Constantine XI, who ruled from 1448 to 1453, was the last Byzantine emperor. He died fighting the Turks in the battle for Constantinople, which ended in the fall of the nearly 1,100-year-old Byzantine Empire.
The whaling movie Down to the Sea in Ships (1922) was shot on location in the traditional home of New England whalers, New Bedford, Massachusetts.
A wave breaks when the water that supports a wave is only about 1.3 times as deep as the wave is high. At that point, the water at the crest is moving faster than the water below. This condition commonly occurs in shallow water at the shore, but it may occur farther off if the … Read more
John Wayne got the nickname “Duke” because he had a dog named “Duke” as a child. To distinguish them, the dog was known as “Big Duke” and Wayne as “Little Duke.”
A baseball game running eight hours and six minutes was played by the Chicago White Sox and the Milwaukee Brewers on May 9, 1984. It was the longest baseball game recorded. The White Sox won, 7-6.
The “Hair Buyer of Detroit” was Henry Hamilton, the Detroit settlement’s British governor during the American Revolution. To fight the spread of U.S. settlements, he armed massive numbers of Native Americans with knives and ordered them to scalp frontier dwellers.
Euphemia Chalmers (“Effie”) Gray divorced English art critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) on grounds of impotence. Gray obtained an annulment in 1854 after seven years of an unconsummated marriage. She went on to marry painter John Everett Millais, a favorite of Ruskin’s.
The novel of attempted suicide and recovery The Bell Jail was written by Sylvia Plath, but was first published under the pseudonym of Victoria Lucas in 1963. It did not appear under the author’s name until 1966.
A 1 carat diamond weighs 200 milligrams, or 3.086 grains troy. The measurement originally represented the weight of a seed of the carob tree.
The federal income tax in the U.S. has been permanent since 1913, with the passage of the 16th Amendment. As established in that year, the bottom rate was 1 percent on taxable net income over $3,000 for an individual, $4,000 for a married couple. The top rate, for those making more than $500,000, was 7 … Read more
John Donne (1572?-1631) wrote, “Go and catch a falling star,/Get with child a mandrake root”, in the opening lines to the poem, “Song,” which was published posthumously, in 1633.
The Pole of Inaccessibility is the point on the continent of Antarctica farthest in all directions from the seas that surround it. The site lies on the Polar Plateau and is occupied by a Soviet meteorological research station. The term Pole of Inaccessibility is also sometimes used to describe the point in the Arctic Ocean … Read more
Only one ancient Norse settlement has been discovered in North America. The remains of a colony at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland were discovered by Norwegian archeologists in the 1960s. Settled in the 11th century, it may have been a staging area for explorations to the south.
Ralph was the embattled elected leader in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.
Don Novello played Father Guido Sarducci on “Saturday Night Live” (NBC, 1975), who has since gone on to occasional roles in films such as The Godfather Part III (1990).
The subtitle of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) was A Romance.
Harry Lillis Crosby get the nickname “Bing” from a comic strip he liked called “The Bingville Bugle.”
Will Robinson (Billy Mumy) is easy to remember from the many scenes in “Lost in Space” where the Robot shouts things like “Danger, Will Robinson!.” The other Robinsons were his sisters Penny (Angela Cartwright) and Judy (Marta Kristin); his mother Maureen (June Lockhart); and his father John (Guy Williams). Also aboard the Jupiter II were … Read more
In the 1970s, the author of Flaubert’s Parrot (1984) Julian Barnes wrote the “Edward Pygge” gossip column for the British periodical, The New Review.
“The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (CBS, 1970-77) had three spinoffs, all on CBS: “Rhoda” (1974-78); “Phyllis” (1975-77); and “Lou Grant” (1977-82).
The practice of people crossing their fingers may have evolved from the sign of the cross, which was believed to ward off evil.
The song that made Carol Burnett famous was “I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles,” which she introduced in a New York nightclub in the late 1950s and debuted nationally on “The Tonight Show” with Jack Parr.
The origins of the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church lay in a controversy over segregation rules at St. George’s Methodist Church in Philadelphia in 1787. The white elders ordered black members of the congregation to sit in a separate gallery. Several African-Americans, including Richard Allen, an ex-slave and lay preacher, refused, founding their own Methodist … Read more
The cinematographer on Jonathan Demme’s movies was usually Tak Fujimoto. He was the cinematographer on the following Demme films: Caged Heat (1974) Crazy Mama (1975) Last Embrace (1979) Melvin and Howard (1980) Swing Shift (1984) Something Wild (1986) Married to the Mob (1988) The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
The first three American states admitted to the union after the original 13 were: Vermont-1791, created from parts of New York and New Hampshire Kentucky-1792, created from Virginia Tennessee-1796, created from North Carolina
Nielsen Media Services reported in 1990-91 that the average American (older than one year) watches 28 hours 13 minutes of television per week, about four hours per day.
Troy was located in present-day Turkey at the mound now called Hissarlik, about 4 miles from the mouth of the Dardanelles. Also known as Ilium, hence the Greek epic set during the Trojan War is called The Iliad, Troy was destroyed at the end of that war (c. 1200 B.c.). It was first excavated by … Read more
The rich and thin Duchess of Windsor, the former Wallis Warfield Simpson (1896-1986) said you can never be too rich or too thin.
Semantics is the study of meaning. Approached from the philosophical point of view, it involves the relationships between words; approached from the linguistic point of view, it deals with changes in meaning over time. Semiotics is the study of signs and the use of signs in human communication.
Old Gold cigarette packs started dancing in TV commercials in 1950, in a spot called “Dancing Butts.” Women wearing huge Old Gold packages did the dancing.
Alfonso II, the Duke of Ferrara in the mid-sixteenth century, is the speaker in Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess”.
Walter Huston played the part of Captain Jacobi, the ship’s officer who delivers the falcon, in The Maltese Falcon (1941). His role was unbilled.
Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek) and Milly Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall) are fellow Texans who work in an old-age home in Robert Altman’s Three Women (1977). Willie Hart (Janice Rule) is a painter whose husband owns a motorcycle bar. The three interact.
Jane Withers was Josephine the Plumber, who sang the praises of Comet Cleanser in the 1960s.
Twenty-nine: I Want to Hold Your There’s a Place Hand Why (with Tony Sher- She Loves You idan) Please Please Me P.S. I Love You I Saw Her Standing This Boy There Ain’t She Sweet My Bonnie (with Tony A Hard Day’s Night Sheridan) I Should Have Known From Me to You Better Twist and … Read more
Philadelphia-born John T. Noland (1896-1931) earned it early in his career. As a teenager, he joined a gang called the Hudson Dusters, which stole packages from the backs of trucks. For his ability to dodge police in his efforts, he was nicknamed Legs. Diamond was one of his chosen surnames.
The speed limit in New York City is thirty miles per hour on the streets, 50 miles per hour on the highways, except where otherwise noted.
There are four: monogamy, polygyny, polyandry, and group marriage. Monogamy is one wife, one husband. Polygyny is one husband, several wives. Polyandry is one wife, several husbands. Group marriage is several wives, several husbands. Group marriage is by far the rarest and has never been the prevailing form of marriage in any known society.
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo depicts the first American air raid on Japan, staged in 1942 by Lt. Colonel Jimmy Doolittle (played by Spencer Tracy). The movie was based on the book of the same name by Ted Lawrence, a pilot on the raid (Van Johnson). The air strike was important in lifting American morale early … Read more
The New York Times adopt the slogan, “All the news that’s fit to print” in 1896, when it was purchased by Chattanooga Times newspaper publisher Adolph Ochs. Known until 1857 as The New York Daily Times, it was founded in 1851 as a Whig newspaper. Under its first editor, Henry Jarvis Raymond, the Times was … Read more
Only one treaty ending foreign wars ever been signed in the U.S. In 1905, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was the site of the treaty that ended the Russo-Japanese War. President Theodore Roosevelt facilitated the negotiations between Japan and Russia.
The population of Cicely, Alaska, setting of Northern Exposure was 815.
In 1824, the candidates the last time the presidential election went to the House of Representatives were Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay. Jackson won a plurality of both the electoral and popular votes, but not a majority in the Electoral College. In accord with the Constitution, the election was … Read more
Most fish do not sleep. They are constantly in motion, though the motion is marked by periods of reduced activity. There are, however, a few exceptions: Some fish in coral reefs do sleep by leaning on rocks or standing on their tails.
The Grand Canyon, which is the gorge of the Colorado River is 217 miles long. Fifty-six miles lie within Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. The canyon varies in width from 4 to 18 miles.
The group of writers and thinkers, the Bloomsbury Group, which included Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, and Lytton Strachey, among others, was named for the place where they held their meetings-46 Gordon Square, in Bloomsbury, London.
The United Kingdom of Great Britain was formed in 1707, when England, Scotland, and Wales were united by the Act of Union. But the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was not formed until 1801. In 1945, 24 years after most of Ireland had won its independence, Great Britain’s official name became the United … Read more
The New York Giants moved to San Francisco for the start of the 1958 season. The final game of the New York Giants at New York’s Polo Grounds was played against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Pia Zadora was born in Forest Hills, New York, in 1954. It is her real name.
Spelunking is the exploration of caves as a hobby. It is not to be confused with speleology, the scientific study and exploration of caves.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote “Water, Water, everywhere/Nor any drop to drink” in his poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798). The lines are often misquoted as “and not a drop to drink.”
Three cities were destroyed when the volcano erupted. They were Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae, all southeast of modern Naples. When were the ruins of Pompeii discovered? Destroyed in A.D. 79, the city was not discovered until the late 1500s. Formal excavation did not begin until 1748.
Corbin Bernsen of “L.A. Law” played a “boy” in the black action film Three the Hard Way (1974). The film, directed by Gordon Parks Jr., starred Jim Brown, Fred Williamson, and Jim Kelly.
Philadelphia lawyer Andrew Hamilton (c. 1676-1741), born in Scotland, was John Peter Zenger’s attorney during Zenger’s trial for seditious libel. He successfully defended the German-born editor’s right to print true accusations against the colonial governor of New York. The famous trial in 1735 was a landmark for freedom of the press.
Dorothy Malone plays the bookstore owner with whom Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) has a passing encounter in The Big Sleep (1946).
Yes, Jay Silverheels (Tonto on “The Lone Ranger,” ABC, 1949-57) was a Mohawk who grew up on a reservation in Canada.
The term chauvinism originally referred to Nicolas Chauvin, a French soldier of the Napoleonic era whose devotion to Napoleon was considered excessive and unreasonable. He later appeared in a number of plays and literary works, including Baroness Orczy’s Scarlet Pimpernel (1905), always representing an exaggerated patriotism. The term has since taken on a more general … Read more
Lincoln said, “I believe this government can not endure permanently half slave and half free” in a speech delivered on June 16, 1858, in Springfield, Illinois, accepting the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. In the same speech, Lincoln paraphrased the New Testament, saying, “A house divided against itself can not stand.”
Oliver Hazard Perry said, “We have met the enemy, and they are ours” at the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813, during the War of 1812.
A golf hole is 4.25 inches in diameter and at least 4 inches deep.
The transatlantic flier and isolationist won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for his autobiography, The Spirit of St. Louis. The book was made into a movie starring James Stewart in 1957.
Eyeglasses first appeared in Italy in the fourteenth century. They were supposedly introduced by Alessandro di Spina of Florence. Eyeglasses also appeared in China about this time; it is not clear who got the idea first.
Twenty-two of 41 presidents served in the armed forces. They were: George Washington James Monroe Andrew Jackson William Henry Harrison Zachary Taylor James Buchanan Abraham Lincoln Andrew Johnson Ulysses S. Grant Rutherford B. Hayes James A. Garfield Benjamin Harrison William McKinley Theodore Roosevelt Harry Truman Dwight D. Eisenhower John F. Kennedy Richard M. Nixon Gerald … Read more
The song “Meet Me in St. Louis” by Andrew B. Sterling and Kerry Mills refers to the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri. The tune provides the leitmotif for the 1944 musical film Meet Me in St. Louis, starring Judy Garland, about a St. Louis family faced with a move to New York … Read more
Gerald Finnerman, who had also been the cinematographer on the TV series “Star Trek” (NBC, 1966-69), photographed the black-and-white ’40s episode, “The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice,” on the TV series “Moonlighting” (ABC, 1985-89). Finnerman was nominated for an Emmy for the episode.
Super Bowl XII was played in the Superdome in New Orleans on January 15, 1978. Dallas beat Denver 27 to 10. The largest arena in human history, the Superdome covers 13 acres and reaches a height of 27 stories.
“The Guiding Light” (CBS, 1952) was the daytime TV drama which the rock group the B-52s once performed on.
Abraham Lincoln was 25 when he was elected to the Illinois state legislature as an assemblyman in 1834.
Daphne du Maurier wrote the short story that inspired Hitch-cock’s The Birds.
There are 132 islands that are part of the Hawaiian Islands. The eight main islands are: Hawaii, Kahoolawe, Maui, Lanai, Molokai, Oahu, Kauai, and Niihau. The islands are spread over 1,500 square miles.
Jerry Mathers (TV’s Beaver on “Leave It to Beaver,” CBS, ABC, 1957-63) appeared on the Hitchcock film The Trouble With Harry (1956). Mathers played Tony, Harry’s son.
At the end of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1819), Washington Irving’s schoolmaster Ichabod Crane disappears after being hit by the Headless Horseman’s “head.”
The 1803 purchase from France of 828,000 square miles of land, stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, now known as Louisiana, cost $15 million. This put the price of each acre of land at about 3 cents. The purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867 cost $7.2 million. This made the selling … Read more
The TV special “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” appeared first, in December 1964. “Charlie Brown” followed in 1965. Since then, both have appeared annually at Christmas time on CBS.
This ancient creature called the coelacanth existed 350 million years ago. Scientists had believed that the fish became extinct 60 million years ago, until a living specimen was caught in the Indian Ocean off southern Africa in 1938.
The scene of the newborn Christ, the Virgin Mary, and often shepherds and the Magi is familiar to most of us. The Nativity Scene was first represented in the fourth century, carved on early Christian Roman sarcophagi.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, was created in 1933 to protect against bank failure by insuring deposits in eligible banks. It is entitled to borrow up to $3 billion from the U.S. Treasury. The FDIC has not yet had to use that privilege.
The last picture show in The Last Picture Show (1971) was Red River (1948). The name of the theater was The Royal.
The first petroleum well was dug by American railway conductor Edwin L. Drake on August 28, 1859, at Titusville in western Pennsylvania. Kerosene for lamps was the first product to be refined from oil; gasoline did not become important until the development of the internal combustion engine in the 1880s and ’90s.
Yes. The blood of mammals is red, the blood of insects is yellow, and the blood of lobsters is blue.
Will Rogers said, “We don’t know what we want, but we are ready to bite somebody to get it”?.
The first theatrical performance in America north of Mexico took place in 1598 in a Spanish settlement near present-day El Paso, Texas. The play was a comedy about a military expedition.
Yes, at least since 1800. At that time, Philadelphia and Baltimore were the second and third-largest cities. Census estimates for 1986 placed Los Angeles and Chicago, respectively, in those ranks.
Tony Curtis said, “With all the unrest in the world, I don’t think anybody should have a yacht that sleeps more than twelve” to hoped-for conquest Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot (1959).
The following are on denominations of U.S. paper currency: One dollar—George Washington Two dollars—Thomas Jefferson Five dollars—Abraham Lincoln Ten dollars—Alexander Hamilton Twenty dollars—Andrew Jackson Fifty dollars—Ulysses S. Grant One hundred dollars—Benjamin Franklin
Considered the oldest full novel in the world, The Tale of Genji was written in Japan toward the start of the eleventh century.
Increase Mather(1639-1723) was the father of Cotton Mather(16631728). Both were clergymen, theologians, and prolific writers in Puritan New England.
Walt Disney’s animated cartoons first appeared in Kansas City in 1919. Disney started working for the Kansas City Film Ad Company, which produced short cartoon commercials to be shown in local theaters. By 1922, Disney had developed his own series of theatrical cartoons, “Laugh-O-Grams,” which were parodies of fairy tales.
