive development. However, only the effects for reading comprehension and composite achievement were significant and the magnitude of the negative influence tended to be smaller for women than for men.

A follow-up study in 2006 by the same researchers and using similar sampling techniques and controls showed that negative effects of fraternity/sorority affiliation were much less pronounced during the second and third year of college than during the first year of college. On objective, standardized measures of cognitive skills, the effects of Greek affiliation continued to be negative for both men and women, but they were substantially smaller in magnitude. The study also included self-reported measures of students’ cognitive growth. For men, fraternity membership continued to exert small negative effects in the second and third years of college, but only one was statistically significant. For women the impacts of sorority membership on self-reported gains were just the opposite. In both the second and third years of college, sorority membership exerted small positive effects on all self-reported measures.

Cognitive Effects of Greek Affiliation in College, Research Journal of the Association of Fraternity, September 2006 

Bloodletting is the withdrawal of quantities of blood from a patient to cure or prevent illness and disease.  It was the most common medical practice performed by doctors from antiquity up to the late 19th century, a time span of almost 2,000 years.  In the overwhelming majority of cases, the historical use of bloodletting was harmful to patients.

Though the bloodletting was often recommended by physicians, it was carried out by barbers. This division of labour led to the distinction between physicians and surgeons. The red-and-white-striped pole of the barbershop, still in use today, is derived from this practice: the red represents the blood being drawn, the white represents the tourniquet used, and the pole itself represents the stick squeezed in the patient’s hand to dilate the veins.

Bloodletting was used to “treat” a wide range of diseases, becoming a standard treatment for almost every ailment. One British medical text recommended bloodletting for acne, asthma, cancer, cholera, coma, convulsions, diabetes, epilepsy, gangrene, gout, herpes, indigestion, insanity, jaundice, leprosy, ophthalmia, plague, pneumonia, scurvy, smallpox, stroke, tetanus, tuberculosis, and for some one hundred other diseases.  Before amputation, it was customary to remove a quantity of blood equal to the amount believed to circulate in the limb that was to be removed.

A number of different methods were employed for the procedure. The most common was phlebotomy, or venesection (often called “breathing a vein”), in which blood was drawn from one or more of the larger external veins, such as those in the forearm or neck. In arteriotomy, an artery was punctured, although generally only in the temples. In scarification (not to be confused with scarification, a method of body modification), the “superficial” vessels were attacked, often using a syringe, a spring-loaded lancet.

There was also a specific bloodletting tool called a scarificator, used primarily in 19th century medicine. It has a spring-loaded mechanism with gears that snaps the blades out through slits in the front cover and back in, in a circular motion. The case is cast brass, and the mechanism and blades steel. One knife bar gear has slipped teeth, turning the blades in a different direction than those on the other bars. The last photo and the diagram show the depth adjustment bar at the back and sides.

Leeches became especially popular in the early nineteenth century. In the 1830s, the French imported about forty million leeches a year for medical purposes, and in the next decade, England imported six million leeches a year from France alone. Through the early decades of the century, hundreds of millions of leeches were used by physicians throughout Europe.

From Wikipedia

Mae Jemison (born October 17, 1956) is an American physician and NASA astronaut. She became the first black woman to travel in space.  After her medical education and a brief general practice, Jemison served in the Peace Corps in Africa from 1985 to 1987. She joined NASA in 1987, and went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on September 12, 1992. She resigned from NASA in 1993 to form a company researching the application of technology to daily life. In addition to her achievements in science she is an accomplished actor, dancer and public speaker.

Mae Carol Jemison was born in Decatur, Alabama, the youngest child of Charlie Jemison and Dorothy Green. Her father was a maintenance supervisor for a charity organization, and her mother worked most of her career as an elementary school teacher of English and math at the Beethoven School in Chicago. The family moved to Chicago, Illinois, when Jemison was three years old, to take advantage of better educational opportunities there. Jemison says that as a young girl growing up in Chicago she always assumed she would get into space. “I thought, by now, we’d be going into space like you were going to work.” She said it was easier to apply to be a shuttle astronaut, “rather than waiting around in a cornfield, waiting for ET to pick me up or something.”

Jemison wouldn’t let anyone dissuade her from pursuing a career in science. “In kindergarten, my teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I told her a scientist,” Jemison says. “She said, ‘Don’t you mean a nurse?’ Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a nurse, but that’s not what I wanted to be.”

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Though originally most traffic drove on the left worldwide, today about 66.1% of the world’s people live in right-hand traffic countries (red on map) and 33.9% in left-hand traffic countries (blue on map). About 72% of the world’s total road distance carries traffic on the right, and 28% on the left.

In 1998, archaeologists found a well-preserved track leading to a Roman quarry near Swindon, England. The grooves in the road on the left side (viewed facing down the track away from the quarry) were much deeper than those on the right side. These grooves suggest that the Romans drove on the left, at least in this particular location, since carts would exit the quarry heavily loaded, and enter it empty.

Some historians, such as C. Northcote Parkinson, believed that ancient travellers on horseback generally rode on the left side of the road. As more people are right-handed, a horseman would thus be able to hold the reins with his left hand and keep his right hand free—to offer in friendship to passing riders or to defend himself with a sword, if necessary.

The history of the keep-left rule could be tracked back to ancient Greece, Egypt and Rome. In retrospect, it was more widely practiced than right-side traffic. Ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Romans adhered left side while marching their troops. If two men riding on a horseback were to start a fight, each would edge toward the left. Thus, they would be enabled to draw swords from their right and uphold a defensive position. Eventually, this turned into customs, and later, a law.

 In Japan, one of the few non-commonwealth countries to drive on the left the informal practice of left-hand passage dates at least to the Edo period. Samurai are said to have passed each other to the left to avoid knocking their longer katana swords with each other (as swords were always worn to the left side). During the late 19th century, Japan built its first railways with British technical assistance, and double-tracked railways adopted the British practice of running on the left.

In the late 18th century, the shift from left to right that took place in countries such as the United States was based on teamsters’ use of large freight wagons pulled by several pairs of horses. The wagons had no driver’s seat, so a postilion sat on the left rear horse and held his whip in his right hand. Seated on the left, the driver preferred that other wagons pass him on the left so that he could be sure to keep clear of the wheels of oncoming wagons. He did that by driving on the right side of the road.

In continental Europe Napoleon changed the rule of the road in the countries he conquered from keep-left to keep-right. Justification for this decision is still unclear, however it was likely a symbolic gesture in opposition of the prevailing British custom. 

Over the course of the 20th century, there was a gradual shift that followed Napoleon’s early efforts. Italy changed over in the 1920s after Benito Mussolini came to power; Austria and Czechoslovakia changed when Germany occupied them in the late 1930s, and Hungary followed suit.

From Wikipedia

The Moon is familiar; it always looks the same. We know that the Earth rotates, that’s why the Sun, Moon and stars seem to move through the sky every day. But does the Moon rotate? And if the Moon rotates, why do we alway see the same side – it never seems to change.

Well, the Moon does rotate. In fact, the Moon takes 27.3 days to turn once on its axis. But the Moon also takes 27.3 days to complete one orbit around the Earth. Because the Moon’s rotation time is exactly the same amount of time it takes to complete an orbit, it always presents the same face to the Earth, and one face away.

Because it only presents one face to the Earth, astronomers say that the Moon is tidally locked to the Earth. Although the Moon looks like a perfectly smooth ball, it has slight differences in the shape of its gravity field. A long time ago, the Moon did rotate. But each time it turned, the Earth’s gravity tugged at it, slowing down its rotation until it only presented one face to the Earth. At that point, the Moon was tidally locked, and from our perspective, it doesn’t seem to rotate.