Beddian year
n.— «Shearer chatted with another firefighter, Bobby Beddia. Shearer said recently, “He mentioned that he was very lucky, because he was fifty-three, so this year he got to experience living in his ’birth year.’”…Shearer told the story to Barry Cipra, a freelance math writer in Minnesota.…Cipra wrote a short paper on the idea, which he calls the “Beddian year.”» —“A Firefighter’s Theorem” by Lizzie Widdicombe New Yorker Nov. 12, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Chase from Jacksonville, Florida, grew up in Sacramento, California, where kids played Rochambeau instead of rock, paper, scissors. Why the difference in names? Nobody knows. Folklorists call this a choosing game, and while the hand-game itself...
Linda in Salisbury, North Carolina, wonders why boxing is called the sweet science, since there’s nothing obviously sweet about a bruising sport. This term took hold among British sportswriters in the early 19th century as promoters tried to frame...