People remember stories

Your knuckles know more than you think: Here’s what they can tell you

You might forget where you left your keys or your glasses, but some things are forever imprinted in your memory one way or another. And for those things you simply can’t seem to remember, some useful mnemonic devices can help you. For example, how can you remember the presidents on our bills? And what about all the spelling rules our language has? Is it "gray" or "grey"? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Keep reading and learn a few tricks.

You may handle bills every single day, but can you answer whose face is on each one? You don’t need to remember; this mnemonic device will do it for you: The phrase "When Jeff Left Home, Jack Got Fat" gives you the answer. As you can notice, the first letter of each word stands for the last name of the president or founding father: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Hamilton, Jackson, Grant, and Franklin.

Yes, we keep lots of calendars, but sometimes we have to double-check if a month has 30 or 31 days. Has this happened to you? If it has, next time you’ll want to use your knuckles. The rule is simple: Make two fists and count across your knuckles and the dips between them. Months that land on knuckles have 31 days. The dips are the shorter months, February being the shortest, naturally.

Have you ever had to try a few times before knowing whether you were loosening or tightening that screw? Well, with this rhythmic phrase, you won’t need to do that anymore. If you turn right, you’ll be making it tight. On the other hand, if you turn left, you’ll loosen it.

English spelling keeps everyone on their toes, and certain words have regional rules that make everything worse. Nobody can remember them all, so this device comes in handy. When you don’t know whether it is "gray" or "grey," think of it this way: Gray, with an A as in America. Grey, with an E, as in England.

"Necessary": This is another word with a spelling that can create a few problems. And the mnemonic device for this one is picturing a T-shirt. You know how a T-shirt has one "Collar" (that’s one C) and two Sleeves (that’s two S)? That’s it, spelling solved.

Back in school, memorizing the Great Lakes could feel like a geography pop quiz. Simply the word "HOMES" is a trick that many teachers share with their students. Why HOMES? Because each letter represents a lake: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and of course, Superior.

Just as with any other long list, remembering the order of the planets in our solar system is no piece of cake. But this fun phrase has the answer to your prayers, it’s not bout nachos, but about the names of the planets in order: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

This one sounds like breakfast advice, but it’s actually a compass lesson. The first letters match the four cardinal directions in clockwise order: North, East, South, West. Many kids learned this one in school, and plenty of adults still repeat it quietly when trying to picture a map in their heads.

This may sound silly, but many people struggle to point left; most need more than just a second to figure out which one is actually left. But many have discovered something quite useful: hold up both your hands and use your thumb and index finger to do an "L." Can you see which one forms a clear letter? That’s left, of course.

Is this connected to the Constitution? Yes, it is. Civics teachers sometimes lean on this unusual sentence to remember the seven articles of the US Constitution. Each word stands for one: Legislative, Executive, Judicial, States, Amendment, Supremacy, and Ratification. Now you just have to remember this funny phrase.

Translation and interpretation

Was the forbidden fruit really an apple? 10 Bible surprises

What if some of the Bible stories you grew up with aren't exactly what the Bible says? Was the forbidden fruit really an apple? Were there actually three Wise Men? Did "God helps those who help themselves" really come from the Bible? Over centuries, translations, traditions, and famous works of art have added details that became so familiar, we stopped questioning them. But go back to the texts, and some of these stories look surprisingly different. From Eve's "apple" to the date of Jesus' birth, here are 10 familiar parts of the Bible that may not be quite what we remember.

When you picture the Garden of Eden, what fruit comes to mind? Most people imagine an apple, but there's just one problem: the Bible never says it was an apple.

In the Book of Genesis, the fruit is simply called "the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." The original Hebrew text uses the word peri, which simply means "fruit." The apple connection came centuries later, largely through the Latin translation. The Latin word malum can mean both "apple" and "evil," making it an especially fitting symbol for the story. Over time, that association spread through Christian art and literature. Famous works such as Albrecht Dürer’s 1504 engraving Adam and Eve (also known as The Fall of Man) helped cement the image of Eve holding an apple. Today, it's one of the most famous scenes in history, even though the original biblical text doesn’t identify the fruit as an apple at all.

The story of Jesus' birth is so famous that most of us picture the Three Wise Men, sometimes called the Three Kings, standing beside the manger. But the thing is, over the centuries, the story picked up a few details that aren't actually in the Bible.

In the Gospel of Matthew, the only Gospel that mentions these visitors, they are described simply as Magi from the East. The original Greek word, magoi, referred to learned scholars, astrologers, or priests from Persia or Babylon, not kings. But where did the number three come from? Matthew lists three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but never says how many visitors brought them. Over the centuries, people naturally assumed there must have been three Magi, one for each gift. Even their familiar names, Melchior, Caspar, and Balthasar, were added later by Christian tradition. So, neither the number of visitors nor their names appears anywhere in the biblical text.

Whether it's used to motivate a friend, encourage a family member, or push yourself to finally make a difficult decision, "God helps those who help themselves" is one of the most familiar religious sayings in America. But here's the surprise: those words never appear in the Bible.

The idea can be traced to ancient Greek sources, including Aesop’s Fables, where the saying appears in an earlier form: "The gods help them that help themselves." The exact modern wording was written by English politician Algernon Sidney in 1698, but it was Benjamin Franklin who helped make it part of American culture when he included it in his 1736 edition of Poor Richard’s Almanack.

Many teenagers have heard "Cleanliness is next to godliness" when it was time to clean their rooms. But despite sounding like a Bible verse, the phrase never appears in Scripture.

The Bible, particularly Leviticus, does contain extensive laws requiring people to wash their bodies and clothes in certain circumstances, especially before religious rituals. But the famous saying itself came much later. In 1605, Francis Bacon wrote in The Advancement of Learning that "cleanness of body" was connected to reverence for God. Then, in 1786, it was Methodist leader John Wesley who used the wording we recognize today in a sermon: "Cleanliness is indeed next to Godliness." Over time, the phrase became a familiar saying that many people simply assumed came from the Bible.

When it comes to famous dates, December 25 may be the most recognizable of all, universally associated with Christmas. But here's the surprising part: the Bible never gives any specific date for Jesus' birth.

The Gospels of Matthew and Luke describe the Nativity but never provide a calendar date, so how did December 25 become Christmas? There are two leading theories. The first is that the Roman Church was celebrating Christmas on December 25 by 336 AD, during Constantine's reign, possibly choosing the date to coincide with existing Roman winter festivals and make it easier to convert the empire to Christianity. The second points to an early Christian tradition that calculated Jesus' birth date from the supposed date of his crucifixion, eventually arriving at December 25.

The story of Jonah and the Whale is so famous that it has appeared literally or symbolically in innumerable works of art and literature, from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508-1512) to Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick. But there's a small problem with the title we've given it: the Bible doesn’t actually say it was a whale.

In the Old Testament, the original Hebrew text of Jonah 1:17 uses the words dag gadol, meaning "great fish" or "large fish"; it doesn't identify the creature as a whale, or even specify what kind of fish it was. Most modern English translations therefore stick with "great fish," but the familiar "whale" interpretation developed through older translations and later European tradition, eventually becoming so widespread that "Jonah and the Whale" became the name almost everyone recognizes.

Just as we've always pictured the forbidden fruit as an apple, many of us also assume the serpent in the Garden of Eden is the devil himself. But the original story is a little more complicated.

A plain reading of Genesis depicts the creature simply as a serpent or snake, using the Hebrew word nachash. It describes the serpent as clever and crafty, but it never calls it Satan or explicitly identifies it as the devil. So where did the connection come from? The answer comes from later parts of the Bible, particularly the New Testament. In Revelation 12:9 and 20:2, Satan is called "the ancient serpent" (ho ophis ho archaios in Greek), connecting him to the snake of Eden. Over time, Christian tradition applied that later connection back to Genesis, leading to the familiar belief that the serpent was Satan himself.

Many of us remember Samson for his legendary strength and the long hair that was said to be the source of his power. His story with Delilah is one of the Bible's most famous tales of betrayal, but there's one detail some people may have gotten wrong: Delilah didn't actually cut his long hair.

In Judges 16:19, Delilah has Samson's hair shaved while he sleeps on her lap. The text says she called for a man to do the shaving; it never says she did it herself. Yet paintings, films, and other retellings have often shown Delilah wielding the scissors herself, cementing that image in popular culture. It can be considered a small detail, but it’s a great example of how easily familiar Bible stories can pick up elements that aren't actually in the original text.

Many of us think of the Bible as a single book, written at one particular time by one author, or perhaps a handful of them. After all, that's how it looks when you pick one up in a hotel room, but its history is far more complicated.

The Bible is actually a collection of books written by over 40 authors over roughly 1,500 years, from about 1400 BC to AD 100. The exact number of books varies by religious tradition: Protestant Bibles contain 66 books, while Catholic and Orthodox traditions include additional books. Across these different traditions, the writings were produced by kings, prophets, fishermen, and scholars in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. They also span a tremendous range of literary styles, including history, poetry, songs, laws, letters, and prophecy. So while we hold it as one book today, the Bible is actually a collection of many different writings produced across centuries.

Many people assume that at least a few original fragments of the Bible must still exist somewhere. It would be incredible if they did, but none of the original manuscripts, known as autographs, have survived.

The earliest biblical texts were written on fragile materials such as papyrus and animal skins, which could deteriorate through humidity, heat, handling, and simple age. Wars, fires, and other destruction also contributed to their disappearance. So how do we know what the originals said? Through a technique called textual criticism: expert scholars compare thousands of handwritten copies, ancient translations, and quotations from early Christian writers. When they find passages that match across different sources, or differences that reveal how a text changed over time, they can work backward to determine what the original most likely said, even though the original manuscripts themselves are gone.