59 Fun Facts About Morning

In German, 'Morgen' means morning, while the same word with a small 'm' means what?

Tomorrow. English once did much the same: 'morrow' used to mean morning, and 'tomorrow' began as Old English 'to morgenne', literally 'on the morning'.

The word "dawn" comes from the Old English verb dagian, meaning what?

To become day. Oddly, 'dawning' is the older word: 'dawn' was probably clipped from it around 1200, and Old English speakers called daybreak 'dagung'.

The "a.m." on a clock stands for the Latin ante meridiem, which translates as what?

Before midday. That is why noon itself is strictly neither a.m. nor p.m.: it cannot come before or after itself, so timekeepers advise writing '12 noon' instead.

Which meal's name comes from a medieval word that literally meant 'to break one's fast'?

Dinner. Medieval dinner was the day's first big meal, eaten between nine and noon; the name stuck as the meal slid later, and the word 'breakfast' is first recorded only in the 15th century.

Which kind of poem or song is about lovers parting at dawn?

An aubade. Troubadours' dawn songs warned a knight to slip away from his lady before he was caught; John Donne's 'The Sun Rising' turns the idea round and scolds the sun instead.

The military wake-up bugle call "Reveille" takes its name from which language's word for "wake up"?

French. It comes from réveillez, the order to "wake up!", and at Anzac Day dawn services the call ends the silence after the Last Post as the flags rise to the masthead.

The Japanese names for Japan, Nihon and Nippon, literally mean what?

The sun's origin. The two characters mean "sun" and "origin": seen from China, Japan lies to the east where the sun comes up, hence the nickname Land of the Rising Sun.

What is a hotel's telephone wake-up service traditionally known as in the United Kingdom?

An alarm call. Before bedside telephones, British shift workers paid a knocker-up a few pence a week to rap on the bedroom window with a long pole.

The word "circadian" comes from Latin words meaning what?

Around a day. Circa means "around" and dies "day", and the "around" is literal: left to itself the human body clock runs about 11 minutes over 24 hours, so light has to keep resetting it.

In 1729, de Mairan kept which touch-sensitive plant in the dark and saw its leaves still open by day?

Mimosa. His "sensitive plant", probably Mimosa pudica, kept its daily rhythm without sunlight, and a later botanist timed the cycle in darkness at 22 to 23 hours, not 24.

The 2017 Nobel Prize in medicine honoured the isolation of a gene that sets daily rhythms in which animal?

Fruit flies. Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael Young isolated the "period" gene in 1984 and showed that its protein builds up in cells at night and breaks down during the day.

Which hormone's "awakening response" peaks 30 to 45 minutes after you wake up?

Cortisol. The burst is bigger on workdays than at weekends, which fits the idea that it readies the body for the demands of the day ahead.

What is the scientific name for the groggy, disoriented state you feel immediately after waking?

Sleep inertia. It hits hardest after waking from deep sleep or a nap of more than half an hour, so US safety training tells night-shift nurses to let it clear before any critical task.

Light of which colour most strongly suppresses the body's production of melatonin?

Blue. In a Harvard experiment, blue light had about twice the effect of equally bright green light on melatonin and pushed the body clock back twice as far, which is why late-night screens get the blame.

In sleep psychologist Michael Breus's four chronotypes, which animal stands for people most alert late at night?

Wolf. Breus's lions are the early risers and his bears follow the sun, while dolphins, named for an animal that stays alert even while it sleeps, are the light sleepers.

The temperature at which water vapour condenses into droplets on a cool surface is called what?

Dew point. Grass and car roofs radiate their heat away after dark, and once they cool below it the air's moisture beads on them, which is why dew is heaviest after clear, calm nights.

Which stage of dawn is bright enough for outdoor work without lamps?

Civil dawn. It starts with the Sun 6 degrees below the horizon, after nautical dawn at 12 and astronomical dawn at 18, and it has legal force: for American pilots, "night" ends when morning civil twilight begins.

Which architect proposed replacing "sunrise" and "sunset" with the words "sunsight" and "sunclipse"?

Buckminster Fuller. He argued that "sunrise" and "sunset" keep alive the picture of a Sun circling a still Earth, when it is the turning Earth that brings the Sun into view and hides it again.

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station see roughly how many sunrises each day?

16. The station laps the Earth about every 90 minutes, so the crew runs on Greenwich time and covers the windows at bedtime to fake a night.

Which planet alternates between being called the "Evening Star" and the "Morning Star"?

Venus. The ancient Greeks first took its two appearances for different stars, Phosphorus before sunrise and Hesperus after sunset, before working out that both were the same planet.

Ancient Egyptians watched for which star's first dawn reappearance each year, a sign that the Nile was about to flood?

Sirius. After a spell lost in the Sun's glare it returned to the eastern sky just before sunrise, an event astronomers call a heliacal rising, and Egypt's calendar was built around it.

Murmansk, the largest city north of the Arctic Circle, where the summer Sun stays up for weeks, is in which country?

Russia. Murmansk was founded only in 1916, on a bay that stays ice-free all year even though it lies north of the Arctic Circle.

Which Pacific nation bent the International Date Line around itself in the 1990s?

Kiribati. The line used to cut the country in two, leaving its eastern islands a day behind the capital; the change put Kiritimati in UTC+14, where each new date begins.

The Morning Glory roll cloud can be reliably predicted over the Gulf of Carpentaria in which country?

Australia. Each spring glider pilots gather in the tiny Queensland town of Burketown to surf the wave of rising air along the cloud's leading edge.

International Dawn Chorus Day began at Birmingham's Moseley Bog, a childhood haunt of which fantasy author?

Tolkien. He grew up nearby and said the bog inspired the Old Forest of his books; broadcaster Chris Baines later asked friends there for his birthday to hear the wildlife wake, and the idea went worldwide.

A study in an Ecuadorian forest found that the birds singing earliest in the dawn chorus tend to have what?

Larger eyes. Bigger eyes probably gather enough of the faint early light for those species to start sooner; birds that feed high in the canopy, where the light arrives first, also sang earlier.

In Roman mythology, who is the goddess and personification of the dawn?

Aurora. In the 17th century astronomers borrowed her name for the northern lights: aurora borealis is Latin for "northern dawn".

In the best-known telling, Eos won her lover Tithonus immortality but forgot to ask for what?

Eternal youth. Tithonus could not die but went on ageing until he shrivelled away, and in later tellings he became a chirping insect, a cicada or a grasshopper.

Who calls the line "prayer is better than sleep" from Sunni mosques at dawn?

The muezzin. In a Sunni tradition the line began with the muezzin Bilal, who called it out on being told the Prophet was still sleeping, and it stayed in the call to Fajr, the first prayer of the day.

In medieval monasteries, monks gathered to sing Matins at what time?

In the dark before dawn. The standard monastic rule had monks rise at the eighth hour of the night, about two in the morning, for a night office that gave way to Lauds at daybreak.

Coffee grows wild in Ethiopia, but which country first cultivated it, where Sufi mystics drank it to concentrate?

Yemen. Its Red Sea port of Mocha shipped the beans on to Egypt and beyond, which is how "mocha" became a word for fine coffee.

Corn flakes were created in 1894 for patients at a sanitarium in which Michigan city?

Battle Creek. Dr John Harvey Kellogg ran the sanitarium, but his brother Will mass-marketed the flakes from 1906, and the two then spent years in court over who could put the Kellogg name on a cereal box.

Granula, the first cold breakfast cereal (1863), never caught on because it had to be what?

Soaked overnight. The baked nuggets were too hard to eat dry; when John Harvey Kellogg later borrowed the name for a cereal of his own, legal pressure from its inventor made him change one letter, to Granola.

Muesli was developed around 1900 by physician Maximilian Bircher-Benner for patients in which country?

Switzerland. At his Zurich sanatorium the dish was known as the "apple diet meal": mostly grated apple with only a little oats, the reverse of the muesli sold in boxes today.

The croissant descends from the kipferl, a crescent-shaped pastry from which country?

Austria. August Zang, an Austrian entrepreneur, opened a Viennese bakery in France in the late 1830s, and local bakers' copies of its crescent rolls became the croissant.

The Egg McMuffin, invented in 1972, was designed to resemble which traditional breakfast dish?

Eggs Benedict. Franchisee Herb Peterson swapped the sauce for a slice of melted cheese, shaped the egg in a Teflon ring, and asked Ray Kroc over without saying why, because the idea sounded crazy.

The pancake race tradition is said to have begun in 1445 in Olney, in which country?

England. In the story a housewife ran to church still holding her frying pan when the shriving bell rang, and since 1950 Olney's women have raced against those of Liberal, Kansas, comparing times across the Atlantic.

Which breakfast staple was developed in the 1940s after American soldiers detested the vitamin C lemon powder in their rations?

Frozen orange juice. The search for a vitamin C drink troops would actually swallow paid off too late for them: the concentrate reached the market only after the war, and families bought it instead.

Bartender Fernand Petiot is said to have invented the Bloody Mary in 1921 while working in which city?

Paris. He tended the New York Bar there, later Harry's New York Bar, but the credit is disputed: comedian George Jessel claimed the drink too, and Petiot said he perfected it years later at a Manhattan hotel.

Dave Garroway, the famously calm first host of NBC's Today, ended each broadcast with which one-word farewell?

Peace. He said it with his palm raised to the camera, and the quiet farewell became his trademark through nine years on the show.

What kind of animal was J. Fred Muggs, the mascot of NBC's Today in its early years?

A chimpanzee. Muggs joined in 1953, a year after the show began, and his antics sent the ratings up "like a rocket", in one history's words, and helped win over advertisers.

In April 2012, which programme ended Today's 852-week run as the top-rated breakfast show?

Good Morning America. Today had won every week since December 1995, and within three months of losing the crown NBC had replaced its co-anchor Ann Curry with Savannah Guthrie.

Before hosting Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough served as a Republican congressman from which state?

Florida. He represented the Pensacola area in the House from 1995 to 2001, and Morning Joe began in 2007 as a stopgap after MSNBC dropped Imus in the Morning.

In Apple TV+'s The Morning Show, which actor plays Mitch Kessler, the anchor fired for sexual misconduct as the series opens?

Steve Carell. His character's sacking leaves his co-anchor of 15 years, played by Jennifer Aniston, fighting to keep her own chair beside a newcomer played by Reese Witherspoon.

Robin Williams's character in Good Morning, Vietnam is loosely based on which real Armed Forces Radio DJ?

Adrian Cronauer. He said that if he had done half the things in the film he would still be in a military prison; the manic broadcasts were largely Robin Williams's own improvisations.

In Groundhog Day, Phil Connors wakes every morning to which song on the clock radio?

I Got You Babe. Screenwriter Danny Rubin chose the Sonny & Cher duet because it keeps repeating its title line, and Phil is soon smashing the clock radio that plays it.

The hymn "Morning Has Broken", written in 1931 to a traditional Gaelic tune, became a 1970s hit for which singer?

Cat Stevens. He came across Eleanor Farjeon's children's hymn in a hymn book while hunting for song ideas, and the piano on his record was played by a session man about to join Yes, Rick Wakeman.

"Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" is the opening song of which Rodgers and Hammerstein musical?

Oklahoma! Instead of the usual dancing girls, the curtain rose in 1943 on an old woman churning butter while a lone voice sang the first lines unaccompanied from the wings.

George Harrison wrote 'Here Comes the Sun' in April 1969 at the country house of which friend?

Eric Clapton. Harrison was playing truant from a day of business meetings at Apple, and wrote the song walking round his friend's garden with a borrowed acoustic guitar.

America's first alarm clock, built in 1787, rang only at 4 a.m., to wake whom?

Its maker. Clockmaker Levi Hutchins of New Hampshire built it only to get himself up for work and never patented it; an alarm that could be set for any hour was not patented until decades later.

GE-Telechron's 1956 "Snooz-Alarm", the first alarm clock with a snooze button, snoozed how long?

9 minutes. One common account is that the gears of existing clocks could not be made to give exactly ten, so the designers settled for just over nine, and phones have copied the habit.

Which Greek philosopher is said to have owned a water clock with an alarm, possibly for his dawn lectures?

Plato. His clock is said to have sounded a note like a water organ, and the later engineer Ctesibius went further, building water clocks that dropped pebbles and sounded trumpets.

The paper often called the world's first newspaper appeared in 1605 in which city, now in France?

Strasbourg. Johann Carolus had been selling handwritten newsletters to wealthy subscribers, but the copying was slow, so he bought a printing shop and reckoned he could earn more from many cheaper copies.

The oldest surviving water clock, made in the reign of Amenhotep III, kept the night hours at which Egyptian temple complex?

Karnak. The idea was older than the vessel itself: an official who served Amenhotep I, more than a century earlier, claimed in his tomb inscription to have invented the device.

Whose 1861 Book of Household Management listed bacon, eggs and sausages among the hot dishes for a Victorian breakfast?

Isabella Beeton. Far from the matronly figure her name suggests, she was 25 when the book appeared and died at 28, yet "Mrs Beeton" stayed the voice of British home cooking for generations.

One theory traces which phrase to the hearty breakfasts of the victor of El Alamein?

The full monty. Field Marshal Montgomery was Monty to everyone, but the origin is uncertain, and the most repeated rival theory credits the tailor Montague Burton and his complete three-piece suit.

Which griddle cake made from mashed potato is a staple of the full Scottish breakfast?

Tattie scone. The dough is only mashed potato, flour, butter and salt, rolled thin and cooked on a girdle; cold ones are fried again, which is how they end up beside the square Lorne sausage at breakfast.

When the rising Sun seems to sit on the horizon, where is it really?

Lower down. The atmosphere bends the Sun's light by about half a degree, roughly the width of its own disc, so the whole Sun is in view before any of it has geometrically risen.

In temperate latitudes, the earliest sunrise of the year comes shortly before which event?

The summer solstice. The longest day does not bring the earliest sunrise: Earth's tilt and oval orbit pull clock time and Sun time apart, so sunrises bottom out a few days early and the latest sunsets come a few days late.