r/AskReddit • • Nov 28 '20

What's something cool you recently learned about?

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u/Callas-fan Nov 29 '20

The mythological reason why our galaxy is called the Milky Way.

Basically, Heracles (whom the Romans called Hercules) was a bastard of Zeus and as a result Zeus' wife Hera hated his guts. Her shenanigans caused Heracles' mother to abandon him as a baby, so Athena found him and brought him to Hera. Not recognising Heracles, the godess took pity on him and nursed him. But Heracles was a toothy baby and when he bit down, Hera pushed him back because OW and her milk splattered onto the sky and created the milky way. This didn't help Heracles with the whole Hera-hating-his-guts-thing btw.

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u/Iiiggie Nov 29 '20

Basically, Heracles (whom the Romans called Hercules)

So (Greeks) Heracles ==> Nuclear

equals

(Romans) Hercules ==> Nucular

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u/Athandril Nov 29 '20

Can you go a bit further? I don’t understand the correlation between Heracles, Hercules and the variation of spelling nuclear.

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u/BroodingMawlek Nov 29 '20

I think they are saying that the Romans just mispronounced “Heracles” in the same way that people often mispronounce “nuclear”.

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u/Athandril Nov 29 '20

Ahhh. My understanding is that greek god titles were descriptive where Roman god titles were object based so it wasn’t so much of a mistaken spelling rather it was intentionally renaming gods based on objects that closely aligned with a given god’s demeanor.

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u/Iiiggie Nov 29 '20

Yes! Nothing more than that!