"Bellweather"

My apologies to Connie Willis and the aptly named Kate Reading, but if I hear the sentence 'Science doesn't work that way' again, I would totally scream.

The book excelled in dispersing trivia on fads throughout the ages though.

• Arsenic, smallpox, and Sick Spaniard had all been hit names for yellow-green.
• In Budapest a writer left a suicide note in the form of a crossword puzzle.
• Color fads are usually the result of a technological breakthrough in the manufacture of dyes. So were the Day-Glo colors of the 1960s.
• At its height it was so popular it was even a treat to the movies, and the studios forbade their actors to be seen playing miniature golf.
• Russia and China banned (hula hoops) as "capitalist".
• Poulaines: the pointed toes became progressively longer, to the point that it was impossible to walk without tripping over them and completely impossible to kneel,
• Bobby pin manufacturers went out business after women all switched to bobs.
• Coffee house fad first started in the Islamic world and mosques didn't like the competition.