You might have read my rant on the origins of the word “picnic,” and you might not have. Either way we can learn a great lesson from this factual error on my part. I wrongly stated that the word had origins in picking a n*&%#* at lynchings. The interesting part is that I never heard about this until I was in a college class with a professor I considered trustworthy, and he explained to us how it was the truth…That was in 2006.

Now in 2009, having never heard about this word origin since I smartly share it with the world only to realize that my professor must have recieved the brilliantly contrived  e-mail hoax (and believed it).  I was rightly corrected by an anstute reader (See Patti’s Blog) and am happy to share that my information was bad and that we can thank the French for the word picnic as well as fries (this one is legitimate…trust me).

Continue with your picnics but never trust an e-mail. See snopes.com if you want those e-mails broken down to fact and fiction.