Language & WorldFact
The English alphabet once had 27 letters.
The & sign is a ligature of e and t, Latin "et", attested since the 1st century. In 19th-century America schoolchildren recited it as the final letter after Z. Spoken aloud it was "and per se and", meaning "and, by itself, and", which slurred into "ampersand", recorded from 1837.
Useful: Look at & in an italic font: you can often still make out the e and the t.
Source: en.wikipedia.org