In a contest with four candidates in 1860 (Lincoln, Stephen Douglas, John C. Bell, and John C. Breckinridge), Abraham Lincoln received 40 percent of the popular vote and carried 18 states.
John Ford shot nine films in Monument Valley, on the Arizona-Utah line.
It took seven years for Sacco and Vanzetti to move from arrest to execution, from their arrest in May 1920 to their electrocution on August 23, 1927. The Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted of robbery and murder in South Braintree, Massachusetts. The evidence was shaky and the conviction seemed motivated by … Read more
Yes, Dr. Thomas Lushington (1590-1661), an English chaplain who liked his liquor. The City of Lushington, a London drinking club, may have borrowed its name from him. In the nineteenth century, the City of Lushington in turn became the source of the word lush, originally a slang term for beer and eventually another word for … Read more
I Am Curious (Blue) (1970) was the sequel to the X-rated Swedish movie I Am Curious (Yellow) (1969).
In the novel My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara, Flicka, a half-wild filly, is the friend of ten-year-old Ken McLaughlin in Wyoming.
Dr. Felix Hoenikker in Cat’s Cradle (1963) invented ice-nine. Ice-nine is a form of water that freezes at 114.4 degrees Fahrenheit. When it is accidentally released into the ocean, it freezes the entire world. Dr. Felix Hoenikker in Cat’s Cradle (1963). Ice-nine is a form of water that freezes at 114.4 degrees Fahrenheit. When it … Read more
The title character of the 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf is named Clarissa.
The name of the puppet-king in “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” was King Friday XIII.
James Stewart played Glenn Miller in The Glenn Miller Story (1954). Steve Allen played Benny Goodman in The Benny Goodman Story (1955).
Ten million Americans were employed in the health care field in 1992, an increase of 43 percent in four years. This vigorous growth contrasts with an increase of only 1 percent in private employment overall during the same period. The Commerce Department expects health spending in the U.S. to exceed $1 trillion in 1994.
Scylla, a female six-headed monster, captured sailors and ate them. Charybdis was a whirlpool (or a creator of whirlpools) that swallowed ships. The two creatures lay in wait on either side of the Straits of Messina between Italy and Sicily. Their story is told in Homer’s Odyssey (ninth century B.C.).
Harold Lloyd, whose best-known movie is Safety Last (1923), was the “King of Daredevil Comedy”.
Five U.S. presidents attended Harvard University: John Adams John Quincy Adams Theodore Roosevelt Franklin D. Roosevelt John F. Kennedy
The doges of Venice were elected dukes who ruled the city-state of Venice and controlled much of the eastern Mediterranean coast. Their reigns tended to be short, often 1 to 10 years. Venice was an independent city-state from 697 until 1797, when Napoleon conquered it.
The first installment plan in American business was introduced by Isaac Singer’s partner Edward Clark in 1856. Customers could buy a sewing machine for five dollars down, paying the rest in monthly installments of three to five dollars, including interest. Singer was criticized for charging high interest, but the company’s sales took off. In 1857, … Read more
Four new Barbara Pym novels have been published since her death in 1980: 1. A Few Green Leaves (1980) 2. An Unsuitable Attachment (1982) 3. Crampton Hodnet (1985) 4. An Acadeniic Question (1986) – A memoir, A Very Private Eye, was published in 1984.
Mae Questel provided the voice of Winky Dink, better known as the voice of Betty Boop. Fifty cents bought a Winky Dink TV Kit, a plastic sheet and magic crayons to use on your television set during the show.
The “Peggy Stewart Tea Party” took place in a colony in Maryland. The burning of the tea ship Peggy Stewart was inspired by the Boston Tea Party of December 16, 1773. Like its more famous counterpart, this act of destruction was committed to protest British duties on tea and the monopoly of the British East … Read more
Yes, novelist Joseph Heller worked in Hollywood With David R. Schwartz, he cowrote the screenplay of Sex and the Single Girl (1964), the sex farce based on Helen Gurley Brown’s book of the same title. It starred Natalie Wood, Tony Curtis, Lauren Bacall, and Henry Fonda.
Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Turkey, and Yugoslavia are all located wholly or in part on the Balkan peninsula. The peninsula lies between the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea. The Balkan Peninsula is one of the three great peninsulas of southern Europe, the others being the Iberian and the Italian.
In 1992, the average annual salary of a major league baseball player was $1,014,947. Currently, the highest paid player is Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants at $7.3 million.
The Daughters of the American Revolution refused to rent Constitution Hall to contralto Anderson for a concert in 1938 because she was black. Appalled by this action, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, a DAR member, resigned from the organization and rallied support in Anderson’s behalf. Later that year, Roosevelt was able to arrange a performance for … Read more
The real names of the following Western actors are: Slim Pickens—Louis Bert Lindley, Jr. Roy Rogers—Leonard Slye Gene Autry—Gene Autry Tom Mix—Thomas Mix Hoot Gibson—Edmund Richard Gibson Allan “Rocky” Lane—Harold Albershart Will Rogers—William Penn Adair Rogers
Groucho Marx was suggested to MGM to play Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind, but only in jest.
Will Durant was twelve years older than Ariel Durant. The authors of the multivolume series The Story of Civilization (1935-67) were married in New York City in 1913, when he was twenty-seven and she was fifteen.
Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray, and Peter Ustinov were the escapees from Devil’s Island in We’re No Angels (1955). Robert DeNiro and Sean Penn were the angels in the 1989 film of the same title.
The first commercially available oral contraceptive “pill” was introduced in August 1960, by Chicago-based pharmaceutical company G. D. Searle. It contained synthetic progesterone and estrogen and was named Enovid 10.
The families lived on opposite sides of a stream called Tug Fork in the Appalachian Mountains. The McCoys resided in Pike County, Kentucky, and the Hatfields in Logan County, West Virginia. How the feud got started is not known, but it got under way in earnest with the killing of a Hatfield in 1882. The … Read more
The Seminole War of 1835-42, sparked by the Seminole tribe’s refusal to be exiled to Oklahoma, was fought in the Florida Everglades. The tribe’s greatest hero, Osceola, held off U.S. troops with guerrilla-style actions until his capture in 1837. He died in prison, but the fighting dragged on for several more years.
The Koran existed first in oral form as a series of revelations recited by the prophet Muhammad (570-632), founder of Islam. His followers wrote down or committed to memory the individual surahs, or chapters, but these were not collected in authoritative form until about 650.
The name of Hawkeye Pierce’s (Alan Alda’s) tent on “M*A*S*H” (CBS, 1972-83) was The Swamp.
Most states outlawed or restricted abortion during the period 1830-1880. Before then, abortion in the first months of pregnancy (until “quickening”, or the first perception of fetal movement) was legal throughout most of the country in keeping with colonial common law. The drive to prohibit abortion came from a variety of sources, including the desire … Read more
The Code Napoleon is the French civil code enacted in 1804 and introduced into areas then under French control. New Orleans, by that time, was under U.S. control, but the Louisiana state civil code of 1825 (still in effect, with modifications) was influenced by the French code. The Napoleonic Code covered everything from civil rights … Read more
Thomas Hardy published his last novel thirty-three years before his death. Hardy’s last novel was Jude the Obscure (1895), the story of Jude Fawley’s adulterous love for his cousin Sue Bridehead. The novel so shocked readers that Hardy gave up writing fiction and turned to poetry. Hardy died in 1928.
The line about “make him an offer he can’t refuse” appears three times in The Godfather (1972): • “My father made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.” Michael (Al Pacino) tells Kay (Diane Keaton) about Vito’s (Marlon Brando’s) threats against a bandleader. • “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” Vito tells Johnny … Read more
Sweatshops were referred to as such not because the workers sweat a lot. In the 1840s in England, the word sweating meant the exaction of tedious work at low wages. The term sweatshop, a place where workers were “sweated”, was coined in the United States in 1867. Originally referring only to the garment industry, it … Read more
Hollywood art director Cedric Gibbons designed the Academy Award statuette. It was executed by sculptors George Stanley and Alex Smith. The statuette, then and now, is 13.5 inches tall and depicts a naked man holding a sword and standing on a reel of film.
Edgar Allan Poe’s epitaph was “Quoth the Raven nevermore,” from his poem “The Raven” (1845).
Benjamin Franklin said, “He that lies down with dogs, shall rise up with fleas” in Poor Richard’s Almanack (published 1732-57).
Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton or “Mother Seton” (1774-1821) was the first native-born American to become a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. Born into a wealthy Episcopalian family in New York City, Seton converted to Roman Catholicism after her husband died. She founded the American Sisters of Charity, an order dedicated to helping the poor … Read more
The first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction was Edith Wharton (1862-1937) in 1921 for The Age of Innocence.
Kevin Costner’s debut in a major film was a one-word part in Frances (1982).
Elvis Presley’s first number one hit was “Heartbreak Hotel” in February 1956. For 16 months following, he had a record, sometimes two, on the nation’s Top 10 list.
The Harvey Girls were waitresses in restaurants at railroad stations throughout the newly developing West. They were played by Judy Garland, Angela Lansbury, and Cyd Charisse.
The first toothbrush with bristles was developed in China in 1498. Bristles were taken from hogs at first, and later from horses and even badgers. Not until 1938 were nylon bristles, more sanitary and less dangerous, developed by Du Pont.
One hundred seventy-nine episodes of the TV series “I Love Lucy” were broadcast, from 1951 to 1957, on CBS.
At the height of their careers as newspaper columnists in Hollywood’s Golden Age, Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons had together about seventy-five million readers.
The animated ad featuring a cartoon child crying, “I want my Maypo” first aired in 1956. Maypo is a maple-flavored oatmeal, new at the time.
It was coined by New York’s Finest along Twenty-third Street in the years before World War I. At the corner of Twenty-third Street and Broadway, traditionally the windiest corner of the city, men used to stand outside the famous Flatiron Building for free looks at ladies’ well-turned ankles. The police dutifully moved the audience along, … Read more
On the 1971 CBS miniseries “The Six Wives of Henry VIII,” the wives were: Catherine of Aragon—Annette Crosbie; Anne Boleyn—Dorothy Tutin; Jane Seymour—Anne Stallybrass; Anne of Cleves—Elvi Hale; Catherine Howard—Angela Pleasence; and Catherine Parr—Rosalie Crutchley. Henry VIII was played by Keith Mitchell.
Thirty-nine half-hour episodes of “The Honeymooners” were filmed, usually referred to as the Classic 39. They were broadcast from October 1955 to September 1956. “The Honeymooners” appeared as a sketch on Jackie Gleason variety shows before and after that series. Reruns of the original 39 episodes continue to be shown.
The Elizabethan Age ran for the 45 years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England, from 1558 to 1603.
“Texaco Star Theater” (NBC, 1948-56) was the top-rated TV program in 1950.
When the Civil War broke out, a West Point graduate, Ulysses S. Grant (1822-85) had fallen into alcoholism and hard times after his service in the Mexican War. He was working as a clerk in his father’s leather shop in Galena, Illinois, when the Civil War began. Obtaining a commission as a colonel of volunteers, … Read more
The secretive, anti-Catholic, and antiforeign movement, which flourished in the 1850s, received its name, the “Know Nothings”, because members, when questioned by outsiders, answered, “I know nothing.” They pursued their aims through electoral politics, violence, and intimidation. Also known as the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner and the American Party, the movement had adherents in … Read more
On the July 2, 1938, flight during which Amelia Earhart disappeared, the aviatrix was traveling from New Guinea to Howland Island, in the Pacific. In June 1928, Earhart had become the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, one year after Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight. Earhart’s remains were never found.
The first skyscraper was the 10-story Home Insurance Company Building in Chicago It was designed by William Le Baron Jenney and completed in 1885. The first tall building to be supported by an internal frame of iron and steel rather than by thick masonry walls, it was demolished in 1931.
Brian Blessed played Augustus, George Baker played Tiberius, John Hurt played Caligula, and Derek Jacobi played Claudius, on the TV series “I, Claudius” (BBC, 1976).
The song “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” was written in 1863 during the Civil War by Union army bandmaster Patrick S. Gilmore.
Poet Henry Timrod (1828-67) of Charleston, South Carolina, author of “The Cotton Boll” and “Ethnogenesis” was given the title “Laureate of the Confederacy”.
“Search for Tomorrow” (CBS, 1951-1982; NBC 1982-1987) was the longest-running daytime TV drama. However, “The Guiding Light” is the longest daytime drama to run on both radio and TV. It began its run on radio in 1937. It has been on CBS-TV from 1952 to the present.
Beginning in August 1990, baseball’s hits leader Pete Rose served a five-month term at the federal prison at Marion, Illinois, for income tax evasion. In August 1989, baseball commissioner Ban Giamatti had banned Rose from baseball for alleged gambling on major league games.
The prefrontal lobotomy was invented by Portuguese surgeon Antonio Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz (1874-1955) for patients with incurable mental disturbances. Moniz, who also served as the foreign minister of Portugal from 1918 to 1919, was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1949.
Gone With the Wind is longer, by one minute. It runs 220 minutes. Heaven’s Gate was originally shown at 219 minutes, but was later cut to 149 minutes.
Henry Fonda endorsed GAF on TV. Robert Young endorsed Sanka. Andy Griffith endorsed Maxwell House.
The hero of William Faulkner’s Light in August is Joe Christmas. He was a man believed to be part black, who murders a white woman named Joanna Burden and is castrated and killed for it.
In 1844, Jonathan Walker had the initials SS branded into the palm of his right hand. He had been convicted of slave stealing, helping slaves escape to the Bahamas. Branding had been used officially as punishment for crimes in America since the seventeenth century.
The wrestler Gorgeous George’s real name was George Wagner.
Bluebeard was a wife murderer in Charles Perrault’s 1679 novel Conte du Temps. The nickname has since been applied to many real-life killers of women. The most famous was Frenchman Henri Desire Landru (1869-1922), who over a period of five years killed 10 women after proposing marriage to them. Gilles de Rais, who was a … Read more
“Dr. Kildare”: “Three Stars Will Shine Tonight,” sung by Richard Chamberlain (reached #10 in 1962) “Dragnet”: “Dragnet Theme,” Ray Anthony Orchestra (reached #3 in 1953) “The Greatest American Hero”: “Believe It or Not,” by Joey Scarbury (reached #2 in 1981) “Happy Days”: “Happy Days,” by Pratt and McLain (reached #5 in 1976) “Hawaii-Five 0”: “Hawaii … Read more
No shells were fired by warships at the Battle of Midway. The decisive Allied victory on June 4, 1942, was significant in naval history because the two opposing fleets never fired at or even came in view of each other. The Japanese and American fleets attacked each other with submarines and planes launched from aircraft … Read more
Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc. Bronze is a more durable mixture of copper and tin.
During the Depression, dish houses were movie houses that offered dishes as inducement for attending the shows.
Part of the maple-sugar manufacturing process, “sugaring-off” refers to boiling down the sap of the maple tree until the sap hardens into candy or crystallizes into sugar. Maple-sugaring was a popular social activity in America during the 19th century, accompanied by feasting and dancing.
Broadway’s all-time longest-running show was A Chorus Line. It ran 6,137 performances from 1975 to 1990. Its nearest competitor is Oh! Calcutta! with 5,959 performances between 1976 and 1989.
The coffee slogan was “If you can’t sleep at night, it isn’t the coffee, it’s the bunk.”
The musical The Fantasticks by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt has been running for over thirty years, since May 1960.
Goldie Hawn was a regular on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” (NBC, 1968-73) from 1968-70.
George Lucas’s last film as a director was Star Wars (1977).
As of 1988, 764,247 members of the U.S. military were on active duty.
Alice Walker wrote the biography for children Langston Hughes: American Poet (1974). In it, poet and novelist Walker told the story of her predecessor in the African-American literary tradition. Hughes was at the center of the influential Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Walker is known for such works as the novel The Color Purple (1982).
The first All-Star baseball game was played on July 6, 1933, in Comiskey Park, Chicago, home of the White Sox. The American League won, 4-2.
From Jonathan Swift’s The Battle of the Books (1704). Matthew Arnold used the phrase “sweetness and light” in Culture and Anarchy (1869) to elaborate his idea of culture as a humanizing and ennobling force.
The small intestine, which is contained in the central and lower abdominal cavity, is 20 to 23 feet long. The large intestine is 5 feet long.
The Goodwill Games were first held in July 1986, in Moscow. The brainchild of Ted Turner, the games included events such as basketball, boxing, gymnastics, track and field, and wrestling.
The first movie pie fight was in 1913, for a Keystone Studio comedy. Mabel Normand tossed a workman’s lemon meringue pie at Ben Turpin to get him to laugh. He did; Mack Sennett saw it and the pie scene became a favorite bit in Keystone Kop comedies, and in many other comedies as well.
They were giants born of Uranus (Sky) and Gaea (Earth). Each of them had the characteristic single eye in the middle of the forehead. The most famous Cyclops, Polyphemus, ate some of Odysseus’s crewmen in The Odyssey. Others, Brontes, Steropes, and Argeswere famed for having fashioned Zeus’s thunderbolts.
The first national copyright act was passed in England in 1709.
