Today's useless fact - How did the letter 'Z' become associated with sleeping?

We searched long and hard for information on the origins of symbolizing sleep with the letter "z" -- so long and hard, in fact, that we fell asleep.

We do know that the last letter of the alphabet has an association with sleep that's commonly attributed to comic strips. Who hasn't seen a slumbering 'toon with a trail of little "z"s hanging over its head?

After we slept on it, we surmised the first instance of "z" -- which surely mimics the grating sound of snoring -- may have appeared in one of Winsor McCay's classic comic strips from the early 20th century. McCay was a pioneer in the field, and many of his landmark creations pivoted on sleep, including Little Nemo in Slumberland and the nightmarish Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend -- a strip where each installment would focus on the surreal visions of a person who overindulged in Welsh rarebit.

We didn't find pictorial evidence of the letter "z" in McCay's strips, but we certainly woke up and smelled the coffee about his mastery of the medium. We can definitely thank McCay and his contemporaries for taking comic strips and sequential art into the modern era, new symbols for sleep and all. Check out the links in the Sleep category for more.