Growing up we learn the alphabet song to become familiar with our ABC's, but the number of letters in the alphabet wasn't always 26 as people online have been finding out. There were actually 27 ...

Basically there were five additional characters used in the English alphabet that has since disappeared: Thorn, Eth, Wynn, Ash and Ethel. The first letter, Thorn, makes the "th" sound such as in ...

This isn't the only letter that has been lost in time. Languages grow and evolve, and English has actually lost a few letters along the way, while not gaining U and J until the 1500s.

Letters inscribed along the edges of this slate slab from the 5th century B.C. are closely related to the Phoenician alphabet, which was hugely influential Latin, Spanish and English writing systems.