I love that TV can still teach me things. I learnt (on History or Discovery or one of the more worthy channels) the origin of that universal gesture, giving people "the fingers". In the time of Henry V, hordes of men used to engage in bows-and-arrows warfare. Good archers were the secret to winning battles and each man needed two strong fingers to pull back the string of the bow. The French vowed to hack off the fingers of any archer they captured so they couldn't fight again. When the English won a battle, they would jubilantly jab up their fingers in the air so their French opponents could see they were still intact. It's the defiant "nyah-nyah, can't-beat-me" gesture still so often used today. Ain't history wonderful?
