WHAT IS A LED ZEPPELIN?

What does Aerosmith mean? 10 legendary bands’ names explained

Image: Graydon Driver

Due to constant repetition, the names of successful bands become household names. But, when we stop to think about them, some of those names are downright strange or, at the very least, curious. What is an Aerosmith? Or a Supertramp? Find the answers to these and a few other existential questions by scrolling through the following stories.

Image: JC Gellidon

In case anyone wondered, The Ramones were not a band of brothers named Ramone. The name of the band was first suggested by Dee Dee, after learning that Paul McCartney would check into hotels under the fake name 'Paul Ramon'. He convinced the other members to adopt the last name, and The Ramones came to be.

Image: Desi Mendoza

There are two versions of the origin of Alice Cooper’s name. In the early days, the story was that Alice Cooper was a spirit the band contacted via an Ouija board.

But in later years, the frontman himself has said that they came up with a name that could be someone’s grandmother – which made it a perfectly unorthodox match for a bunch of cross-dressing shock rockers.

Image: The National Library of Norway

If the rumors are correct, Jimmy Page (guitarist and frontman for what would become Led Zeppelin), Jeff Beck (guitarist for The Yardbirds, a band Page had been part of), Keith Moon (drummer for The Who), and John Entwistle (bass player for The Who) came up with the idea of forming a supergroup, but Moon suggested this would "go over like a lead balloon".

Sometime later, Page remembered this expression and, after swapping "balloon" for "zeppelin", decided to drop the "a" in "lead" to make it clear how the word should be pronounced: Led Zeppelin.

Image: Adrian Ordonez

Billy Gibbons, the guitar player for ZZ Top came up with the band’s name thanks to his obsession with blues music. He thought of combining the names of two bluesmen: Z.Z. Hill and B.B. King. But when ZZ King didn’t sound all that great, Gibbons made the slight shift to ZZ Top.

Image: Brands&People

There are many bands whose names are literary references to authors and their works. Uriah Heep got their name from a character in Charles Dickens’ 'David Copperfield.' Uriah Heep was a man untrustworthy and unlikable in the extreme.

As guitarist Mick Box said "We were formed on the 100th anniversary of Charles Dickens. There was publicity all over London to celebrate his birthday."

Image: Cody Board

Being the American answer to The Beatles, the Monkees needed a moniker similar to that of the Fab Four. Accordingly, they mispronounced the name of a creature from the natural world just as the Beatles had done in the first place.

Image: Tim Toomey

Another legendary group that got its name from a book is Supertramp. The British art-rockers got their name from W. H. Davies’ 1908 memoir 'The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp,' in which the Welsh writer details his wandering early days.

Image: Sisi

The fact that the Grateful Dead came up with their band name while under the influence surprises no one. Perusing a folklore dictionary, Jerry Garcia discovered the term, which related to the soul of an unburied dead person expressing karmic gratitude to someone who arranged for their eventual burial.

Image: Wayne Hollman

Not many bands are named after the drummer and the bass player. But Fleetwood Mac is. The outfit was christened after the names of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie. This was a ploy devised by guitarist Peter Green to keep them in the band. And it worked; 5 decades and countless lineups later, the pair is the only remaining members from the ‘60s.

Image: Daniel Ebersole

The curious name of this legendary hard rock outfit originated, according to drummer Joey Kramer, while he and his girlfriend were listening to Harry Nilsson’s "Aerial Ballet" and the couple began toying with cool band names that had the word "aero" in them.

He liked how "Aerosmith" sounded, but the band he was in at the time didn’t. So it was shelved until Kramer joined Joe Perry and Steven Tyler’s group. The convincing was done and the rest is history.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT

Stranger Than Fiction: 10 Unbelievable Events That Actually Happened

Image: Diana van Ormondt

They say truth is stranger than fiction, and some of these historical events are living proof of this old adage.

Brace yourself for a rollercoaster ride through history, where the strange and unexpected take center stage in the theater of reality. From absurd battles to mysterious weather phenomena, these 10 astonishing tales will leave you thinking long and hard about the complexities of human history.

Image: Sharon Co Images

Wars are typically waged between nations, but in 1932, Australia faced an unusual adversary: emus. After large numbers of these flightless birds invaded crucial farmland within Western Australia’s Wheatbelt, the government decided to intervene by sending soldiers armed with machine guns to reduce the emu population in the area. However, most attempts were ineffective at most, killing very few birds and costing thousands of dollars in supplies and ammunition.

As soon as the first shot was fired, the seemingly tame emu dispersed way beyond the range of the machine guns, and apparently switched to guerrilla tactics of sorts, avoiding all further military ambushes and frontal attacks while still feasting on the farmer’s crops. The government’s futile attempts were ridiculed and physical barrier methods to manage wildlife were preferred from then on. Sadly, they give no medals for having endured the Great Emu War.

Image: Hannah Skelly

In 1518, the town of Strasbourg, France, was gripped by a strange and inexplicable phenomenon - people suddenly began dancing uncontrollably in the streets. The dancing madness persisted for weeks, with some of the affected succumbing to exhaustion or even death. The authorities at the time did not know how to react, and some people even joined the dancers voluntarily, as they feared it was a punishment from Saint Vitus (and presumably wanted to stay on the safe side).

After many efforts to fight the strange epidemic, the dancing eventually subsided and people in the town could resume their normal lives. While theories range from mass hysteria to hallucinogenic substances and neurological disorders like Sydenham's chorea, the event remains a historical enigma that challenges our understanding of the human mind and collective behavior.

Image: Nima Sarram

In 1908, a massive explosion flattened over 80 million trees in the remote Tunguska region of Siberia. The cause? A mysterious airburst, likely caused by the explosion of a meteoroid or comet in Earth's atmosphere. It is now estimated that the event had an explosive energy of 3 to 5 megatons, equivalent to over a thousand Hiroshima bombs. The resulting shockwave broke windows, and knocked people down hundreds of miles away, reaching an equivalent of an earthquake of 5.0 on the Richter scale in some areas.

A bright glow was observed in night skies in Asia and Europe for days after the event due to high-altitude ice particles that formed as a result of the explosion. For all its magnitude, the explosion left no visible crater and minimal debris beside the devastated forest. The Tunguska Event serves as a stark reminder of the potential cosmic threats that lurk in the darkness of space.

Image: British Library

Miscommunication can often lead to chaos, but rarely on the scale witnessed in the Battle of Karánsebes in 1788. The Austrian army, at the time facing the Ottoman Empire, descended into total anarchy when two different scouting parties mistook one another for the enemy, fired on each other, and raised the alarm.

Making matters worse, the Austrian army was made of men of different nationalities who more often than not could not understand each other. All attempts to end confusion and the ensuing friendly fire on the part of the Austrian emperor himself were in vain, and after a while - deeply demoralized - he was forced to give the order of retreat. When the Ottoman army arrived two days later, they found an empty battlefield and were able to take the city of Karánsebes without any resistance.

Image: Aswathy N

In 1807, eight years before Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte had a humiliating defeat at the hands of a strange opponent - a horde of rabbits. During the celebrations that followed the Treaties of Tilsit - which effectively ended the war between the French and Imperial Russia - Napoleon’s chief of staff Alexandre Berthier had the idea of organizing a rabbit hunt to entertain its guests.

So far, nothing out of the ordinary for the time, but when the rabbits were simultaneously freed along the edges of a grassy field, instead of scattering as expected, all these fluffy beasts began running toward their amused hunters. But the fits of laughter didn’t last long, as the now-hunted hunters realized that there was nothing they could do to stop the relentless animals as they swarmed their positions and had no other choice than to flee. Some accounts state that Berthier had gathered around 3000 rabbits, so not even mighty Napoleon was a match for this unexpected army.

Apparently, the chief of staff's mistake was buying tame rabbits from local farmers, accustomed to being fed by humans, instead of trapping wild hares for the hunt. If we learned anything from the Great Emu War, the lesson is clear: never underestimate animals!

Image: Mitsuo Komoriya

In the aftermath of the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia - the largest in at least 1,300 years - 1816 became known as the "Year Without a Summer." The volcanic ash floating in the atmosphere led to climate abnormalities worldwide, resulting in crop failures and widespread famine in the most affected areas.

In Europe and North America temperatures plummeted, and most crops suffered irreparable damage due to the persistent frost. In the United States, a "dry fog" was observed in the eastern regions, dimming sunlight so much that sunspots were visible to the naked eye. Also, the high level of volcanic particles present in the atmosphere caused strange optical effects in the following years, such as strong red hues during sunsets, which can be observed in many paintings produced at the time.

Image: Tiana Attride

It seems that wars against unusual adversaries are a fashionable trend in human history because the Roman Emperor Caligula declared war in the year 40 AD on no one other than the god Neptune himself, king of the raging seas.

Known for his eccentricity, Caligula allegedly ordered his legionnaires to "attack" the sea with swords and spears, after which he declared victory against the powerful god and told the men to gather seashells as trophies of war. One can only imagine that the soldiers had a fun -albeit puzzling- day.

Image: Tim Mossholder

In the late 1980s, Pepsi briefly possessed the sixth-largest navy in the world. In exchange for commercializing Pepsi products in the Soviet Union, the company received 17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer.

However, the fleet was composed of obsolete and unseaworthy vessels that were destined to be turned into scrap almost immediately. The payment was made in the only resources the USSR could gather easily at the time, and it provided a way to establish profitable international relations - and open up to the world.

Image: Garry T

The American Civil War started and concluded with a curious connection to Wilmer McLean, an American wholesale grocer from Virginia. The conflict's first major battle, the First Battle of Bull Run, took place in McLean's farm in 1861. A cannonball fell directly through the kitchen fireplace of the McLean’s house, which was being used as headquarters for the Confederate Army, destroying the dinner that was being prepared by the stationed officers - something that was noted not without humor by the Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard.

The McLean family moved to Appomattox, Virginia trying to escape the war, but just four years later, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant in McLean's parlor, marking the conclusion of the Civil War. Unintentionally, McLean was a prime witness of one of America’s most defining conflicts. Later, he said of this: "The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor."

Image: Snowscat

Genghis Khan's vast empire and brutal military campaigns had an unexpected impact on the Earth's climate. A recent study suggests that the Mongol invasions in the 13th century led to a significant reduction in global carbon dioxide levels, as large areas of cultivated land returned to forests.

This had the unintentional effect of scrubbing as much as 700 million tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere, roughly equivalent to the global annual consumption of gasoline today. This drastic ecological shift highlights the effect that land use, and particularly deforestation can have on our planet at a large scale.