Both Hatfield and McCoy are among the top 1,000 surnames in the US.
It’s Istanbul not Constantinople! Why did Constantinople get the works? That’s nobody’s business but the Turks.
But it happened 82 years ago today.
Word Frequency History in Wolfram|Alpha
Now when you ask Wolfram|Alpha about the “word frequency history” of any word in English, you’ll see a plot of how that term’s usage has changed over time.
The word frequency history of a word can document when a common word, such as “web”, becomes more popular after gaining a new meaning.
It can also show how quickly a word can pass into common usage after the emergence of a new technology, such as “transistors”.
These plots may also show interesting correlations with historical events. For example, malaria became a large problem for servicemen in the Pacific during World War II.
(Raw data comes from the Google Books “English One Million” corpus.)
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two US Founding Fathers who signed the US Declaration of Independence, both died on Tuesday, July 4, 1826. Coincidentally, their death date was also the 50th Anniversary of the United States declaring Independence.
