Hiya Skeleton Crew,

Happy Day Before Thanksgiving!

I know I’d said I’d try to send out trivias all week, but as ya can tell things didn’t quite work out that way. As is, I don’t got TONS of time to put this email together, so let’s just get to business, eh?

Trivia 1

Yale University’s motto is an expansion of Harvard’s, which is just Veritas. Apparently the Yalies only like their truth when it’s in the daytime? But once the sun goes down, I guess it’s FIB CENTRAL!! (Just kiddin, just kiddin.)

As ya might imagine, most of those Ivy League schools like to have fancy-pants Latin mottoes. But not ALL! One of ’em has a motto in English, a quote from a letter the founder wrote. It goes like this:

I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in study.

Who was the telegraph mogul who said (or I guess wrote) that?

Trivia 2

Most U.S. university mottoes are in either English, Latin, or Greek, but a handful reach for somethin more interesting than that. Like there’s one school whose motto is in SYRIAC—i.e., the language that Jesus spoke—which is pretty cool!

It’s Ephphatha (the motto is) & it means “Be Opened”. It comes from the Bible of course, & specifically it’s this passage from Mark:

And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue; And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain. And he charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it; And were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.

Can ya tell me what university is it that has the motto Ephphatha?