History
An unlikely theory is that it arose from a health spa fad, which began in the second half of the 19th century and continued up until World War I. This movement was popularized by Sylvester Graham, best remembered for the Graham Cracker, and Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, of cereal fame. People traveled to the shore to enjoy the "beneficial airs" of the salt water, "bene-" becoming "benny" in the process.
Read more about this topic: Benny (slang)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“... the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun’s rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)