Bloody well right

The other day, on line, where you see everything you never thought you would, I saw someone patiently explain to someone else that there were no dragons roaming the earth in real life. Ever.

Well, oh yeah, came the response! How come the Titanic was carrying dragon's blood in its cargo?

Here's another case of a popular misunderstanding being taken as fact owing to constant repetition, like the way people think a Filet-O-Fish is like a real seafood dinner, or the one spread by Owen Wilson in "Wedding Crashers" about people only using ten percent of their brains. The reality is, we use almost all of our brains. It's just that we don't need that much of it when listening to Owen Wilson.

Dragon's blood, in this case, is a sap, a resin, from a palm tree native to the Canary Islands. It is bright deep red, and it is used in medicine, in art, and in spiritual practices. We talk about antioxidants and anti-inflammatories, and this sap was doing that for doctors long before we even knew how great it was.

Powdered Dragon's Blood 

By the way, the Canary Islands were not named for the yellow birds that came from there. The islands took that name for dogs! There were a lot of BA dogs when the islands were first explored, so early people took the Latin word for dog (canis) and named the islands Canariae Insulae or "Islands of the Dogs."

I love facts! The fact is, I wish I could remember more of them.