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Because Count de Sade, an eighteenth-century Frenchman, found his greatest delight in
torturing friends and mistresses, the term sadist was derived from his name. His works
shocked his nation and the world by the alarming frankness with which he described his
morbid and bloodthirsty cruelty.
Galvanism
Luigi Galvani, the Italian physiologist, found by accident that an electrically charged
scalpel could send a frog’s corpse into muscular convulsions. Experimenting further, he
eventually discovered the principles of chemically produced electricity. His name is
responsible not only for the technical expressions galvanism, galvanized iron, and
galvanometer, but also for that highly graphic phrase, “galvanized into action.”
Guppies
In 1868, R. J. Lechmere Guppy, president of the Scienti c Association of Trinidad, sent
some specimens of a tiny tropical sh to the British Museum. Ever since, sh of this species
have been called guppies.
Nicotine
Four hundred years ago, Jean Nicot, a French ambassador, bought some tobacco seeds
from a Flemish trader. Nicot’s successful e orts to popularize the plant in Europe brought
him linguistic immortality.
PLACES THAT MADE OUR LANGUAGE
Bayonne, France
Where rst was manufactured the daggerlike weapon that ts over the muzzle end of a
rifle—the bayonet.
Cantalupo, Italy
The first place in Europe to grow those luscious melons we now call cantaloupes.
Calicut, India
The city from which we first imported a kind of cotton cloth now known as calico.
