Mr. Smarty Pants Knows

The first marriages in America were civil, not religious. The Pilgrims instituted the Dutch custom of civil marriage.

It is believed the Scots were an Irish people who migrated to Western Scotland in the fifth century ("Scotus" in Latin originally meant "Irish.")

"Colly" is an English dialect word for coal dust. Blackbirds were hence known as colly birds. The song "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is usually sung as "my true love sent to me, four calling birds," but the actual line is "four colly birds."

According to a recent Colgate University study, the use of hand gestures by teachers plays a big role in adult students' ability to understand and memorize words from another language. The study showed that the greatest word learning occurred when gestures conveyed redundant imagistic information to speech.

In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.