Last time this bit of fluff showed up elsewhere on the net someone replied:

>A while ago someone posted a description of life in the 1500's that gave
>the derivation of many common words and expressions.  I was curious and did
>some poking around on the web.  It was a good story, just not the facts.
>
>The Snopes web site actually refers to "some literature floating around the
>web" about life in the 1500's.  The article was almost completely wrong.
>For example it says that people got "trench mouth" from eating off of dried
>bread crust plates (trenchers) - when in fact the term trench mouth was
>coined in the 1920's and had nothing to do with eating worm ridden bread
>(it had everything to do with living in a trench during WW1).  If you are
>interested go to the www.snopes.com web site and read all the details.  BTW
>the 1500's article surfaced in APRIL 1999 (what fools we be?).  For more
>complete (and fascinating) discussion of word origins go to
><www.wordorigins.org> Dave Wilton has done a great deal of work on the
>subject on that site.
>
>Snopes also discusses the Vanilla Vapor lock tale.  While it does not
>refute it, it does note that the details have changed considerably since it
>first appeared in 1971.  In the early edition the short time for vanilla
>did not allow the vapor lock to occur whereas in the recent edition the
>vapor lock did not have time to dissipate ie the story was reversed.
>
>I think it makes a good story that illustrates the benefit of thinking
>"outside the box" - it is such a good example that a web search of "Vanilla
>ice cream Vapor lock" gets 393 hits.  Alas I have to believe it is an Urban
>Legend.

Dave
--
Dave Carpenter

Whatever you wish for me,
May you have twice as much.

"Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think
we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering." -- Arthur C.
Clarke