Gorgeous Gussie gave spectators the slip; YKK on zipper pulls; walking in rain keeps you drier than if you run?; more

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | Question: Why do we say someone is "all gussied up" when they are? - Loyd Dillon

Answer: Loyd, we can always count on you, when the days are short and the parties over, to give us a chance to talk about an athletic young woman showing her underwear in public.

Never fear, folks. As always, I shall explain.

Word experts opine that we might have arrived at "all gussied up" because of the gusset, a triangular piece of fabric sewn into clothes to make them fit better. If you had a couple of gussets stitched into your outfit, you were surely wearing your Sunday best.

Or perhaps we got the phrase from the Australian slang term "gussy," which basically means sissy, and comes from the nickname for Augustus. Aussies figured Augustus would be a pretentious young man who flaunted his finery.

But there is another theory for the origin of this phrase, and it is far more juicy. It concerns a leggy young tennis player from California who shook up the whole bloomin' sports world in 1949 by giving prudes the slip - and giving everyone an eyeful of her slip.

Gertrude Agusta Moran wanted to look different when she played at Wimbledon. So she had fashion guru Ted Tinling design a special outfit for her. Or perhaps "outfit" is the wrong word. For what stunned the sporting and fashion worlds was what Moran wore - and displayed - underneath. Beneath her regulation white dress trimmed with white satin peeked - gasp! - lace-trimmed underwear.

Proper British ladies swooned from "the vapors." Proper British gentlemen dropped their monocles, then hastily put them in again. Photographers lay down near the baseline to get a better shot.

GORGEOUS GUSSY! proclaimed the British tabloids, beneath splashy front-page photos. Newspapers and magazines around the world ran shots of "Gorgeous Gussy."

By today's sexy sports standards - think Serena's tight, black lycra catsuit - what Moran actually revealed was laughably tame. She wore what the Brits called knickers - white frilly underpants that extended down her legs a bit below the hem of her skirt. But it was daring for a woman to show that glimpse of underwear at Wimbledon in 1949.

Gorgeous Gussy became world famous. A racehorse, aircraft and special sauce were named after her. She appeared in the Tracy-Hepburn sports movie "Pat and Mike." She made many public appearances and went on tour with Bobby Riggs (who had some funny ideas about women and tennis).

In short, Moran took her unmentionables and made them very mentionable.

SOURCE: wimbledon

Q: Jeff, I've seen the letters YKK on many zipper pulls. What does this mean? - John Hall

A: OK, everybody look at your fly. Go ahead. Just look at the zipper on your pants.

Bingo. Many of you just saw what John's been seeing: YKK.

I'd never noticed before either. They make jacket zippers, too.

Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha is a huge Japanese zipper company founded in 1934. Over the years the initials YKK have become the company's trademark.

Q: I've heard that if you walk in the rain you actually stay drier than if you run. How can that be? - Dayle Vickery, Orange Park, Fla.

A: You know that thing - call it instinct, or common sense, maybe - that perks up in your mind when you get caught in the rain? It says: "I better hurry! The less time I'm in the rain, the drier I'll be!"

Well, generally speaking, that's right. But there are many factors to consider. So this topic has been tested scientifically several times. Trevor Wallis and Thomas Peterson, meteorologists with the National Climatic Center in Asheville, N.C., were running in the woods one day when it started to rain. Being scientists, they spent the rest of the run debating the specifics of the walk-run rain debate. (You have to be either really smart or really dumb to stay out in the rain arguing about how wet you're getting.)

Wallis and Peterson planned an experiment, and waited for clouds. When it rained, they put on cotton sweat suits and hats, and ran around a 100-meter loop. Then they weighed their clothes.

The walker's clothes were 40 percent wetter than the runner's. The hat got wettest, and that's a key difference, Wallis said. So if you don't want to ruin your hairdo, get a move on. (Me, I just towel off.) Canadian physicist Doug Craigen found the same thing. He notes you do get wet faster when you run, but you're outside for less time and come out drier in the end. He's even devised a calculator to help you figure out the difference. You can find it online at: www.dctech.com/physics/features.

In the book "Why Do Buses Come in Threes? The Hidden Mathematics of Everyday Life," authors Rob Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham also agree that you should fly to stay dry. But they point out it is possible to have a circumstance in which you would stay drier by walking. This rare condition would be if the rain were coming down at an angle from behind you so that it happened to be moving at just the same speed you were walking. In that case, running would move you into raindrops you would otherwise miss.

Interestingly, the Discovery Channel's "Mythbusters" show simulated rain and found the opposite conclusion in experiments. Wallis says he pointed out that they failed to factor in how wet one's head gets in their calculations.

That point, he says, was omitted from the show. But there are dissenters who believe walking keeps you drier. I'll probably even hear from some.

CAN YOU NAME THE BROADWAY MUSICAL?

Use these lyrics to name the show.

1. "Ev'ry night my honey lamb and I..."

2. "Tote that barge. Lift that bale..."

3. "Would it spoil some vast, eternal plan, if I were a wealthy man?"

4. "Touch me. It's so easy to leave me."

5. "Isn't it rich? Are we a pair?"

ANSWERS: 1. "Oklahoma!" 2. "Showboat." 3. "Fiddler on the Roof." 4. "Cats."

5. "A Little Night Music."

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Jeff Elder is a columnist for The Charlotte Observer. Comment or try to stump him by clicking here. If you send him a great question, he'll send you a Glad You Asked T-shirt.