where did the expression life of riley come from
The Life of Riley Theories exist as to the origin, for example from James Whitcomb Riley's poems in the 1880s depicting the comforts of a prosperous home life,[3] but it could have an Irish origin: After the Reilly clan consolidated its hold on County Cavan, they minted their own money, which was accepted as legal tender even in England. These coins, called "O'Reillys" and "Reillys," became synonymous with a monied person, and a gentleman freely spending was therefore "living on his Reillys."
Abiogenesis Belief in spontaneous generation of certain forms of life from non-living matter goes back to Aristotle and ancient Greek philosophy and continued to have support in Western scholarship until the 19th century.[76] This belief was paired with a belief in heterogenesis, i.e., that one form of life derived from a different form (e.g., bees from flowers).[77] Classical notions of spontaneous generation held that certain complex, living organisms are generated by decaying organic substances. According to Aristotle, it was a readily observable truth that aphids arise from the dew that falls on plants, flies from putrid matter, mice from dirty hay, crocodiles from rotting logs at the bottom of bodies of water, and so on.[78] In the 17th century, people began to question such assumptions. In 1646, Sir Thomas Browne published his Pseudodoxia Epidemica (subtitled Enquiries into Very many Received Tenets, and commonly Presumed Truths), which was an attack on false beliefs and "vulgar errors." His contemporary, Alexander Ross, erroneously refuted him, stating: "To question this [Ed.: i.e., spontaneous generation], is to question Reason, Sense, and Experience: If he doubts of this, let him go to Ã†gypt, and there he will finde the fields swarming with mice begot of the mud of Nylus, to the great calamity of the Inhabitants."[79][80]