The young Republican congressmen from southern and western states known as the “War Hawks”, including Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, demanded war against Great Britain in 1810-11. They got their wish in the War of 1812. Dubbed “War Hawks” by their opponents, they wanted to stop Great Britain from … Read more
President John F. Kennedy said the line at his inaugural speech. Another form of the quote was spoken by the young Kennedy’s headmaster at Choate, a prep school in Wallingford, Connecticut. The headmaster told his students, “Ask not what your school can do for you; ask what you can do for your school”; and Kennedy … Read more
The famous mining town Deadwood, South Dakota from the gold rush days that now stands as the final resting place for Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane, has 1,830 inhabitants. Every August it relives its frontier past in a three-day “Days of ’76” celebration, featuring a historical parade and rodeos. In 1992, Deadwood held its … Read more
The woman who sued the state of Texas for denying her the right to abort a fetus was named Norma McGorvey. In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that women had the right to abort a fetus during the first trimester of pregnancy. Justice Harry Blackmun wrote the majority opinion in that case. Justices William … Read more
The Mosquito Coast is also known as The Spanish Costa de Mosquitos. It is a 40-mile-wide band along the coasts of Nicaragua and Honduras. It follows the Caribbean Sea for about 225 miles.
The modern ballroom tango appeared about 1880 in Argentina. It combined the old tango of Spain, a light-spirited variety of flamenco, with the milonga, a fast, hot Argentine dance. At first considered low-class, the new tango was all the rage in fashionable circles by 1915.
American Revolutionary patriots Samuel (1722-1803) and John Adams (1735-1826) were cousins. John Quincy Adams (17671848) was John’s son. Two of these men served as president of the U.S.: John (served 1797-1801) and John Quincy (served 1825-29).
The interminable law case in Dickens’s Bleak House was Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, a case stemming from a dispute about distribution of an estate.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) had its premiere on October 16, 1939, on “Mr. Smith Day” in Washington, D.C., at Constitution Hall. The film was at first poorly received by members of the Senate, who felt that the movie cast a negative light on democracy and on Washington, D.C.
Catherine the Great was alone on the morning of November 17, 1796, when she collapsed with a stroke. Earlier that morning, she had bid farewell to a lover, a twenty-seven-year old man. No horses were involved.
Country singer Randy Travis is a ring member in Young Guns (1988).
Hoagy Carmichael won in 1951 for “In the Cool Cool Cool of the Evening,” which appeared in Here Comes the Groom, starring Bing Crosby.
The Revolutionary War patriot Paul Revere (1735-1818) was only 50 percent British. Revere’s father was French silversmith Apollos Rivoire, a Huguenot (Protestant) refugee from persecution by the Catholic authorities in France. Revere’s mother, Deborah Hitchbourn, was of English descent.
As written by Francis Bellamy, editor of The Youth’s Companion, where is first appeared on September 8, 1892, the Pledge of Allegiance read: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands; one nation indivisible, with liberty and Justice for all.” In its present text (established by Congress in 1954), it … Read more
Andy Robinson has continued to appear in action/mystery films, including Charley Varrick (1973), The Drowning Pool (1975), and Cobra (1986).
The name of Rochester’s house in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is Thornfield Hall.
Gertrude and Murgatroyd were the names of the pigeons played by Red Skelton on “The Red Skelton Show” (CBS, NBC, 1951-71).
Rudolph Valentino’s real name was Rodolfo Alfonzo Raffaele Pierre Philibert Guglielmi d’Antonguolla, born on May 6, 1895, in Castellaneta, Italy.
The deepest circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno is the Ninth Circle. It is where betrayers of their family or country are frozen in ice. There, in the center of the earth, a three-headed Lucifer eats at Judas Iscariot and at Cassius and Brutus, betrayers of Julius Caesar.
Songwriter and performer David Seville chose the names for the “stars” of his 1958 hit record. Simon and Alvin were named for two executives at Liberty Records, Simon Waronker and Al Bennett. Theodore was named for Ted Keep, the recording engineer.
Yes, Jodie Foster has starred in a TV series. During the 1974-75 season, she played Addie Pray on “Paper Moon,” an ABC sitcom based on the 1972 Peter Bogdanovich movie.
In most species of songbirds, only male birds sing, and for only two reasons: to protect territory and to attract a mate.
American forces took six months to capture Guadalcanal Island, from the landing of the First Marine Division on August 7, 1942, to the evacuation of the last Japanese on February 8, 1943. In the fighting, the Japanese lost about 10,000 men, the Americans about 1,600.
The tradition with writing autobiographies began with the nation’s second president, John Adams.
Hoover directed the Bureau of Investigation for 48 years, from 1924 until his death in 1972. The Bureau of Investigation was renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935. Most know it as the FBI.
Born Joseph Louis Barrow (1914-83) near Lafayette, Louisiana, the African-American boxer defeated James J. Braddock for the world heavyweight championship on June 22, 1937. Known as the “Brown Bomber,” Louis held the title for 12 years, from 1937 until he retired in 1949. During this period, he defended his title a record 25 times.
An artist named Otto Messmer who worked for silent cartoon animator Pat Sullivan invented Felix the Cat. Messmer developed Felix for Paramount’s Screen Magazine in 1919. Paramount producer John King gave Felix his name. The first Felix cartoon in 1919 was called Feline Follies; the second was called Musical Mews.
The highest was 136.4 degrees Fahrenheit at El Azizia, Libya, on September 13, 1922. The lowest was –129 degrees Fahrenheit at Vostok, Antarctica, on July 21, 1983.
That’s what it sounds like on the tape that was recorded at 10:56 P.M. (EST) on July 20, 1969. But what he intended to say was, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” The a was somehow lost in the transmission.
The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, founded in 1925 by A. Philip Randolph and other labor leaders, was the first African-American union. The Pullman Company, at first opposed to the Brotherhood, awarded the union its first contract in 1937. Later the Brotherhood became best known for its civil rights activism.
In descending order, the top five are: 1. New Jersey. 96 2. New York. 63 3. Pennsylvania. 61 4. Michigan. 58 5. California. 48
The male side of a family is called the Spear side. A distaff was a stick with a cleft end, used to hold the flax or wool from which a woman spun thread. The distaff was considered a woman’s tool, while the spear was a man’s. Both ways of describing genealogy are now rarely used.
The word vaudeville originally referred to a type of light, comedic song that originated in Vau-de-Vire in Normandy, France. It came to mean the whole program of songs, dances, comedy, and other acts once popular in theaters across America. Vaudeville was introduced to the United States in 1865 with the opening of the Opera House, … Read more
The original “action figure,” G.I. Joe, was introduced in 1964 by Hassenfeld Bros. (later Hasbro) of Newport, Rhode Island. G.I. Joe was 12 inches tall. By 1982, G.I. Joe had shrunk down to three inches.
The Antilles, the islands of this chain of Caribbean islands are divided into two groups, the Greater Antilles and the Lesser Antilles. The islands of the Greater Antilles are: Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and Puerto Rico. Those of the Lesser Antilles are: the Virgin Islands, the Leeward Islands, the Windward Islands, … Read more
Formed in 1834 to oppose President Andrew Jackson, the Whig Party took its name from the British anti-monarchical party, the Whigs, to underline their conflict with the man they viewed as “King Andrew.” The word “Whig” itself was an old pejorative term meaning “cattle-driver.” In the 1836 presidential election, the party offered three regional candidates, … Read more
Thomas Chatterton was the author of several pseudo fifteenth-century poems supposedly written by monk Thomas Rowley. He committed suicide in his London garret by taking arsenic at age seventeen, driven to despair by poverty. He became a hero of native English verse to Romantic poets such as Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats. Chatterton was the author … Read more
Tom Selleck was first approached to play Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), then known for his commercials for Chaz Cologne. He turned the offer down for the lead in a TV series, “Magnum, PI” (CBS, 1980-88).
The fire that killed 491 people at the Boston night club The Coconut Grove on November 28, 1942, may have been started by a 16-year-old boy named Stanley Tomaszewski who lit a match near a palm tree while trying to replace a light bulb. However, the fire commissioner could not prove that the boy had … Read more
They began as the “Eight” but were reduced to the “Seven” when defendant Bobby Seale’s case was declared a mistrial. Tried in 1969-70 for crossing state lines to riot and conspiring to use interstate commerce to induce rioting at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, the remaining seven were: Rennie Davis David Dellinger John Froines … Read more
The military nickname “G.I.” stood for Government Issue. The term was introduced during World War II.
“Beautiful Dreamer,” sung by Terry Moore to the giant gorilla Joe Young, tamed the savage beast in Mighty Joe Young (1949). The song reappears in Batman (1989) as the theme song for the Joker.
Born in 1930, the French philosopher, critic, and founder of deconstructionism Jacques Derrida teaches at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. Born in 1930, the French philosopher, critic, and founder of deconstructionism teaches at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris.
Special-effects man Ken Strickfaden designed the electrical machinery used to create life in Frankenstein (1931).
Andrew Jackson (served 1829-37), who shot and killed Nashville lawyer Charles Dickinson in 1806, is the only U.S. president known to have killed a man in a duel. The duel resulted from Dickinson’s impugning of the honor of Jackson’s wife, Rachel Donelson Robards Jackson.
The second movie mentioned by name in Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer (1961) is The Third Man (1949), directed by Carol Reed.
The light from a firefly comes from an area on the sides of its stomach. Fatty tissue located there contains air tubes and nerves that when stimulated give off oxygen. The oxygen combines with a pigment in the fat called luciferin, producing the familiar heatless light.
The Toll House behind the chocolate-chip cookies known as Toll House cookies was a Massachusetts eatery called the Toll House Restaurant, run by Ruth Wakefield, who popularized the cookies in the early 20th century. She later sold the rights to the name “Toll House Cookies” to the Nestle Company.
Champion, the Wonder Horse was the name of Gene Autry’s horse.
Gregg Toland was the cinematographer on Citizen Kane (1941), who served in the same role on such classics as The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).
Richard Burton, playing British malcontent Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger (1959).
Sissy Spacek was voice of the brain in The Man With Two Brains.
Margaret Jones of Charlestown, Massachusetts, was the first person executed for witchcraft in America, on June 15, 1648. This was nearly five decades before the Salem witch trials of 1692– 93.
Robert Herrick urged Corinna, in “Corinna’s Going A-Maying” (1648).
Gary Cooper said, “From what I hear about Communism, I don’t like it because it isn’t on the level”.
Robert Jenkins was a British sailor smuggling slaves to the Spanish colonies in defiance of the Spanish trade monopoly. A Spanish captain caught Jenkins and cut off one of his ears. Jenkins was displayed in the House of Commons by people seeking to ignite a war with Spain. The war that followed from 1739 to … Read more
In 1535, the sight of what is now Baja California in Mexico evoked for Spanish conquistador Hernin Cortes an imaginary island and its female black ruler, Calafia, in a popular Spanish novel. In September 1542, when Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo stepped onshore from San Diego Bay, the entire Pacific coast had been named California.
The hugely popular show “Roller Derby” ran on ABC for two years, from March 1949 to August 1951.
Duke University was founded in 1838 as the Union Institute and Randolph College, and renamed Trinity College in 1851. The Durham, North Carolina, institution became Duke University in 1924 in commemoration of a $40 million donation from tobacco mogul James B. Duke.
Supreme Court received the disparaging epithet “Nine Old Men” when they opposed President Franklin Roosevelt’s reforms during the Great Depression. The Nine Old Men was the title of a 1936 book on the Supreme Court by Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen.
Fifty-one nations, including the U.S., signed the U.N. charter in 1945, to join the United Nations. The charter was framed at a conference in San Francisco.
The Woodstock Music and Art Fair was originally scheduled to take place in Wallkill, New York, but had to be moved to nearby Bethel when Wallkill residents, nervous about the huge turnout, backed out of the deal. The event, held August 15-17, 1969, brought together about 400,000 people. Performers included Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Joan … Read more
According to 1894 baseball rules, the 4-by-12-inch pitching rubber embedded in the pitcher’s mound lies 60 feet, 6 inches from the front edge of home plate. The pitcher is supposed to place both feet on the rubber at the start of his delivery. Previously, the distance of the mound from home plate had been 50 … Read more
Charo’s real name is Maria Rosario Pilar Martinez. Among her TV credits is the role of Aunt Charo in the series “Chico and the Man” (NBC, 1974-78).
Between June 1928 and December 1929, the major studios spent about thirty-seven million dollars converting their filming structures to sound stages.
The Ten Commandments vary according to religion and denomination. In the Jewish tradition, the Ten Commandments (based on Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21) are as follows: 1. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 2. You shall have no other god to set against … Read more
Isabella Rossellini was married to director Martin Scorsese from 1979 to 1982. Afterward, she became the companion of director David Lynch.
“Queen for a Day” ran from 1955-59 on NBC and from 1959-64 on ABC.
Sophia Smith (1796-1870) founded the Smith College for women. After receiving an inheritance upon the death of her brother, a wealthy stockbroker, she was advised by a clergyman to use the money to begin an institution of higher education for women. Plans were drawn up in 1868, and in 1871, Smith College was founded.
Steven Spielberg’s Always (1989) was a remake to A Guy Named Joe (1943). Richard Dreyfuss took the Spencer Tracy part and Holly Hunter took the Irene Dunne part, in this fantasy about a pilot who dies and helps another pilot romance his girlfriend.
Herman Raucher wrote the book Summer of ’42, which was also a movie.
The Dust Bowl was the name given to the region of the Great Plains wracked by drought in 1934-37 during the Great Depression. It contained portions of several states, including Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Kansas, and New Mexico.
A bolero is a lively Spanish dance in 3/4 time with a strongly marked rhythm. The dancers perform intricate steps while keeping time with castanets. Maurice Ravel published a well-known orchestral version of the dance, Bolero, in 1928. A bolero is also a short jacket, perhaps first worn during performances of the dance.
The “Hurricane of Independence” was a hurricane that swept from North Carolina to Nova Scotia from September 2-9, 1775, killing over 4,000 people. It received its name because it coincided with the first stages of the American War of Independence.
The “G.E. College Bowl” ran from 1959 to 1970 on CBS and NBC, and was hosted until 1963 by Allen Ludden and after that by Robert Earle.
Jack Broughton of Great Britain invented the boxing glove. The English bare-knuckle fighting champion for many years (beginning in 1734), Broughton also wrote the first set of boxing rules.
Members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) led about 200 Sioux in the 70-day occupation of the town, site of the 1890 battle of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. AIM demanded redress of American Indians’ grievances against the federal government.
An agency called the Bureau of Investigation was instituted in 1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt. He believed that the federal government should have an arm to enforce federal law. It was renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935. Twenty-nine-year-old J. Edgar Hoover became its first acting director in 1924.
Boris Karloff was working on Graft (1931), in which Karloff played a murderer, when director James Whale asked him to do a screen test for Frankenstein (1931). Whale spotted Karloff in the Universal commissary.
According to Jerry/Daphne (Jack Lemmon), it was Marilyn Monroe as Sugar who moved like “Jell-O on springs, in Some Like It Hot (1959).
Red Skelton said, “Give the people what they want, they’ll all show up” at Harry Cohn, head of Columbia’s funeral.
No. Kate “Ma” Barker was never arrested. Although Mrs. Barker (the former Arizona Donnie Clark) saw three of her four sons serve in Alcatraz, Kansas State Penitentiary at Lansing, and Leavenworth, she stayed behind the scenes of the crimes. Ma Barker and her son Freddie were killed on January 16, 1935, in a 45-minute gunfight … Read more
Four main collections of English mystery plays based on biblical episodes survive: The York Cycle (early fourteenth century), forty-eight plays The Towneley Cycle (mid-fourteenth—early fifteenth century), thirty-two plays The Chester Cycle (fourteenth century), twenty-four plays The Coventry (or N Town) Cycle (fifteenth century), forty-three plays
Great Britain, with $3.1 billion, received the most aid under the Marshall Plan; Iceland, with $32 million, received the least. The aid came in the form of grants, food, goods, and tariff reductions.
Edward Bellamy looking backward from the year 2000 in Looking Backward.
John Wayne said, “Don’t apologize. It’s a sign of weakness” in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), in the character of Captain Nathan Brittles. He was upbraiding one of his soldiers.
The Great Compromise was the agreement reached at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention in 1787 to give each state two senators and to apportion seats in the House of Representatives on the basis of population. The agreement satisfied both the smaller, less populous states, which wanted all states to be represented equally, and the larger states, … Read more
Sigmund Freud’s original term for the unconscious mind was not id but es, the indefinite pronoun it in German. Freud borrowed that term from a physician, Georg Groddick, who in turn had borrowed it from his teacher Ernst Schweninger. As Freud’s ideas became popular in English-speaking countries, translators felt that simply calling the unconscious it … Read more
The motto Annuit Coeptis above the eye on the dollar bill means, “He [God] Favored Our Undertakings.” The eye represents the all-seeing deity. The pyramid symbolizes strength; it is unfinished to suggest the work ahead.
Warren G. Harding was the first president to speak over the radio, on June 14, 1922.