The poor thorn. After reading this, I definitely think it should make a comeback.

 

"Incidentally, the use of y for Thorn in print is where we derive our pseudomedieval idea of "ye olde" from. The "ye" here should be pronounced exactly like the word the."

I DID NOT KNOW THIS.

 

"The long s, another letter variant, was one of the last to die out in English. In text, it can often be mistaken for an f without the stroke. Its use as lowercase s at the beginning or in the middle of words dates back to the 8th century, but it was effectively defunct by the beginning of the 19th century."

I have always wondered about the long s... I always just thought it was how the font worked for the lowercase s back then, not that it was an actual letter in itself.