After Samuel Morse invented the telegraph in 1844, there was a lot of public fascination about the then-new form of communication in the years that followed. People couldn’t help but compare telegraph communication with the one form of communication that was most prevalent at the time, word-of-mouth. People observed that the telegraph wires resembled the vines and tendrils of grape plants in terms of thickness, but unlike the grapevines that were messy and twisted, the telegraph lines were very straight. Building on these comparisons, people started to jokingly refer to word-of-mouth communication as “the grapevine telegraph.” So, instead of saying “I heard a rumor,” or “I heard it through gossip,” people would say “I heard it through the grapevine.”
Even as other means of communication took over and people forgot about the telegraph, the term “grapevine” stuck around, and today we still use it to mean “gossip.”
Explanation: A lone tree stands in a quiet meadow in Guadalajara, Spain, silhouetted against the Cygnus region rising above like flames in the night sky. This deep night skyscape is a composite of exposures that reveals a range of brightness and color human eyes can’t quite see on their own. Spanning over a thousand times the angular size of the full moon, Cygnus sets the sky afire with active star formation where clouds of gas and dust collapse under gravity until nuclear fusion ignites and new stars are born. These stars ionize the surrounding hydrogen gas, causing it to glow crimson, while tendrils of interstellar dust absorb some of that light and cast dark shadows across the sky. Cygnus is a trove of celestial treasures, notably the Veil, Crescent, and Pelican nebulae, as well as Cygnus X-1, the first confirmed black hole. Cygnus continues to yield fresh science, including a new three-dimensional model of the Cygnus Loop made possible by the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Into a Belfast pub comes Paddy Murphy, looking like he’d just been run over by a train. His arm is in a sling, his nose is broken, his face is cut and bruised And he’s walking with a limp.
“What happened to you?” asks Sean, the bartender.
” Jamie O’Conner and me had a fight,” says Paddy.
“That little shit, O’Conner,” says Sean, “He couldn’t do that to you, he must have had something in his hand.”
” That he did,” says Paddy, “a shovel is what he had, and a terrible lickin’ he gave me with it.”
” Well,” says Sean, “you should have defended yourself, didn’t you have something in your hand?”
” That I did,” said Paddy.
“Mrs. O’Conner’s breast, and a thing of beauty it was, but useless in a fight.”
An Irishman who had a little too much to drink is driving home from the city one night and, of course, his car is weaving violently all over the road. A cop pulls him over.
” So,” says the cop to the driver, where have ya been?”
“Why, I’ve been to the pub of course,” slurs the drunk.
” Well,” says the cop, “it looks like you’ve had quite a few to drink this evening.”
” I did all right,” the drunk says with a smile.
“Did you know,” says the cop, standing straight and folding his arms across his chest, that a few intersections back, your wife fell out of your car?”
“Oh, thank heavens,” sighs the drunk. “For a minute there, I thought I’d gone deaf.”
Brenda O’Malley is home making dinner, as usual, when Tim Finnegan arrives at her door.
“Brenda, may I come in?” he asks. “I’ve somethin to tell ya”.
” Of course you can come in, you’re always welcome, Tim. But where’s my husband?”
” That’s what I’m here to be telling ya, Brenda. “There was an accident down at the Guinness brewery…”
“Oh, God no!” cries Brenda. “Please don’t tell me.”
” I must, Brenda. Your husband Shamus is dead and gone. I’m sorry.”
Finally, she looked up at Tim.. “How did it happen, Tim?”
” It was terrible, Brenda. He fell into a vat of Guinness Stout and drowned.”
“Oh my dear Jesus! But you must tell me the truth, Tim. Did he at least go quickly?”
“Well, Brenda…. No. In fact, he got out three times to pee.”
Mary Clancy goes up to Father O’ Grady after his Sunday morning service, and she’s in tears.
He says, ” So what’s bothering you, Mary my dear?”
She says, “Oh, Father, I’ve got terrible news . My husband passed away last night.”
The priest says, “Oh, Mary, that’s terrible. Tell me, Mary, did he have any last requests?”
She says, “That he did, Father.”
The priest says, “What did he ask, Mary? “
She says, He said, ‘Please Mary, put down that damn gun..’
A drunk staggers into a Catholic Church, enters a confessional booth, sits down, but says nothing.
The Priest coughs a few times to get his attention but the drunk continues to sit there.
Finally, the Priest pounds three times on the wall. The drunk mumbles, “ain’t no use knockin, there’s no paper on this side either!
