Bless you is a phrase we all use on regular basis, in fact I bet you have said this to a complete stranger in the last week. Even in our religious-a -phobic culture "Bless you" is complete intertwined into the everyday. However very few people every question why we respond to some one sneezing with "bless you". This odd cultural behavior originates way back in the times of the black plague. You see then final stage of the black plague was sneezing fits so when the black plague descended on England it became common place to say may god bless you when someone began to sneeze because it meant that they would be dead soon. This is my one bit of trivia... some people collect random facts as a hobby but I feel like I don't really have to room in my brain for a ton of facts so I just have this one. When I was little I got the book " Do Fish Drink Water?" as gift and basically it was this big book full of answers to all the questions children ask that no one really knows the answer to. It was a fitting gift because I was a curious and questioning little girl. Well a few years ago I re-gifted the book to the family I babysit for but the one thing I will always remember from the book that helped answer many of my silly questions as a kid, is the origins of "bless you".