Well, y'learn a new thing every day...
 

watching the programme QI, I discovered that the convention of dressing girls in pink and boys in blue is relatively modern. Up until the early twentieth century it was the opposite of that. Blue was considered the appropriate (serene and pale) colour for girls, and pink (strong and vibrant) for boys.

Also, apparently, the word 'girl' used, up until the 16th century, to refer to babies and young children generally; with 'knave girls' for male babies and 'gay girls' for female babies. The word 'boy' was a word to refer to servants.

A friend is getting QI DVDs for Christmas (he may already have them, I'm not sure). I'm looking forward to borrowing them.

I had read that some time in the last couple of months and it came up during Christmas break. The discussion turned to why things changed. Did they say?

Watched an old episode of QI the other night. Linda Smith was on it, so that should give you a clue.

Reminded me of why I disliked it to start with - there were factual inaccuracies included, which made me think of it first as some weird sort of "lying for fun" show. I couldn't work out why some things I was sure were true were counted as false, and others that I knew were false were accepted without question.

As the series progressed the answers became more accurate, so it was obviously intended as a high-brow comedy quiz show. When you can trust the answers are correct, it helps redress some of the received wisdom we're all prone to.

Two glaring examples from that show; Sean Locke revealed that the Huntsman spider is the only spider with lungs. No it isn't. A number of spiders have what are known as "book lungs" but even they are nothing like what we would call lungs in mammals. And if that's what he meant, the Huntsman is by no means the only spider with them, nearly 50% have them.

Also, that catgut was not used to string violins as it was considered unlucky to kill a cat in Medieval times. Except that cat killing was rampant across Europe in Medieval times (the Plague, the witchhunts, burying a cat in the foundations for a house for luck)... The rumour was put about in the 17th century to discourage amateurs from taking up the work - sheeps gut was used instead. So the answer was correct in one sense, but the timing was at least a century out.

You can see why I was puzzled originally.

Well. the thing about 'girls' intigued me so I went looking up a few sources, and it would appear to be true :P

I'm confident they are more accurate these days.
Probably because more strident pedants than me gave them a good spanking back then.

I'm not sure what they use but gut strings are the best to play on.