When I was wee lad, friends told me that the number of gold stripes on the inside liner of your tie was an indication of its quality. I don’t know why, but I recently thought of those claims and became suspicious. If that were the only indication of quality, why couldn’t other manufacturers add stripes? It didn’t seem right, and thanks to Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope, I learned that my young friends were full of it. There is little veracity to such claims, and he even explained how they came to be.

You learn something every day.