Why Meghan Markle Won’t Be Called Princess

Prince Harry and American actress Meghan Markle’s engagement has already shaken up the British monarchy in a big way. But royal enthusiasts are less concerned about how the couple might break royal protocol—and more interested in the issue of Meghan’s future royal title. (Here’s what it takes to have the manners of a royal.)

Why? When it comes to the protocol of the British monarchy, nothing is more complicated than royal titles. For instance, Princess Charlotte’s future kids won’t get royal titles, but Prince George’s will. But here’s where things get even trickier: While Kate Middleton may one day take the title of “Princess,” Meghan will not ascend to official princess status.

To become a bonafide “Princess,” royal custom dictates that one must either be born the daughter of a prince or become a prince’s wife. But marrying Prince Harry won’t technically make Meghan a true princess, thanks to Prince Harry‘s position in the royal line-up.

Like Prince William before him, Prince Harry will probably receive a royal dukedom from the Queen as a wedding gift. Prince William became the Duke of Cambridge after marrying Kate Middleton, making Kate the Duchess of Cambridge. Royal insiders say that Harry, on the other hand, will likely become the Duke of Sussex on his own wedding day. That would make Meghan the Duchess of Sussex. (This is how much each person in the royal family is actually worth.)

Complicating matters further, once Prince Charles becomes King of England, Prince William will become “Prince of Wales,” making Kate the “Princess William of Wales.” But because Harry is currently fifth in line for the throne—and will soon be sixth after William and Kate’s third baby is born—he will probably remain a duke.

Royal rules aside, becoming a Duchess is still pretty cool—and it won’t stop us from looking forward to another fairytale wedding!

Check out 10 Royal Family Holiday Traditions You Might Want to Steal Yourself!

Why replace your thermostat?

Thermostats are important for two reasons: they accelerate engine warm-up and regulate the engine’s operating temperature. By blocking the circulation of coolant between the engine and radiator until the engine has reached its predetermined temperature, thermostats can ensure great fuel economy, reduce engine wear, and improve cold weather durability.

What you’ll need:

• A clean rag
• New thermostat
• Gasket and gasket sealant
• Screwdriver or pliers
• Small socket wrench
• Small adjustable wrench
• A small scraper or wire brush
• 9 L bucket or drip pan

1. Put your vehicle on level ground. Wait until the engine is cool before draining the cooling system.

2. With your screwdriver or plier, remove the radiator hose attached to the thermostat housing by pulling off the clamp.

3. Twist the radiator hose to loosen it from the housing. Some coolant will pour out of the hose when you take it off. Loosen the bolts on the housing with your socket or wrench. Lift the cover off and remove the thermostat. While the housing is removed, temporarily stuff a clean rag into the thermostat opening on the engine to keep debris out of the cooling system.

4. Install the new thermostat so the copper heat sensing element is toward the engine. If installed upside down, it won’t function properly.

5. Remove any corrosion from the accessible part of the water jacket. In addition, clean the rims of the thermostat housing. Use your scraper to remove the old gasket from the housing and cover base (the soft metal on aluminum housings can be easily scratched, so be careful).

6. Put on a new gasket and replace and tighten the housing. Torque the thermostat housing bolts evenly and to the manufacturer’s recommendations.

7. Re-attach the hoses and put the engine coolant back into the vehicle. When everything is back in place, run the engine to full operating temperature and check for leaks. Ensure that air has been removed from the cooling system too.

8. Take the car for a drive. Make sure that the temperature gauge needle stays at normal with the car at full operating temperature. If the needle did not do this before you changed the thermostat, it should do so now.

Plus: 4 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Getting an Oil Change

For more great tips on how to maintain your car and to find the parts you need, visit NAPA Canada.

Why Christmas Colours Are Green and Red

Every major holiday has its classic colour scheme. Halloween decorations are generally orange and black. Valentine’s Day is known for its reds, whites and pinks. And every year around Christmas, the world sparkles with red and green hues.

Society has long associated Christmas with this classic colour combo. We’ve accepted green and red as the most festive way to decorate cookies and homes, as long as you don’t go overboard. Yet we do so without any inkling of doubt. Sure, red and green make a lovely pair, but how did they become the official Christmas colours?

It actually started centuries ago, when the colours were used to commemorate a different holiday. Ancient Celtic peoples revered red- and green-coloured holly plants for being evergreen and believed holly was meant to keep Earth beautiful during the dead of winter. So when they and other cultures celebrated the winter solstice, they decorated their homes with holly to bring protection and good luck to their families in the coming year. (Here’s the oldest Christmas carol in the world.)

The tradition of pairing red and green dates continued into the 14th century, when the colours were used to paint medieval rood screens, which were partitions installed in churches to separate the congregation from the priest and the altar. Dr. Spike Bucklow, a research scientist at the University of Cambridge, speculates that this physical boundary could have influenced Victorians to associate the colours with a different boundary, marking the end of the old year and the beginning of a new one at Christmas.

Despite these meaningful religious traditions, there’s one person we should thank for confirming red and green as Christmas colours: Haddon Sundblom. Never heard of him? He’s the guy that Coca-Cola hired to draw a Santa Claus for the company’s ads.

Until that point, artistic renditions of Santa were never consistent. He was usually a thin-looking guy, and his robes varied between blue, green, and red. Sundblom chose to make him fat and jolly, wearing red robes (and, interestingly enough, the same colour as the Coke logo). As Arielle Eckstut, co-author of Secret Language of Color, told NPR, that creative decision made all the difference. Of course, the ads grew in popularity, and people came to know Sundblom’s Santa as “the real one.” “It solidified in our collective imaginations the red of Santa’s robes with the green of fir trees and holly and poinsettia that we already had in our minds,” she said.

It seems that the history of how red and green came to symbolize Christmas is a lot like the holiday itself: rooted in religious tradition, modernized by commercialism, and continued by spirits of joy and good cheer. Think about that the next time you see lights blinking bright red and green. (Want to know why we hang Christmas lights in the first place? This is how your favourite Christmas traditions came to be.)

Check out 7 Silly Holidays Everyone Really Should Start Celebrating!

When something on your fruit or vegetable looks odd, it isn’t unusual to instinctively toss it to the side. But some “weird” parts of fruits and veggies actually contain copious amounts of health benefits (like this fruit’s seed), or they may offer other little-known uses. (Who knew there’s a use for onion skins?) Those “strings” on your banana are no different.

Often peeled off and thrown away with its skin, banana “strings,” which are scientifically called “phloem bundles,” are just as nutritious as the rest of the fruit. They are packed full of potassium, fibre, vitamin A, and vitamin B6.

Phloem is a tissue found in all plants, which is responsible for the transport of nutrients. “Phloem bundles are made up of living cells and allows for food products and sugar to get to all the different parts of the plant,” says Rebecca Lee, a registered nurse and the founder of remediesforme.com, a health resource for natural remedies.

And that is exactly what those “strings” do in the banana; they act as “veins” or “arteries,” transporting necessary nutrients throughout the delectable fruit so it’s grown properly. (Here are some healthy breakfast ideas you can use today.)

“It’s not gross or disgusting it just helps the banana grow and become delicious,” Dr. Elizabeth Trattner A.P. DOM, Doctor of Chinese and Integrative Medicine, told Reader’s Digest. “It is fine to eat and although its structure is a little different than the inside it can be consumed.”

Those phloem bundles can also be used to determine if your banana is ready to eat. If all of the nutrients haven’t been evenly distributed throughout the fruit yet, then the phloem bundles stay on more tightly; meaning the banana is underripe. The opposite occurs with ripe and overripe bananas, as the “strings” can be removed more easily. But if your bananas do end up being overripe, here are some ways to still use them!

Plus: This Is the Reason Why North Americans Refrigerate Eggs and Europeans Don’t

Green Eggs & Sam

The egg on our chicken-coop floor was far from ordinary. An ugly mud green, it looked as if some alien creature had left it there. Nudging it with my sneaker, I wondered, Where did it come from? Had Mother Nature made a mistake?

“Mama! You found Sam,” five­-year-old Becky piped up behind me. Holding up her much-read Dr. Seuss book, Green Eggs and Ham, she pointed at the scraggly creature named Sam on the cover, then at the egg. “Sam’s in there,” she insisted. “I know he is. It’s green.”

My husband, Bill, and I and our six children raise cattle and horses on our Arizona ranch. But I’d recently decided I wanted chickens, too—and not just everyday Plymouth Rocks, White Leghorns and Rhode Island Reds, which lay white or brown eggs. I wanted Easter Eggers, a friendly mixed breed that lays rainbow-coloured shells.

I pictured these beautiful eggs in the refrigerator. Like small, bright balloons, they would add magic to our lives. Every day would be Easter.

“Please, honey,” I’d said to Bill, “let’s order 100 chicks. I could sell eggs and make a little money.”

He looked skeptical but relented. I ran for the chequebook before he changed his mind.

Six months later, my chicks had grown into fat hens. Brown and white eggs appeared every day. But where were the magical colours? The mud-green egg on the floor wasn’t even close to turquoise or seafoam green, much less yellow or pink.

“Looks like a hand grenade,” Bill said as he poked his head into the chicken coop. His words made me feel strangely protective. I cupped the egg in my hand. A curious warmth surged through its smooth, elliptic­al walls, and it took on a magic of its own. What is inside? I wondered. There was only one way to find out—wait for it to hatch. (Learn more about raising backyard chickens!)

Becky thought Sam might be lonesome when he arrived, so we nestled him among three other eggs—two brown, one white—in the incubator in our kitchen. We turned the eggs several times a day, adding teaspoonfuls of water to keep the humidity just right.

On the 21st morning, we heard the tapping of tiny beaks. The shells quivered and rocked. At last, the brown and white eggs burst open, releasing three soggy chicks. Becky named them A, B and C. But the green egg stopped moving. “Mama!” Becky cried. “Sam gave up!”

“No, honey. He’s just resting.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “He can’t get out. He’s gonna die!”

Pressing the egg to my ear, I could hear mournful cheeps inside. Was the shell too thick? I wondered. Should I help? Poultry books say that you should never interfere because a failure to hatch is often nature’s way of ridding a species of the weak and the imperfect. But I had a child pleading, “Mama, do something.”

Praying it was the right course of action, I cracked the egg open. A tiny gold beak popped through. Seconds later, Sam rolled out, a scraggly female chick with pure-white eyes embedded like seed pearls in ash­-grey down.

“She’s blind,” Bill said. “You’d better get rid of her now before the other chicks peck her to death.”

I knew Bill was right. Chickens peck at anything in their search for food. Even if Sam survived “chick­hood,” a blind chicken could never bluff her way past the knifelike beaks of full-grown hens.

I sensed something special about Sam, however. When she nestled in my hand, she dozed peacefully, enjoying the warmth of my palm like a baby bird beneath its mother’s wing.

Since chicks eat and drink at frequent intervals, I decided to find out if Sam could locate food without the noisy cheeping of A, B and C to guide her. When she was four days old, I placed her on the kitchen table, not too far from a soda-bottle cap full of mash. Seconds later she scuttled toward the mash and pecked up every speck.

Maybe, just maybe, Sam could live a life of her own. And since I was responsible for that life, I had to keep her safe. I put her in a wire cage on the porch.

The children took Sam out frequently. They laid her in a doll buggy on her back, claws skyward. Sam remained content while the girls danced around singing, “I am Sam. Sam I am.”

One afternoon Becky said, “Sam likes to ride on the swing, Mama.”

Indeed, wings outstretched, ghost eyes wild, our Easter Egger chick clutched the rim of the rubber tire Bill had tied to a tree branch. “She thinks she’s flying!” three-year-old Jaymee squealed, giving a too-hard push that tossed poor Sam to the ground. But she was on her feet instantly, flapping her wings and staggering back toward the children’s voices. (The origins of the Easter Bunny are more mysterious than you think!)

When the girls tired of the fun, Sam crouched on the porch alone, as though trapped within invisible barriers she dared not go beyond.

Early one April morning, a stray Siamese cat arrived at our kitchen door. His body was so starved that it hung over my arm like an empty sock. I was fascinated by his non-stop purring, even as he slept. The girls named him Ping-Sing and were delighted to have two pets to play with. Although Sam was safe in her cage, Ping was still a cat who ate birds, and I warned: “Be careful when you take Sam out. Make sure Ping is outside.”

The day came when I overheard Becky say, “Jaymee, maybe Ping and Sam could be friends.”

Too late to protest, I peered out to the porch to see Becky shoving two-month-old Sam toward the cat. The Siamese purred like a chainsaw, hot glitter blazing in his eyes. The young chicken approached, bewitched by Ping’s strange vibration. Nose met beak, and Sam stabbed. Ping recoiled, instantly subdued. By afternoon Ping and Sam were wedged side by side in the doll buggy, enjoying a friendship ride. (Use our guide to find a cat breed that suits your lifestyle and personality.)

To our amazement, Sam began to shadow Ping as radar tracks a distant object. When Ping lay down on the stoop, Sam nestled nearby. When Ping got up to drink water, so did Sam. The two became inseparable, and our blind chicken happily discovered life beyond the cage.

Meanwhile, as my hens continued laying eggs, all the colours I’d dreamed about filled my basket to the brim. I watched for more mud­green eggs but never found one.

Then January cast a shadow on little Sam’s life. Seeing the sign at the end of our road—“Rainbow Eggs for Sale”—a passerby stopped and bought three dozen in assorted col­ours. He was ready to leave when he glanced at Ping and gasped, “Where’d you find that cat?”

“He found us,” I said, “and Sam can’t live without him.” But Ping was already cradled in the old man’s arms. “His name’s Elvis,” he said. “Can’t stop singin’—in case you didn’t notice.”

I choked back useless arguments and waved goodbye to Ping.

Now Sam’s lonely battle with life began in earnest. Cheeping the loss of her Siamese friend, Sam paced in her cage. She stopped eating. When I saw too many cast-off feathers blanketing the cage floor, I worried. I let her out, hoping for a miracle.

Sam hunkered down near the porch. One day her curiosity drew her toward the sounds of my free­-roaming flock, but angry ducks and stabbing beaks forced her to flee.

Several weeks later I watched her wait for the hens to go to their nests. Then, squeezing cautiously through the trap door and into the coop, she found the grain in the feeder.

When night came, however, I still gathered up Sam and put her back in her cage. At first, she’d snuggle with pleasure in my arms. But as the weeks passed, I noticed a resistance each time I carried her off. Then came the unexpected peck on my wrist. Was she telling me to leave her alone?

One summer evening I was later than usual locking the coop for the night. To my surprise, Sam was roosting on the feed trough, sound asleep. She looked so content, I left her there. At last she was one of the flock, ready for life among her own.

By her second September, Sam still hadn’t laid an egg. At the same time, she became obsessed with a hole between the railway ties that supported the bucket of Bill’s tractor, parked next to the coop. As the days grew cooler, she seemed to find this to be a warm, safe hiding place.

One October night I awoke to screeches of terror from my flock. I grabbed a flashlight and Bill’s rifle and dashed outside. In the beam of my light glowed the eyes of a raccoon inside the coop. As the animal prepared to rip off my rooster’s head, I fired a shot into the air. The intruder fled.

The next morning at breakfast, Becky asked, “Did he get Sam?”

Cold fear gripped me. I didn’t know. I’d long ago stopped worrying about leaving Sam with the flock.

We hurried to the barnyard. Near the tractor, golden feathers lay scattered like fallen leaves. “Oh, Mama,” Becky said sadly. “Sam’s gone.”

“Maybe she’s underneath,” I said to Bill. He climbed up into the cab. Hydraulics whined, and the giant shovel rose from its resting place.

That’s when I saw them: four little mud-green eggs cradled in a straw-banked nest. A farewell gift from Sam? Maybe I should hatch them, I thought. But it was not to be.

Who, after all, could replace her? As she scuttled bravely to the edges of her unseen world, Sam, a mere chicken, had demonstrated how extraordinary life is.

Looking for another heartwarming read? Try this story about Esther the Giant Pig! 

There are so many more uses for lemons than just being a refreshing sweetener for your water. The beloved fruit can act as a cleaning solution, beauty fix, and even a teeth whitening solution. But did you know that just sleeping next to a cut lemon on your nightstand can reap some of these benefits, as well?

By merely inhaling the scent of a lemon, your body experiences most (if not all) of its beneficial homeopathic purposes. Some of these include decreased anxiety levels, reduced stress, an overall calming sensation, increased alertness, potential reduction of blood pressure, calmed allergies (by reducing airway inflammation), and increased productivity.

“The ‘health benefits’ that everyone is talking about is actually just the effect of aromatherapy,” Diane Elizabeth, founder of Skin Care Ox, told Reader’s Digest. “The idea is that if you place slices of lemon next to your bed, then you will breathe in the subtle scent of lemon at night. Lemon has been used as a powerful aromatherapy essential oil for ages and it has been credited with such benefits as increased concentration, decreased stress levels (most likely the result of increased serotonin production), and a soothing effect on the respiratory system.”

While most of the benefits of sleeping with a cut lemon next to you are health-related, there’s a couple of other benefits, too. One of them is keeping ants away—if you have an ant infestation, simply rub the cut lemon’s juice near or around any possible entries. The lemon’s citrus aroma will disrupt the ants’ scent trail and they’ll avoid that area altogether.

Lemons also act as natural air fresheners and deodorizer—so while that lemon is on your nightstand, it’s playing double duty, freshening the air around you and providing natural aromatherapy. Here are some other simple deodorizer ideas to make your vehicle smell fresh.

Have we not succeeded in convincing you that you need more lemons in your life?