I have always been interested in the origins of common phrases, such as “rule of thumb.” While that one is fairly common, I found another phrase that is even MORE common. The problem is that many people assume they know the history of it already, but they are wrong. Dead wrong.
"Yo, pimpin ain't easy but it sho is fun!" - St. Benedict, 512 A.D.
The phrase “it’s not rocket science” has a long and rich history, though not in the way that we understand it in 2010. Origins of this phrase, which today means “it’s not as hard as rocket science,” begin with Benedict of Nursia (480- 543 A.D.), who founded the great monastery of Monte Cassino, where he wrote his Holy Rulez. In Holy Rulez he authored a chapter entitled “Finding God for The Simpleton: Tis Not Metallurgy Nor Tis it Alchemy!” Consequentially, Benedict is also credited with the current “…For Dummies” book series trend. Benedict’s favorite phrase, over the ages, has changed.
Genius!
One such evolution of the phrase occurred when Henry VIII (1491- 1547) wrote a letter to Pope Clement VII requesting an annulment from his wife in order to marry a woman to produce him a male heir. In this letter he stated that the matter of divorce should be easy for the Pope to decide on as it was “not akin to straw roof thatching.” This, however, did not aid Henry’s request.
During the Industrial Revolution the world was rapidly changing, as was the language. Toward the tail end of the Revolution the phrase began to take on more colloquial meaning. In American speakeasies it was not uncommon for a man in a Zoot Suit to exclaim “Say here, what’s the big idea? Now listen here, this ain’t that steam engineerin, ya crazy broad!”
In the late 1950’s the Space Race was on at full power and the phrase is first credited to German rocket physicist and astronautics engineer Dr. Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun (1912- 1977), a man who obviously knew his history. When von Braun first immigrated to America in 1945 he was asked by the American Colonel overseeing his transfer for the correct spelling of his name. The rocket scientist replied, slyly, and with his thick German accent [read phonetically]: “Colonel, das spellings iz note rocket sciences, nein?”
"Yo, diz IZ da rocket science... bitchez." - Dr. Wernher von Braun
Receiving uproarious laughter from his fellow rocket scientists, this quickly became von Braun’s catchphrase. For example, in restaurants he would order a Pepsi and when the server would ask if Coke was all right he would respond with “iz note rocket science!” What made these exchanges even more painful to watch was the knowledge that von Braun had already looked into the menu to see what was being served merely to request the opposite and set up unwitting waitresses. All in all, von Braun was a jerk and that kind of assessment is not rocket science.
