The URL below is to site with a fair amount of information about names.
http://www.familychronicle.com/surname.html

Another interesting site about history of plumbing. For instance it says some Roman plumbers were women.
http://www.plumbingproducts.com/histhomas.html

This URL is for a dictionary and phrase book published in 1848. It is fun to browse through.
For instance, I learned that a catamaran was a name for a raft to cross a river, long before it became a fancy twin hulled racing sailboat.
Do you know what it means "To acknowledge the corn" ? You can find it here

http://www.merrycoz.org/voices/bartlett/AMER02.HTM

Here is a site about the Sphinx and riddle, but at bottom there are quite a few links to other mythology siteshttp://www.nmia.com/~sphinx/greek_sphinx.html

Wordwind stumped me with word "epulation" When I looked it up, I found a word site new to me.

http://archives.emazing.com/archives/word/2001-08-02

Here are some of the words I found there: Pogonip,aposematic,ensorcell,apotropaic, torsade, jobation
uliginous

The navigation is a bit tricky, sorry about that.