The 12-tone theory is music based on the serial ordering of all 12 pitches on the chromatic scale. the scale that includes both the black and white keys on the piano. (The diatonic scale of seven pitches includes only the white keys.) In the 12-tone system, developed by Austro-Hungarian composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) in the … Read more
The “Moonlighting” episode in which Maddie (Cybill Shepherd) and David (Bruce Willis) finally had sex was first broadcast on March 30, 1987, after two years of verbal foreplay.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, was written by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren (1891-1974). Delivered on May 17, 1954, it was one of the first of several major decisions of the Warren Court, which lasted from 1953 to 1969.
The first and middle names of the twentieth-century English critic I.A. Richards are Ivor Armstrong.
Yes. The city in south central North Dakota, now the state capital, was founded in 1872 as Camp Hancock. A military post, it protected the crews working on the Northern Pacific Railway. In 1873, it was renamed in honor of then-chancellor Otto von Bismarck in hopes of attracting German railroad investors.
The peregrine falcon was listed as endangered in the late 1970s. It still remains on the list.
Winston Churchill won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for The Second World War.
A first strike is a massive initial attack intended to destroy all or most of a nation’s strategic nuclear weapons and cripple its ability to retaliate. First use is the initial employment of nuclear weapons in response to a conventional attack.
Alfred Hitchcock did not win any directing Oscars.
According to a Gallup poll, washing the dishes far outweighs its closest competitors, cleaning the bathroom and ironing. Seventeen percent of those questioned listed doing the dishes first; only 8.8 percent named cleaning the bathroom and 8.5 percent named ironing, with 9.8 percent saying they didn’t know what they didn’t like.
The city of Seattle is named for a local Indian chief, whose name was variously spelled Seattle, See-yat, and Sealth.
Developed between 1908 and 1912 by Hugh Moore as the healthful “individual drinking cup” for public water sources, the Dixie Cup was originally called the Health Kup. It did not catch on until inventor Moore gave it a new name. The producer of the cups was the Dixie Doll Company, which reminded Moore of a … Read more
British colonials from India brought pajamas to their home country about 1870, at which time they became popular. Women began wearing pajamas in the early years of the twentieth century, initially as garments for sleeping and later as lounge wear.
The famous shootout on October 26, 1881, happened in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, at a photographer’s studio just to the east of the O.K. Corral, Camillus Fly’s studio. The Earp brothers, Wyatt, Virgil, Morgan, and friend Doc Holliday shot Billy Clanton and neighbors Tom and Frank McLaury. Although there was bad blood between the Earps, the … Read more
Star Wars (1977) was also known as “Episode IV: A New Hope” according to the opening titles.
A Confederacy of Dunces was published eleven years John Kennedy Toole’s death. Born in 1937, Toole finished his comic novel of New Orleans in 1963, but failed to find a publisher. He committed suicide in 1969. With the help of the novelist Walker Percy, his mother succeeded in getting the book published in 1980. Dunces … Read more
Freedom’s Journal, which began publication in New York City on March 16, 1827, was the first black newspaper. Co-founders Samuel E. Cornish and John B. Russwurm explained in their first issue, “We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us.”
The United States took over the island of Puerto Rico from Spain in 1898 as a result of the Spanish-American War. Since 1917, Puerto Ricans have been considered U.S. citizens. Since 1952, the island has been a self-governing commonwealth, voluntarily associated with the U.S.
“Stella” was Esther Johnson, a woman Swift once tutored at the household of Sir William Temple in England. Swift’s letters to Johnson and her companion Rebecca Dingley, written from 1710 to 1713, are known as Journal to Stella.
The Chinese master criminal Dr. Fu Manchu appeared in 13 novels by Sax Rohmer beginning in 1913. He received his main opposition from Sir Denis Nayland Smith, loosely connected with Scotland Yard. Smith’s sidekick was Dr. Petrie.
The insider stock trader Michael Milken who became the symbol of 1980s greed graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, symbol of 1960s activism, in 1968.
Francine Lawrence was the real name of “Gidget”, played by Sally Field on the TV show “Gidget” (ABC, 1965-66).
Aces and eights was the hand held by Deputy U.S. Marshal James Butler (“Wild Bill”) Hickok when he was killed. On August 2, 1876, in a saloon in Deadwood Gulch, Dakota Territory, Hickok was shot in the cheek by fellow poker player Jack McCall. McCall later said he had killed Hickok for shooting his brother.
“Embalmed beef” was a nickname for the tinned meat fed to troops at training camps during the Spanish-American War. The meat gained its nickname because it caused diseases such as typhoid fever, dysentery, and food poisoning, which eventually claimed thousands of soldiers’ lives.
The hands in poker in order of value, from highest to lowest: Royal Flush Straight Flush Four of a Kind Full House Flush Straight Three of a Kind Two Pairs One Pair High Card (No Pair)
The main character in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is Humphrey Chimpden Ear-wicker, a pubkeeper in Dublin who is trying to live down an undisclosed crime he committed against a young woman (or man) in the park. Earwicker is also known as Here Comes Everybody and Haveth Childer Everywhere, and is linked with Adam, Jesus Christ, … Read more
Gimlet. Sir T. 0. Gimlette, a British naval surgeon who in 1890 developed the drink as a healthful cocktail. Grand Marnier. Named (in jest?) by hotel owner Cesar Ritz for a short businessman named Marnier Lapostolle, the inventor of the liqueur. Mickey Finn. A turn-of-the-century Chicago bartender who served the spiked drink to clients he … Read more
The intellectuals who served as advisers to FDR included attorney Basil O’Connor, Felix Frankfurter of Harvard law School, and Raymond Moley, Rexford Tugwell, and Adolf Berle of Columbia University. The nickname, the brains, for the elite group who helped shape the New Deal was first suggested in 1932 by Roosevelt’s legal counsel Samuel Rosenman.
Two self-service stores, precursors to supermarkets, opened in California in 1912. The Alpha Beta Food Market in Pomona and Ward’s Grocetaria in Ocean Park. The Piggly-Wiggly stores, which opened in 1916 in Memphis, Tennessee, had self-service and checkout counters but did not call themselves supermarkets. The word supermarket was not part of a store name … Read more
The first astronauts who went to the moon were: Edwin E. (“Buzz”) Aldrin, Jr., Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins. Collins circled the moon in the capsule while Aldrin and Armstrong landed.
The birthplace of much of twentieth-century popular music was Tin Pan Alley. It was where songwriters plied their trade, actually had two locations, both in New York City. The first Tin Pan Alley section sprang up around Fourteenth Street; the second was in the Times Square area.
John Wayne played the centurion at the crucifixion in The Greatest Story Ever Told. His only line was, “Truly, this was the Son of God.” The movie was director George Stevens’s version of the life of Christ.
Meals had long been offered in taverns, cook-shops, and coffeehouses. The first place known as a restaurant was the Champ d’Oiseau, which opened in Paris in 1765. At the entrance was the Latin motto Venite ad me, omn e qui stomacho laboratis, et ego restaurabo vos, or “Come to me, anybody whose stomach groans, and … Read more
The dog that gave the title to the 1952 speech by vice-presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon was a cocker spaniel. In the speech, Nixon defended his financial integrity and refused to return the pet given to his children by a supporter.
The 1961 book PT-109 about John F. Kennedy’s exploits in World War II was written not by Kennedy but by Robert F. Donovan.
The official languages of Belgium are Flemish Dutch and French. The country is bounded by the North Sea, the Netherlands, West Germany, Luxembourg, and France.
Elizabeth Taylor’s first film was There’s One Born Every Minute in 1942. Taylor was nine at the time.
George Bush said, “Don’t cry for me, Argentina” not to Argentina, but to employees of the Liberty Mutual Insurance Company in Dover, New Hampshire, on January 15, 1992. He was asking people not to feel sorry for him during his tough campaign against Pat Buchanan in the New Hampshire presidential primary.
Ann B. Davis was Charmaine “Shultzy” Schultz, secretary to Bob Cummings’s fashion photo reporter Bob Collings on “Love That Bob” (ABC, 1955-59). She was also Miss Wilson on “The John Forsythe Show” (NBC, 1965-66), besides housekeeper Alice Nelson on “The Brady Bunch” (ABC, 1969-74).
For nearly ten years the short story writer Guy de Maupassant apprenticed himself to Flaubert to learn to write fiction.
Joel McCrea first played Dr. Kildare, in Interns Can’t Take Money (1937).
Upton Sinclair said, “I aimed for the heart and by accident I hit the stomach instead”. He was discussing the national response to his 1906 novel The Jungle about the Chicago meatpacking industry. The book was meant to galvanize workers to socialism but instead led to the passage of the first nationwide food and drug … Read more
It was not John F. Kennedy’s but Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration that first launched plans for the overthrow of Fidel Castro, the Communist leader of Cuba, by an armed invasion of Cuban exiles. This plan was known as the Bay of Pigs invasion. Kennedy, who came to office in January 1961, allowed the plan to … Read more
The “Thunderer of Waters” is the Indian name for Niagara Falls, New York.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission reports that the five most dangerous sources are: stairs, glass doors, cutlery, glass bottles and jars, and home power tools.
New York mayor Edward Koch once appeared on the daytime TV drama “All My Children” (ABC, 1970).
What is now the magazine TV Guide with the largest national circulation first appeared on April 3, 1953. It had editions in ten cities and an initial circulation of 1,560,000.
Hamlet was first put to film in 1907, in a silent film produced by George Melies.
Tobacco was the first major export industry in America. By 1617, 50,000 pounds of the Virginia-grown crop were exported to England.
Yes, there was a sequel to American Graffiti (1973). More American Graffiti (1979). It reunited Ron Howard, Cindy Williams, Paul LeMat, Charles Martin Smith, Candy Clark, and Mackenzie Phillips, but not Richard Dreyfuss. Rosanna Arquette and Mary Kay Place were also in it.
The first in this series of musical shows The Ziegfeld Follies staged by producer Florenz Ziegfeld was “The Follies of 1907.” Combining European style and American topical humor, the show was such a hit that Ziegfeld followed it with 21 annual editions of The Ziegfeld Follies. Famous alumni include Will Rogers, Ruth Etting, Eddie Cantor, … Read more
Times Square was named for the 1903 building that was headquarters for the New York Times. The building, located at the intersection of Seventh Avenue, Forty-second Street, and Broadway, transmitted news by the band of electric lights that ran across the top of the building. New York Newsday now occupies the spot and still flashes … Read more
Anne Tyler’s first novel was If Morning Ever Comes (1965), written in her early twenties. Born in 1941, Tyler was respected by critics but did not become widely known until Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant in 1982.
Science-fiction writer Kilgore Trout is a recurring character in Kurt Vonnegut’s books, including God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Breakfast of Champions (1973), and Jailbird (1979).
The chair dates from the third and sixth dynasties of Egypt (c. 2686-2181 B.C.). These early chairs often had legs shaped like animal limbs.
U.S. military expenditures during Reagan’s first term totalled $1.5 trillion dollars. Between 1981 and 1986, the U.S. national debt doubled, expanding from $1 trillion to $2 trillion.
John Wayne (1907-1979) has played the most leading roles. He had a leading role in all but 11 of his 153 movies. His career began with The Drop Kick in 1927 and ended with The Shootist in 1976.
The draft in the U.S. ended on January 27, 1973, after years of anti-draft protests. The end of the draft coincided with a ceasefire that stopped direct involvement of U.S. ground forces in hostilities in Vietnam.
Robert Redford played in the major league baseball team New York Knights in The Natural (1984).
New Orleans’ streets are threatened with panic in Panic in the Streets (1950). The city is threatened by a deadly plague which may be carried by a pair of murderers.
A polecat is not a cat at all. Polecat is the common name for various weasel-like animals of the family Mustelidae, which also includes weasels, minks, and otters. Varieties of this creature include: the European polecat; the mashed, or steppe, polecat of Asia; the marbled polecat of Eurasia; and the zorilla, or African polecat. In … Read more
The tragedy Samson Agonistes by John Milton, about Samson’s battle of faith and destruction of the Philistine temple, spans one day.
The bank employee Joseph K. is arrested for no apparent reason on his thirtieth birthday Kafka’s The Trial.
There have been Two Liberty Bells. The first was cast in England in 1752 for the Pennsylvania State House, which later became Independence Hall. The second was cast in Philadelphia and inscribed, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10). The bell cracked on July 8, 1835, as it tolled … Read more
The latitude of the boundary between North and South Korea that the U.S. was defending in the Korean War (1950-53) was the 38th parallel.
The most recent tie in Oscar voting for major awards was in the category of Best Actress in 1968. The award went to Katharine Hepburn for The Lion in Winter and Barbra Streisand for Funny Girl.
It meant the kids had to move out of the master bedroom when their show-business father (Danny Thomas) returned from a tour on the TV series “Make Room for Daddy” (ABC, CBS, 1953-64).
Calvin L. Graham (1930-92), born in Canton, Texas, was the boy who lied about his age so he could enlist in the U.S. Navy at age 12 during World War II. Wounded by shrapnel during the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942, he helped pull other crew members to safety. When the Navy discovered his age … Read more
Tales from the Crypt (1972) and The Vault of Horror (1973) were the 1970s British horror films that were inspired by 1950s E.C. Horror Comics. Both were produced by Milton Subotsky and Max J. Rosenberg for Amicus-Metromedia. They were released by Cinerama.
The colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet make up a rainbow.
David Lean made sixteen movies. David Lean won the Oscar for best director twice, for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962).
Lauren Bacall sang for Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not (1944). Andy Williams was hired to dub her voice, but Bacall’s voice was used after all.
Termites clear fallen timber and stumps from forests more efficiently than any other wood-eating creature. They can clear vast quantities of wood that otherwise would be left to rot. This makes termites beneficial in ecosystems such as forests.
the name of the vampire in Nosferatu, the Vampire was Graf Orlok, played by Max Schreck. The film, directed by F. W. Murnau, was the first film version of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, but the name was changed to avoid copyright problems.
The flooding of the Kansas River at Kansas City, Missouri, and Topeka and Lawrence, Kansas, in July 1951 was the first flood in the United States to cost $1 billion in damages. Forty-one people were killed.
Charles F. Richter of the California Institute of Technology developed the Richter scale in 1935 as a mathematical device to compare the sizes of earthquakes. Each whole number increase in the scale corresponds to a tenfold increase in the amplitude of waves measured by a seismograph, or an increase of about 31 times the energy … Read more
The abyssal zone begins at a depth of 6,600 feet and runs to 19,800 feet. It covers 83 percent of the area of oceans and seas. Water temperature in the abyssal zone is about 39 degrees Fahrenheit.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, with 1,560 games, is the NBA lifetime leader in most games played. Born Ferdinand Lewis (Lew) Alcindor in 1947, Abdul-Jabbar began playing for the Milwaukee Bucks in 1969 and the Los Angeles Lakers in 1975.
Director Rouben Mamoulian in City Streets (1931) introduced the use of “subjective sound”, a voice-over showing what a character is thinking. While Sylvia Sidney lay alone in bed, she “remembered” what Gary Cooper had said to her earlier, and Gary Cooper’s voice was heard on the soundtrack.
Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne are buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Massachusetts.
Virginia Woolf’s maiden name was Adeline Virginia Stephen. She married Leonard Woolf in 1912.
The first leap year was 46 B.C. It was then that the Julian calendar of 365.25 days was adopted. The calendar required that an extra day be added every fourth year.
The following actors played Indians: Linda Darnell—Buffalo Bill (1944) Burt Lancaster—Apache (1954) Audrey Hepburn—The Unforgiven (1960) Paul Newman—Hombre (1967)
In the 1960s, Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels (The Lone Ranger and Tonto, respectively) advertised Jeno’s Pizza Rolls.
“He’s the kind of guy that, when he dies, he’s going up to Heaven and give God a bad time for making him bald” referred to Frank Sinatra. The quote is from Marlon Brando.
Gypsies call themselves Rom, or “man.” Not knowing the origin of Rom, the English called them Gypsies (derived from Egyptians); the French, Bohemians; the Spanish, Flemish; and the Swedes, Tatars.
Angry, hungry, and gry, which is a now obsolete unit of measure that is equal to 0.008 inch.
The Yiddish word “chutzpa” meaning “gall, impudence” came over from Eastern Europe with the millions of Jews who immigrated to the U.S. beginning in the 1880s. By the 1970s, the Americanized term had taken on the positive connotation of “self-confidence, courage” and had made its way into British slang as well.
The Panama Canal, which required ten years from start to finish, took two years longer to build than the Erie Canal. Excavation on the 51-mile long Panama Canal began in 1904; the first ship entered the waterway in 1914. The Erie Canal, linking Buffalo and Albany, New York, took from 1817 to 1825 to complete.
