How It All Began

 I love finding out the origins of things: the how-it-all-began stories for legends and songs and inventions and slang expressions and customs we take for granted, usually without knowing how they came into existence. 

For example: did you know that "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" first began as a poem--a free handout to department store shoppers? And that "Rudolph" might just as easily ended up as "Rollo" or "Reginald?" It started in 1939, when Montgomery Ward wanted a poem in booklet...