Each letter of the English alphabet has an origin story, and each one could fill a book. We don't have time for that, so linguist Olly Richards gives us the short version of all 26 letters. They start out as pictograms, which often having nothing at all to do with their modern usage. Then they get filtered through other languages, often ending with Greek and then Latin, but not always. And we learn about ancient cultures that didn't have certain sounds in their own language, but used those letters for something else. By the time we got our standard 26-letter alphabet, those origins were left behind in the mists of obscurity. By the time he's finished with all 26 letters, you will have a new respect for the people who dug all this up for us. -via Laughing Squid