Yesterday in a hangout, I learned an interesting factoid from +Chris Pirillo: the ampersand ( & ) is a ligature for the Latin word "et", which means "and". It dates back to Old Roman cursive from the 1st century AD.
And did you know that the ampersand used to be the 27th letter of our alphabet? That's actually how it got the name "ampersand", from the way schoolchildren were taught to recite the alphabet:
"Any letter that could also be used as a word in itself ("A," "I," "&" and, at one point, "O") was preceded in the recitation by the Latin phrase "per se" ("by itself") to draw the students' attention to that fact. Thus the end of this daily ritual would go: "X, Y, Z and per se and." This last phrase was routinely slurred to "ampersand" by children rightly bored to tears, and the term crept into common English usage by around 1837."
http://www.word-detective.com/052003.html#ampersand
I used to think elemenopee was a letter, so ampersand is not such a surprise. :)
