The name of the woman who appeared on behalf of Marlon Brando at the 1972 Oscar telecast was given as Sacheen Littlefeather, an “Apache,” and “president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee.” On behalf of Brando, she refused his Oscar for The Godfather (1972). It later turned out that Littlefeather was actually an … Read more
Falwell disbanded the conservative Christian movement in 1989, ten years after founding it. After fighting for such positions as prayer in public schools and a ban on abortions, the organization ended about the same time as Ronald Reagan’s presidency, which its influence had helped bring about.
No. W. C. Fields’s gravestone does not read, “On the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia” In the first place, he isn’t in a grave: his ashes are housed in a vault. Second, the epitaph doesn’t appear there. Third, it wasn’t his joke. The line first appeared in the magazine Vanity Fair in the 1920s. … Read more
In a blind test of a new drug, the subject does not know if he or she is receiving the drug or a placebo, but the physician administering the test does know. In a double-blind test, neither the subject nor the physician knows.
The first game on record played by English colonists in America was a game of bowls played in the streets of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1611.
The bulge was a break in the Allied lines caused by a German advance in the Ardennes forest in Luxembourg and Belgium, beginning on December 16, 1944. The Germans advanced 50 miles on a 50-mile-long front. On December 26, the Allies began to push the Germans back, and by the end of January 1945, the … Read more
Marni Nixon’s only film appearance was as a nun in The Sound of Music (1965). Nixon is better known for dubbing other people’s singing, such as Deborah Kerr’s in The King and I (1956), Natalie Wood’s in West Side Story (1961), and Audrey Hepburn’s in My Fair Lady (1964).
In Green Mansions (1904) by William H. Hudson, Rima the Bird Girl is able to understand the language spoken by the creatures who live in the South American forests.
In the Italian poem Orlando Furioso by Ariosto (1532), the knight Orlando goes crazy with rage when he learns that Angelica, the woman he loves, has married someone else. Orlando runs around naked, destroying everything in sight. By the poem’s end, he is cured.
The Fugitives and Agrarians were a group of writers associated with Vanderbilt University in Nashville in the 1920s and 1930s. The most famous of the group were Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and Donald Davidson.
Seoul was occupied by the North Koreans twice during the Korean War. The capital of South Korea fell to invaders from North Korea in June 1950, inciting President Harry Truman to commit American troops as part of United Nations forces sent to repel the invasion. U.N. forces recaptured Seoul on September 26, only to be … Read more
This basic element of tennis rackets and violins called catgut comes not from cats but from the intestines of sheep. The cat in the word may have derived from kit, an old word for a small violin. Valued for its toughness, catgut is also used for artificial limbs and in small machines like typewriters and … Read more
Pontius Pilate killed himself after he ordered the crucifixion. In A.D. 36, Caligula ordered Pilate to Rome to answer charges of cruelty in the massacre of a group of Samaritans. Shortly thereafter, Pilate committed suicide, possibly by order of Caligula or in anticipation of harsh treatment.
The government-owned land known as Teapot Dome, rich in oil, was located in Wyoming. The scandal began when a Senate investigating committee discovered that the Teapot Dome and Elk Hills, California, reserves had been secretly leased by Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall to private oil companies in 1922. Fall was eventually convicted of … Read more
Homographs are two or more words that are spelled alike but have different meanings and sometimes different pronunciations, such as lead (the metal) and lead (to conduct). Homophones are pronounced alike but have different spellings and meanings, such as rite, right, and write. Homonyms are spelled or pronounced alike but have different meanings, such as … Read more
The first line of Philip Roth’s The Great American Novel is “Call me Smitty.” Through his narrator, Word Smith, Roth not only spoofs Melville, but Hawthorne, Twain, Hemingway, and all other writers who pursued the Great American Novel.
Walter Brooke tells Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate (1967) the one word: “Plastics”.
In the 1928 essay “a room of one’s own”, it refers to the space a woman needs to write fiction. Specifically, Woolf says that a woman needs two things to be able to write: “money and a room of her own.” The essay was drawn from two papers Woolf gave at the Arts Society at … Read more
Founded as a secret social fraternity in Pulaski, Tennessee, about 1866, the Ku Klux Klan took the first two syllables of its name from the Greek “kuklos,” meaning circle. Through intimidation, terror, and violence, the ex-Confederates who founded the Ku Klux Klan sought to keep African-Americans in a subservient position.
Botticelli’s real name was Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi (c. 1444-1510). The Florentine painter’s nickname, Botticelli, meant “little barrel” and was presumably a reference to his girth. Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Florentine school during the Early Renaissance and was famous for the masterworks Primavera (c. 1482) and The Birth of Venus (c. … Read more
Major league baseball is the most popular spectator sport in the U.S., with about 56.6 million fans in attendance in 1990. Thoroughbred racing is close behind, with attendance of about 56.2 million. Basketball and football are far behind, with only about 16 million fans attending games in 1990.
Doris Day first sang, “Que Sera, Sera” in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The song, written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, won an Oscar for Best Song.
The symbol for Paramount originally represented a mountain from the Wasatch Range of Utah. This was the home state of W. W. Hodkinson, the businessman who helped found the company in 1914.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Josephine Baker (1906-75) first danced bare-breasted in La revue negre in Paris in 1925. She later joined the Folies Bergere. She became a French citizen in 1937.
Michael Joe Jackson, born August 29, 1958, was eleven when “I Want You Back” was released in November 1969 and sold 2 million copies in its first six weeks.
The name of the United States president in Dr. Strangelove was Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers). The president’s name in Seven Days in May ( 1964 ) was Jordan Lyman (Fredric March). The president’s name in The Man (1972) was Douglas Dilman (James Earl Jones).
LSMFT means Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco. It was the creation of George Washington Hill, son of Buck Duke, founder of the American Tobacco Company. The slogan, introduced in the early 1940s, became so popular that by 1944 its acronym, L.S.M.F.T., was printed on the bottom of every Lucky Strike package.
Birmingham, Alabama. Which city is known as the Rubber Capital of the World? Akron, Ohio. Which city is known as the Pretzel City? Reading, Pennsylvania. Which city is known as the Insurance City? Hartford, Connecticut. Which city is known as the Cement City? Allentown, Pennsylvania. Which city is known as the Celery City? Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Agamemnon, commander-in-chief of the Greek armies at Troy, is forced to return a captive woman named Chryseis in order to stop a pestilence sent by the god Apollo at the beginning of Homer’s The Iliad. Agamemnon demands Achilles’ captive Briseis in exchange. Achilles, in anger, refuses to fight for the Greeks any longer.
William Butler Yeats’s “The Second Coming” (1920) contains the line, “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold”.
Henry Fielding summoned poet laureate Colley Cibber to court in 1740 for the murder of the English language. Fielding issued the summons under the pseudonym “Captain Hercules Vinegar.”
This quote is in none of Shakespeare’s plays. In Hamlet, Act V, Scene 3, Hamlet says, “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio.” For some reason the incorrect version is the one most people remember.
The warning “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal” appeared in the 1968 report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, which was headed by Illinois governor Otto Kerner. President Johnson appointed Kerner to investigate the causes of over 100 ghetto riots that took place in the … Read more
Both Tin Lizzie and The Flivver were nicknames for the Model T, introduced by Henry Ford in 1908.
William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy both appeared in a 1964 episode of the TV series “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” (NBC, 1964-68) called “The Project Strigas Affair.”
The U.S. took military control of the bankrupt republic Haiti in 1915. Two decades later, in 1934, after instituting public works and financial reform, both civilian and military forces were removed.
The term liberal arts arose in the Middle Ages from the Latin artes liberales. It refers to the seven branches of learning: logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy, and grammar. The number seven derives from a quote in Proverbs 9:1: ‘Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn our her seven pillars.”
The word petard refers to a type of bomb or mine once used to break down walls and gates. To be hoist is to be blown up. Therefore, to be hoist by one’s own petard is to be, literally or figuratively, blown up by one’s own bomb.
Man evolved in the Pleistocene epoch, which began about 2.5 million years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago. We now live in the Recent (or Holocene) epoch, beginning about 10,000 years ago.
For 41 years, under the reign of the Medicis, citizens of Florence, Italy, paid what we now know as an income tax. Called the Scala, the tax was instituted in 1451, supposedly on a progressive scale. The tax turned into an easy type of political blackmail, and as such it was repealed when the court … Read more
Born Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry in 1902, the black actor Stepin Fetchit got his stage name from a racehorse on which he bet and won a large sum of money. The name has since become a term of derision among blacks for someone subservient to whites. Fetchit died in 1985.
The Nazi anti-Jewish demonstrations of November 9 and 10, 1938, also known as Kristallnacht destroyed 815 shops and 29 warehouses. Fires were set to 171 dwellings and 191 synagogues, with 76 other buildings completely destroyed by fire.
Filene’s Automatic Bargain Basement opened in the Boston flagship store Filene’s Basemen in 1909. It followed the first example of bargain basements, the “Bargain Room” at Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia.
There were two sets of twins: Bert and Nan and their younger siblings, Freddie and Flossie. The series about them began with The Bobbsey Twins (1904) by Laura Lee Hope.
Taken from the Greek word semeion, or “sign,” the term “semiotics” had its origins early in the twentieth century, when French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and American philosopher C. S. Peirce called for a new science of signs. Saussure called the discipline “semiology”; Peirce called it “semiotic.” Since then, semiotics as the study of cultural … Read more
Errol Flynn was charged with statutory rape in 1942. He was accused of the statutory rape of two teenage girls on his yacht. He was acquitted.
Aside from the female representations of Justice and Liberty, only three women have been so commemorated: Martha Washington, on the face of the 1886 and 1891 $1 silver certificates and on the reverse of the 1896 silver certificate; Pocahontas, on the back of the 1875 $20 bill; and women’s suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony, on … Read more
Long Island, New York British August 27, 1776 White Plains, New York British October 28, 1776 Bennington, Vermont Americans August 16, 1777 Monmouth, New Jersey British June 28, 1778 Cowpens, South Carolina Americans January 17, 1781
Liberal Tom Braden and conservative Pat Buchanan were the original hosts of the cable news show “Crossfire” on CNN. In 1989, Braden was replaced by Michael Kinsley. During Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign, several people filled in for him, including Robert Novak and Linda Chavez.
The Pledge of Allegiance was written by Francis Bellamy, editor of the children’s magazine The Youth’s Companion. It was written for its September 8, 1892, issue, to commemorate Columbus Day. It originally read: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” … Read more
Only Roger Corman was billed as director for The Terror, but several uncredited “assistants” helped out. Francis Ford Coppola, Monte Hellman, Jack Hill, Dennis Jacob, and Jack Nicholson assisted with directing the 1963 movie.
Presidential candidates Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1984 are tied for the honor, with 49 states each in a general election.
The road used by migrants moving westward in the mid-19th century, known as the Oregon Trail, ran about 2,000 miles from Independence or Westport, Missouri, to Oregon’s Willamette Valley. It took about six months for wagon trains to cover the distance. The Oregon Trail was in use from the 1840s until the advent of the … Read more
Lakota, the language of the Sioux is the Indian language spoken in Dances With Wolves (1990).
Instituted in 1897 and celebrated on June 14, Flag Day marks the day in 1777 that the Continental Congress adopted the “Stars and Stripes” as the American flag.
Actually, both art and music lay claim to the rake’s progress. The English artist William Hogarth began a series of eight satirical paintings entitled The Rake’s Progress in 1732. Hogarth engraved the series three years later. In the twentieth century, Igor Stravinsky wrote a three-act opera called The Rake’s Progress, his last neoclassical work. Based … Read more
Ralph Byrd played the part in the Republic (and later RKO) series beginning with Dick Tracy (1937). Morgan Conway played the police detective in two RKO films, beginning with Dick Tracy (1945).
Benedict Arnold (1741-1801) demanded £20,000 from the British but received only £6,315. In exchange, he revealed American battle plans, tried (but failed) to deliver West Point, and crossed over to the British army. Although Arnold was given 13,400 acres of land in Canada after the war, he lived the rest of his life in England.
Twelfth-century Persian poet Omar Khayyam wrote “A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou” in his Rubaiyat, translated into English by Edward Fitz-Gerald in 1859.
The full title of Oliver Twist is Oliver Twist, or, The Parish Boy’s Progress.
Charles Lindbergh launched The Spirit of St. Louis from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, on May 20, 1927, becoming the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic. He landed at Le Bourget Field outside Paris, on May 21.
The four dancers known as the Ding-a-Ling Sisters came from the larger dancing group, the Golddiggers. They appeared on “The Dean Martin Show” (NBC, 1965-74) from 1970 to 1973.
The symbols of the theme of the 1939 New York World’s Fair, “The World of Tomorrow,” were massive: The Trylon, a tapering three-sided shaft, was 750 feet high; the Perisphere was a globe 200 feet in diameter. The two objects were built at a cost of $1.7 million.
The baroque style dominated European art in the seventeenth century. To an art historian, it connotes vigorous movement, emotional intensity, and a sense of balance (not art that is excessive and florid, the popular meaning of the word baroque). The rococo style flourished in the eighteenth century, after the baroque period; it is characterized by … Read more
In Body Heat (1981), Ned Racine (William Hurt) uses the Wheaton High School yearbook to learn that Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner) is guilty of murder.
Groundhog Day is observed in February because of latitude. German immigrants to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, brought an older version of Groundhog Day to America, one in which badgers predict the weather. The immigrants discovered that, in the United States, groundhogs are easier to find. At the latitude of Punxsutawney, a groundhog emerges from hibernation in February.
In 1789, George Washington was wealthy in land but short of cash. He borrowed £600 to travel from Mount Vernon to New York City, the site of his first inauguration.
Ernest Hemingway won one Pulitzer prize, for The Old Man and the Sea (1952).
The New York Film Critics, established 1935, was established before the National Society of Film Critics. The National Society of Film Critics, considered more avant-garde than the older group, was founded in 1966. Both give annual recognition to the best work in films.
Two Women (1961) was the movie that made Sophia Loren famous, for which she won an Oscar. She was also awarded a special Oscar in 1990.
Milton’s masque Comus was first performed on Michaelmas Night (September 29), 1634, at Ludlow Castle to celebrate the Earl of Bridgewater’s becoming Lord President of Wales and the Marches. The Earl’s children enacted the roles of the Lady and her two brothers in the play.
The Palestine Liberation Organization or PLO now claims to represent 4 million Palestinians. It was founded in 1964 to unify splintered Palestinian organizations.
“Lonesome Dove” was the name of a town in south Texas. Retired Texas ranger Gus McCrae (Robert Duvall) ran a ranch near there.
Arbor Day is a holiday for planting trees and was first observed on April 10, 1872, in Nebraska. It is now usually observed on the last Friday in April.
The Irving Berlin song “God Bless America” (1918) appeared 24 years before “White Christmas” (1942). “God Bless America” was written for, but discarded from, the Broadway musical, Yip, Yip, Yaphank. “White Christmas” made its introduction in the 1942 film musical Holiday Inn, starring Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby. Irving Berlin wrote the 1918 song “Oh, … Read more
Mothra, Rodan, and Godzilla appear in the Japanese horror film Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster (1965), directed by Inoshiro Honda.
The Marshall Plan was named for U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall and was formally known as the European Recovery Program. The Marshall Plan expended $12.5 billion in U.S. loans and grants to help rebuild Europe after World War II. Payments were made in the fiscal years 1949 through 1952.
“II Penseroso,” written in 1632 is Milton’s companion work to “L’Allegro”.
Moliere’s real name was Jean Baptiste Poquelin. Among the French playwright’s works are Tartuffe (1664) and The Misanthrope (1666).
Sean Connery, George Lazenby, David Niven, Roger Moore, and Timothy Dalton have played the character James Bond.
Of the 2,200 persons quoted in the current edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations only 164 are women. This is an astronomical increase over the number quoted in the 1855 first edition of four.
In art, gusto is the excitement of the imagination that gives full expression to the dynamic character of an object. According to William Hazlitt (1778-1830) in his essay “On Gusto,” gusto is “power or passion defining any object.” Gusto unites the senses as “the impression made on one sense excites by affinity those of another.” … Read more
The British fort, captured by the French in 1757 during the French and Indian War, was located in New York near Lake George. Where was Fort McHenry? The fort that withstood British bombardment during the War of 1812 was on the Patapsco River in Baltimore, Maryland. Where was Fort Henry? The Confederate stronghold captured by … Read more
Ohio-born writer Earl Derr Biggers invented the portly Honolulu detective Charlie Chan. The first book about Chan was The House Without a Key (1925).
Founded in 1947, the CIA was born about the same time as the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. An offshoot of World War Il’s Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the agency was established to gather foreign intelligence, carry out counterintelligence, and perform covert operations.
As of the early 1980s, there were seven churches in the United States that ordained women: They were the United Methodist Church, the United Presbyterian Church, the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, the Lutheran Church in America, the American Lutheran Church, and the Southern Baptist Convention.
Using the pseudonym Spectator, Frank E. Woods began the tradition in the June 1908 issue of the New York Dramatic Mirror. Six years later, the Chicago Tribune began the first regular publication of movie reviews. The first columnist was Jack Lawson; when he died shortly after the feature’s inauguration, Miss Audrie Alspaugh took over. Under … Read more
Rene Clair directed the first version of And Then There Were None (1945), starring Barry Fitzgerald and Walter Huston. The Agatha Christie story was remade three times, each time as Ten Little Indians: in 1966 (directed by George Pollock), in 1975 (Peter Collinson), and in 1989 (Alan Birkinshaw).
There are nine nuts per ounce in each box of Cracker Jack, a smaller proportion than in the original 1893 box. But there is a prize, and that didn’t become part of the package until 1913.
