Educational children's TV be hanged - I learned a lot from Mad Magazine. Don't read it anymore, either it's declined or lost the appeal it had for a 10 year-old. But the memories linger on...
I was checking the definition of "axiom" in the dictionary, and saw the word "axolotl" - a type of salamander. I had thought for all these years that the Mad guys made up that word, as they used it in the follwing poem:
I wandered lonely as a clod,
Just picking up old rags and bottles,
While onward, as my way I trod,
I spied a host of axolotls
Beside the lake, beneath the trees
A sight to make a man's blood freeze.
Isn't that a lot better than Wordsworth? I think I got my love of poetry from Mad Magazine.
Also, we couldn't go to movies when I was a kid (a law in Quebec after some theatre fire left many children dead) - so Mad was my only source of movie information until I was 14 and they changed the law.