In the U.S., British general Charles Cornwallis’s main claim to fame was his surrender to the Americans and French at Yorktown, Virginia, on October 19, 1781, a turning point that effectively ended the war. But Cornwallis’s career of enforcing British imperial rule was far from over. He went on to become Governor General of India … Read more
Both types of professionals practice law in Great Britain, but their roles are different. A barrister represents clients in open court and may appear at the bar. A solicitor is allowed to conduct litigation in court but, with only a few exceptions, not to plead cases in open court. In practice, most plaintiffs and defendants … Read more
Known as an artist and writer as well as an inventor, Samuel F. B Morse wrote a series of highly popular newspaper articles denouncing the immigration of Catholics to the U.S. These were published under the pen name “Brutus.” Gathered into book form in 1835, they helped create an American tradition of anti-immigration sentiment.
The four-year post-World War II economic recovery plan for Europe, known as the Marshall Plan, cost $13 billion. The plan, enacted 1948-51, was named for its chief architect, U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall.
Played by Dean Martin, Matt Helm was a secret service agent for ICE (Organization for Intelligence and Counter-Espionage). The four Matt Helm movies were: The Silencers (1966), Murderer’s Row (1966), The Ambassadors (1967), and The Wrecking Crew (1969). The character is taken from a series of novels by Donald Hamilton.
The term noble gas refers to the lack of chemical reactivity in these inert gases. For the record, there are six noble gases: helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon, and radon.
Raskolnikov murders the old pawnbroker Alena Ivanovna and her sister, Lizaveta in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
Jessica Walter, playing Evelyn Draper requested that DJ Dave Garland (Clint Eastwood) Play Misty for Me (1971).
Arabian philosopher and physician Avicenna introduced coffee as a beverage about A.D. 1000. He called the drink bunc; he believed it to be useful as a medicinal tonic. Not until about the sixteenth century did coffee become accepted as a social beverage in Arabia and Persia.
Robert Redford’s directorial debut was Ordinary People in 1980.
The Brownshirts in the Nazi army were the ordinary soldiers. The Black-shirts were members of the army chosen to be bodyguards for high-ranking officials and supervisors of concentration camps. The latter were also known as the SS, short for Schutzstaffel, or elite guard.
Buckingham Palace was built by the Duke of Buckingham in 1703. It became the London residence of British royalty in 1837.
No, red M&M’s were never made with a carcinogenic dye. In 1976, M&M/Mars responded to publicity about the carcinogenic effects of red dye number 2 by taking red M&M’s off the market. However, red M&M’s were not made with red dye number 2: The company acted because people wrongly believed that the dye was being … Read more
Dwight D. Eisenhower changed the name Shangri-La to Camp David in 1953, naming it after his grandson.
Richard Burton (1925-1984) was the most nominated actor who never won an Oscar. He was nominated for an Oscar six times.
Bird guano is the accumulated excrement and remains of birds such as cormorants, pelicans, and gannets. Guano is 11 to 16 percent nitrogen, 8 to 12 percent phosphoric acid, and 2 to 3 percent potash. The excellent fertilizer is harvested from islands off Peru, Baja California, and Africa. Bat and seal guano is also highly … Read more
Eleanor Roosevelt endorsed Good Luck Margarine on TV. She was paid $35,000 for the endorsement.
Agent 99’s (Barbara Feldon’s) name on the TV series “Get Smart” was never revealed, although on one episode she had the cover name of Susan Hilton.
The Lord High Everything in W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s operetta The Mikado (1885) was first called “Pooh-Bah”.
According to the 1783 Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain acknowledged American independence, the new nation’s boundaries were the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, the state of Florida and the latitude line of 31° North.
The shoguns were the de facto rulers of Japan from 1192 to 1867. Originally military commanders, they exercised real power, while the emperor retained formal sovereignty. The name is an abbreviation of seii-tai-shogun, meaning “barbarian-quelling generalissimo.”
While early American filmmakers refused to reveal the names of their players, fearing the actors would request more money, German filmgoers created celebrities. The first celebrity actress was Henny Porten, who first appeared in the movie Lohengrin (1907), directed by Oskar Messter. She was known only as the Messter Girl until 1909, when she played … Read more
Winston cigarettes tasted good “like a cigarette should.” The first commercial using the jingle appeared in 1956.
The Egg and I (1947) gave Ma and Pa Kettle their debut. It is about a city woman (Claudette Colbert) who marries a chicken farmer (Fred MacMurray). Ma and Pa Kettle were supporting characters played by Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride. They went on to star in the same roles in their own movie series.
The first Jews in the 13 Colonies settled in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (New York) in 1654. Descendants of Jews forced to leave Spain and Portugal during persecutions in the late 15th century, they had settled in the Dutch colony of Recife in Brazil. When that colony was conquered by the Portuguese, the … Read more
The sequel to Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward is Equality (1897).
The continental shelf is an underwater ledge around the coastline of the world’s oceans. The edge of the shelf lies at depths of between 360 and 480 feet. The width may vary from a few feet to several hundred miles.
Anne Francis played the female private detective “Honey West” during the 1965-66 season on ABC. Her pet ocelot was named Bruce.
The stockyard district where main character Jurgis Rudkis lives and works in The Jungle is known as Packingtown, in Chicago. The 1906 book led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act. the stockyard district where main character Jurgis Rudkis lives and works in The Jungle
Literary critic Joel Spingarn invented the term “New Criticism” in 1910 in an address at Columbia University called “The New Criticism.” The term did not come into general use until John Crowe Ransom’s book The New Criticism (1941). New Critics focused on the literary text as a discrete whole rather than on historical or biographical … Read more
Apes and some monkeys perceive the full spectrum of color, as may some fish and birds. But most mammals view color only as shades of gray.
In The Iliad (9th century B.C.), Thetis, a sea nymph is Achilles’ mother.
“Reflections,” by Diana Ross and the Supremes was the theme song for “China Beach” (ABC, 1988-91).
Kugelmass has an affair with Emma Bovary in Woody Allen’s short story “The Kugelmass Episode”. The Great Persky projects the bored professor into Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1856) and Emma Bovary into modern Manhattan.
Lorenzo Music provided the voice of Carlton the Doorman on “Rhoda” (CBS, 1974-78). He was never seen.
Sponsored by a nonprofit youth organization called Environmental Action, Inc., Earth Day was first celebrated on April 20, 1970, to draw attention to the pollution of the nation’s environment. The nationwide action involved more than 2,000 college campuses, 2,000 community groups, and 10,000 schools. Over 20 U.S. Senators spoke against pollution. Earth Day continues to … Read more
The poet laureate of England Tennyson sent the wreath to Victor Hugo’s funeral. The author of the novel Les Miserables (1862) was also a great lyric poet. His poetic works included Contemplations (1856).
The Saint Petersburg, Tampa Airboat Line of Saint Petersburg, Florida, began flight operations on January 1, 1914. The twice-a-day service took passengers one at a time across 20-mile-wide Tampa Bay. The complete trip in a Benoit flying boat covered 36 miles and cost $5. The service ran for four months.
The first college to be founded in America north of Mexico was a college for young men founded by French Jesuits at Quebec in 1635. Harvard, the first college in the British colonies, was founded in 1636.
Erected in June 1892 on a nine-story building near Broadway and Twenty-third Street, the first electric sign in New York measured 60 by 68 feet and read: Buy Homes On Long Island Swept By Ocean Breezes Manhattan Beach Oriental Hotel Manhattan Hotel Gilmore’s Band Brock’s Fireworks
The novel The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker tells the story of a single lunch hour. Much of the book focuses on an escalator ride.
Poet Vachel Lindsay killed himself by drinking Lysol, in 1931 at age fifty-two.
Arthur de Lulli is named as the writer of the 1877 piano exercise. The name is actually a pseudonym for a sixteen-year-old girl named Euphemia Allen.
A Cherokee named Sequoyah finished the system of writing in Cherokee in Arkansas in 1821. Sequoyah neither spoke nor wrote English, but he had an idea of the power of writing: “I thought that would be like catching a wild animal and taming it.” His alphabet had a character for each of 86 Cherokee syllables. … Read more
The leader of the intellectual group the “New Humanists” which, during the flowering of modernism, tried to spur interest in the classics, was Irving Babbitt, professor of romance languages at Harvard from 1894 to 1933.
The first group, inducted in the 1936 Baseball Hall of Fame, consisted of Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth, and Honus Wagner. Tyrus Raymond Cobb (1886-1961), “the Georgia Peach,” had played for the Detroit Tigers. Walter Perry Johnson (1887-1946) had pitched for the Washington Senators. Christopher Mathewson (1880-1925) had been a pitcher for … Read more
The English explorer Sir Francis Drake gave the name Nova Albion (Latin for “New England”) to California in 1579. The place near San Francisco where he anchored is still called Drake’s Bay.
James K. Polk, who served as Speaker of the House from 1835 to 1839, was sworn in as president in 1845. Polk served one term, leaving office in 1849.
We drink about 16,000 gallons of water in a lifetime.
The U.S. government first adopt daylight saving time in 1918, during World War I. During daylight saving time, which currently extends from the first Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October, clocks are set ahead one hour to extend daylight hours into the late afternoon and evening.
In colonial New England, “hiving out” meant leaving a town when the rules or the neighbors were not to one’s liking and settling somewhere else.
Two Vietnamese extras, six-year-old Renee Chen and seven-year-old Myca Dinh Lee, died with actor Vic Morrow during the filming of Twilight Zone The Movie (1983). All were killed while a helicopter scene was being shot for the segment by John Landis.
It is slang for a policeman or politician who accepts or extorts graft.
Geena Davis’s screen debut was in Tootsie (1982), where she played the dressing-room mate of Dustin Hoffman.
Alaska became the 49th U.S. state in 1958, Hawaii the 50th in 1959.
Written in 1950, when he was thirty, Isaac Asimov’s first book was Pebble in the Sky. The Russian-born writer has over 400 books to his credit, including science fiction, science nonfiction, mystery, textbooks, and a guide to Shakespeare.
Serge, played by Bronson Pinchot was the art gallery worker with the funny accent in Beverly Hills Cop.
Walter Cronkite, astronaut Wally Schirra, and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke (author of 2001), did CBS’s news commentary on July 20, 1969, the day of the first moon landing.
The blue note is a musical note, usually a flatted third or seventh, that gives a blues feeling to a song. The Blue Note is also the name of a popular nightclub in New York’s Greenwich Village.
Orville made the first flight in the airplane built by him and his brother Wilbur, on December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The 12-horsepower biplane covered 120 feet in 12 seconds.
A median is the point that divides a series of numbers so that half are on one side, half on the other. In the series 1, 4, 8, 20, 24, 27, 42, the median is 20. The mean is the average of a series, found by dividing the sum by the number of elements. In … Read more
Joseph Conrad make the journey down the Congo River in 1890, aboard the Roi des Beiges and it became the basis for Heart of Darkness. Conrad took over as ship master when the captain fell ill of tropical fever.
The pilot for “Happy Days” (ABC, 197484) first appeared on February 1972, as a segment of “Love, American Style” (ABC, 1969-74), called “Love and the Happy Days.”
Greek tragic actors wore “buskins,” boots that reached halfway up the calf and had thick soles to make the actors seem taller. The Greek word for the boot was cothurnus. “Buskin” first appeared as the English term in the sixteenth century.
The Princess slept on 20 mattresses and 20 eiderdowns (fluffy featherbeds), between 2 of which was placed a single pea.
In 1916, the rebel leader Pancho Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico, and killed 18 people. Villa opposed U.S. influence in Mexico and was seeking to overthrow the Mexican government. In response, President Woodrow Wilson sent General John Pershing and 6,000 troops into northern Mexico on a mission to find Villa. Pershing’s expedition clashed with Mexican … Read more
In a 1961 speech, Newton Minow, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, announced that television was a “vast wasteland” because it was a “procession” of formulaic and violent programs and endless commercials.
In the 1896 decision that established the grounds for “separate but equal” public facilities, Homer Plessy was an octoroon (mixed race) who was arrested in Louisiana when he sat in a “white” car on a train. John H. Ferguson was the New Orleans criminal court judge who convicted him.
The hero of the Meuse-Argonne offensive, Sergeant Alvin York, launched on September 26, 1918, killed 25 Germans and captured 132, along with 35 machine guns in World War I. The Tennessee sharpshooter, who had petitioned unsuccessfully for exemption as a conscientious objector, was lionized for his exploits and awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and … Read more
Louis Armstrong’s first recordings were with the Creole Jazz Band of Joseph “King” Oliver in Chicago in 1923. Armstrong played second clarinet to Oliver.
The 1928 novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover by British writer D. H. Lawrence was one of the top-selling novels of 1959, the year the ban on its publication in the U.S. was lifted.
At first, it seemed that the U.S. had won the Olympic basketball final in 1972 50-49 . But it was ruled that the clock was wrong, and there were three seconds left to play. When the teams resumed the game, the U.S.S.R. scored a basket to win 51-50. It was the first U.S. basketball title … Read more
The League of Women Voters was founded in Chicago in 1920 by Carrie Chapman Catt, along with other leaders of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Its aim was to strengthen the political power of women following passage of the 19th Amendment (granting women the vote). Since then, the organization’s aims broadened to general advocacy … Read more
Manhattan is 13.4 miles long, 2.3 miles across at its widest point, and 22.5 square miles in area.
The People’s (or Populist) Party nominated James Baird Weaver, a Union general from Iowa, as their presidential candidate at their first national convention on July 4, 1892. His running mate was James C. Field, a Confederate general from Virginia. The party was supported by farmers and workers discontented with the dominant parties.
The TV movie “The Homecoming,” the original pilot for “The Waltons” (CBS, 1972-77) starring Patricia Neal and Richard Thomas, aired on CBS in 1971.
The first elevator, called the Flying Chair, was erected in King Louis XV’s private apartments in the Palace of Versailles in 1743. It gave him ready access to his mistress, Madame de Chateauroux, on the floor above. The Flying Chair was operated by weights.
Thomas Jefferson said, “I am not among those who fear the people; they, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom”.
The date of the first human migration to the Americas is still in dispute. It may be as early as 35,000 years ago or, according to some archeologists, no more than 12,000 years ago. Whichever date turns out to be correct, it is believed that the first Americans migrated from northeastern Siberia across the Bering … Read more
Bernard Herrmann’s final movie score was the Oscar-winning score was for Taxi Driver (1976).
Shays’s Rebellion (with the apostrophe after Shays) was named for army veteran Daniel Shays, who led an uprising against the Massachusetts state government in 1786. This action was one of a series of protests in 1786-87 by American farmers and workers throughout the young nation against state and local enforcement of tax collection and judgments … Read more
It is estimated that the first edition of one of the great American poems, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass sold no more than three dozen copies when it was first published in 1855.
A death rattle is the sound a person often makes before dying. It is caused by air being forced through food or mucus lodged in the throat.
A Passage to India (1984) was David Lean’s last picture. He was scheduled to start on an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo when he died in 1991.
According to Albert Einstein’s law on the equivalence of mass and energy, the energy (E) of a quantity of matter is equal to the product of the quantity’s mass (m) and the square of the velocity of light (c).
The gypsies probably came from India. Romany, the Gypsy language, is Indic; but it is not known when or why the Gypsies left India. Living as aliens in every country, they reached Persia by A.D. 1000 and northwest Europe by the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
In 1921, the 320-pound silent comedy star and former Keystone Kop allegedly caused the death of a young starlet, Virginia Rappe, fiancee of the director of some of Arbuckle’s films. At a wild party in San Francisco, Rappe went into convulsions, supposedly the result of a sexual assault by Arbuckle. She died a few days … Read more
The author of The Red Badge of Courage (1895), Stephen Crane was born in 1871, six years after the end of the Civil War. He died in 1900.
The Truce of God was an attempt by the Roman Catholic Church in 1041 to limit war. In this decree, the Church proposed that no country do battle between Lent and Advent, as well as from the Thursday to the next Monday of important festivals. Although the Lateran Council approved the truce in 1179 and … Read more
