What is the origin of the word jazz?
Jazz may be an American art form, but the word predates any application to music or sex. It first appeared in print in 1831 as jazzing, meaning the telling of fun stories. The first American use of jazz was in baseball as slang for enthusiasm in 1913. Its first musical use was a year later, to describe the vigor of West Coast band leader Art Hickman. The word jazz wasn’t used to describe black music until 1918.

Where did the yellow smiley face come from?
The yellow smiley face, with its dotted black eyes, first appeared with a slightly crooked smile as a promotion for the deejays of radio station WMCA in New York in 1962. However, in 1963, commercial artist Harvey Ball introduced the version that’s still with us when he curved the smile as a promotion for a major insurance company. Unable to copyright his smiley face, Ball received forty-five dollars for its creation.

Why is the energy from a car’s engine referred to as “horsepower”?
When Scottish inventor James Watt received a patent on his steam engine in 1755, horses were being used to draw coal to a mine’s surface. After calculating that one horse had the power to haul 330 pounds 100 feet in one minute, he proved that one steam engine could replace an entire herd of horses. This made Watt wealthy and gave us a formula to interpret engine capacity in horsepower.