The palindromeis anold tradition: the first thing that man ever said was, probably, “Madam, I'm Adam.” And it has caused terrible distress to even th… - Mark Forsyth

That A Lot More became a mile, and then the inch was dropped because it doesn’t begin with an M, and we were left with ‘A miss is as good as a mile’, which, if you think about it, doesn’t really make sense any more. But who needs sense when you have alliteration?

Just adding (for some only mind number ONE)4 ‘I, I shall go in, when the major has done:’ The Sub, who was, now, a most terrible plight, in; And, not quite aware of priority S — -ING, Squeez’d awhile; ‘Well!’ says he, ‘then, the best friends MUST PART;’ Crap! Crap! ’twas a moist one! a right Brewer’s ****! And, finding it vain, to be stopping the lake; ‘Zounds!’ says he, ‘then, here goes man! I’ve brew’d; so, I’ll bake.

Baron von Munchausen (1720–97) was a real person who had fought as a soldier in Russia. On his return home he told stories about his exploits that nobody believed. These included riding on a cannonball, taking a brief trip to the moon, and escaping from a marsh by pulling himself out by his own hair. This latter feat is impossible, for the upward force on the Baron’s hair would have been cancelled out by the downward force on his arm. It’s a nice idea, though, and von Munchausen’s preposterous principle was later taken up by Americans, but instead of talking about hair, the Americans started in the late nineteenth century to talk of pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps. What’s impossible in physics is possible in computing, and a computer that’s able to load its own programs is, metaphorically, pulling itself up by its own bootstraps. In 1953 the process was called a bootstrap. By 1975 people had got bored with the strap, and from then on computers simply booted up.