Classics on the Billboard

Classics hide on coffee cups, search pages and fried-fish signs. Short, witty stories about which book a name you saw today really came from.

01That green-logo cup you carry every morning takes its name from a man aboard a whaling ship.The coffee named after a whaling mateRead the story →

02One of the first big names of the web is borrowed from a brutish creature in a satire.Yahoo is the beast Gulliver metGulliver's Travels
03A pirate from a Victorian novel now hangs over American fried-fish counters.The one-legged cook on a fish-and-chips signTreasure Island
04There is a newspaper that decides how many Pinocchios a politician has earned.The newspaper that rates lies in PinocchiosThe Adventures of Pinocchio
05Call a stingy friend a Scrooge and you are naming a London businessman invented by Charles Dickens.How Scrooge became a word for a miserA Christmas Carol
06If someone calls you a Pollyanna in English, is it a compliment or a dig?Pollyanna, the word for relentless optimismPollyanna
07Switzerland has a region that carries the name of a storybook girl.The Swiss region named by a novelHeidi
08When Peter Pan takes the stage in Britain, a London children's hospital gets a share.How the boy who never grew up helps a hospitalPeter Pan (Peter and Wendy)
09Everyone knows the balcony scene, yet the word balcony never appears in the text we publish.There is no balcony in Romeo and JulietRomeo and Juliet
10"Elementary, my dear Watson," the line everyone gives Sherlock Holmes, does not appear in Conan Doyle's stories.Sherlock Holmes never said that lineThe Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
11There was a time when English job ads asked for a "girl Friday."How Friday became a word for an assistantRobinson Crusoe
12If you opened one video and are still watching related ones at 2 a.m., you have gone down a rabbit hole.Falling down the rabbit hole starts with AliceAlice's Adventures in Wonderland