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[weekstuff]

Stuff I Learned This Week 4.4.16 - 4.10.16

1. The eccentric mix of songs recently added to the National Recording Registry include “Piano Man”, “I Will Survive”, and "Mack the Knife" along with recordings by George Carlin and Metallica. “Mack the Piano Man Will Survive” mashup TBD. 

2. Musical theater pre-wireless-microphones is hilarious. 

3. Henry V carried a gold pomander stuffed with musk and ambergris at Agincourt to protect against the plague. 

4. One of the best-known medieval cookbooks was written by Richard II’s master chefs and is called The Forme of Cury. 

5. The exclamation point (!) was first used in the catechism of Edward Vi in 1553. 

6. Author Agatha Christie may have been one of the first Britons to learn how to surf standing up. 

7. Marcel Marceau “started miming to save children from the holocaust”

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Stuff I Learned This Week 3.28.16 - 4.3.16

1. St. Jerome referred to dairy products as “molten flesh” in forbidding their consumption during Lent. 

2. Irish writer Charles Johnstone wrote an entire series of novels from the point of view of inanimate objects, including a coin, a black coat, a watch, a corkscrew, and a Hackney coach. 

3. In 1811, an elephant named Chunee went onstage at Covent Garden in a production called Padmanaba, or the Golden Fish. He only lasted two performances but subsequently appeared in “an entirely new Equestrian and Pedestrian Legendary Melo-Dramatic Spectacle’ called Baghvan-Ho. 

4. In the 15th century, syphilis was thought to be caused by “astrological conditions and conjunctions of the planets”. Read the article for an incredible engraving of baby-Jesus emitting syphilis death-rays from his hands. 

5. In 1964, both major party candidates released limited-edition beverages. “The Barry Goldwater campaign featured cans of Gold Water, "the right drink for the conservative taste” [and] Lyndon Johnson's campaign was bolstered by cans of Johnson Juice, "A Drink for Health Care."

6. Victorian flirtation cards are delightful. "Come and see our new Lamp. You can turn it down so low that there is scarcely any light at all. P.S. Our Sofa Just Holds Two."

7. Gilles de Montmorency-Laval, knight, serial killer, occultist, Joan-of-Arc-supporter and Bluebeard-inspirer, staged a theatrical spectacle in 1435 called Le Mistère du Siège d'Orléans. It included, “more than 20,000 lines of verse...140 speaking parts...500 extras...[and] six hundred costumes [that] were constructed, worn once, discarded, and constructed afresh for subsequent performances.” Oh, and “unlimited supplies of food and drink were made available to spectators.” 

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Stuff I Learned This Week 3.21.16 - 3.27.16

1. Dr. Walter Jackson Freeman II traveled the US in a van he called “the Lobotomobile” preaching the virtues of transorbital lobotomies. He personally performed over 2,500 and once, “during a lobotomy in 1951 at Iowa’s Cherokee Mental Health Institute, Freeman lost a patient when he stopped suddenly to pose for a photograph and accidentally inserted the orbitoclast too far into the patient’s brain.”

2. In May 1866 an Army chaplain organized  a ‘Grand Exhibition of Left-Hand Penmanship by Soldiers and Sailors’, because so many Civil war veterans were learning to write letters with their left hands, following amputations.

3. Riding sidesaddle dates to 1382 when “15-year-old Anne of Bohemia journeyed across Europe on horseback to wed King Richard II. Because of the need to preserve her virtue—or, in plainer terms, “protect the royal hymen”—Anne rode with both legs to one side.” 

4. One of the rules from the Comic Book Code of 1954 stated that “Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.” Yup, that turned out well. 

5. During the First World War, Germany and its allies ceased production of sausages so that there would be enough cow guts to make zeppelins from which to bomb England. 

6. In medieval superstition, cats were thought capable “of recycling carbon dioxide into breathable air.”

7. The first recorded name is that of a Mesopotamian accountant named Kushim. 

[weekstuff]

Stuff I Learned This Week 1.17.16 - 1.23.16

1. One of the titles considered for the Gone With The Wind film was Not in Our Stars. 

2. In order to subvert the 1879 Tidewater oil pipeline, John. D. Rockefeller hired someone to dress as a bum and sit outside the pipeline’s telegraph office where he could hear the click of the telegraph, memorize those messages, and report them back to Standard Oil. 

3. In 1863, “the Union Army created in Nashville’s the country’s first system of legalized prostitution.”

4. Orson Welles raised the money to make Chimes at Midnight by lying to a Spanish producer that he would direct and play Long John Silver in a film of Treasure Island. 

5. “ Until February 7, 2013, the state of Mississippi had never submitted the required documentation to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, meaning it never officially had abolished slavery.” 

6. There is a rumor that Leon Trotsky was an extra in a 1914 film called “My Official Wife”.

7. Before drilling for oil was invented, entrepreneurs in western Pennsylvania blotted it up from riverbanks with blankets. 

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Stuff I Learned This Week 12.27.15 - 1.2.16

1. Richard III may have taken advantage of the fact that he was allergic strawberries in order to execute a political opponent. 

2. A law from 1268 forbad the apparently common practice of putting on a mask and throwing eggs full of rose water at ladies.

3. The Ancient Greeks sacrificed ugly people. 

4. As an experiment, and partially for fun, Benjamin Franklin attempted to slaughter his Christmas turkey by electrocution but instead shocked himself.

5. John Milton’s first published work was a poem in Shakespeare’s Second Folio. 

6. At the end of the 18th century, fashionable young people adopted a haircut “a la victime” imitating the shorn hair of guillotine victims. 

7. Opponents of President Andrew Jackson claimed that his inauguration was a wild, out-of-control party, however his allies reassured that public that it was merely a “regular Saturnalia.” 

Word of the Week: auscultation. n. the art of listening to the body to detect disease.

[weekstuff]

Stuff I Learned This Week 11/8 - 11/14

1. A WWII saboteur’s handbook suggested disrupting propaganda films by releasing bags of moths into the theater so they obscured the beam. 

2. The USA Tested Supersonic Jet Ejection Seats Using Bears On Drugs.

3. An English soldier named John Lambert assassinated one of Elizabeth Stuart’s ministers because he believed that the dead Queen Elizabeth I had taken possession of Elizabeth’s body. He was executed. 

4. The first time Anne of Cleves met Henry VIII he arrived at her room disguised and with five of his men. He then kissed her, and tried to start a conversation, all without explaining who he was. Anne ignored him because she was trying to watch a bull-baiting out her window. 

5. As a teenager, actor Christopher Lee witnessed the last public execution - by guillotine - in France. 

6. Vincent Price once cooked a fish in a Westinghouse dishwasher on “The Johnny Carson Show”. 

7. A “cephalophore” is a saint who is depicted carrying his or her own head. There is no agreement about where to put the halo. 

[weekstuff]

Words of the Week 11/8 - 11/14

amimetobion - noun. an order set down by Antony and Cleopatra meaning “no life comparable.” 

apotropaic - adj. having the power to avert evil influences. 

armigerous - adj. being entitled to bear heraldic arms. 

[weekstuff]

Stuff I Learned This Week 10/25 - 10/31

1. The case that helped legalize birth control in the US was called United States v. One Packet of Japanese Pessaries. Other asset forfeiture cases include United States v. One Pearl Necklace and United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins.

2. Hydrocyanic acid smells like almonds and is the poison Hyde uses to kill himself in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

3. Ornamental orange peeling used to be a thing. 

4. In order to evaluate the reliability of testimony, a psychologist in Kansas City staged a holdup in the middle of his psychology class. Other professors in Germany used clowns to the same effect. 

5. The 1907 work horse parade in New York City featured over 1,000 horses from the police and fire departments, as well as the horses that delivered beer and ice. 

6. According to a 1907 Chicago ladies magazine, “orange hair will not be in fashion this spring,” however green, bright blue, yellow, ashes-of-roses, salmon pink, and violet wigs were acceptable, depending of course, “on the color of the gown.” 

7. Cary Grant was once a carnival barker for a Coney Island incubator. Not a business incubator, an actual incubator. 

[weekstuff]

Words of the Week 10/25 - 10/31

oobleck - noun. a non-newtonian fluid, a fictional green precipitation in the Dr. Seuss book Bartholomew and the Oobleck.

petrichor - noun. the smell of rain on dry earth.

limerence - noun. tingly infatuation. 

Source: A New Leaf by Dana Goodyear.

[weekstuff]

Word of the Week 10/18 -10/24

vexillologist - noun. a flag enthusiast. 

From, “The Birth of the DC Flag,” by John Kelly.

[weekstuff]

Stuff I Learned This Week 10/18 - 10/24

1. Queen Victoria is “largely responsible” for the Pomeranian.

2. In the 18th century, tea was considered both an aphrodisiac and a promotor of “domestic strife.” 

3. “A magician catches a bug, which he throws into a brazier he has conjured up. From the brazier emerges a woman with shimmering wings. The brazier disappears and is replaced by a water fountain. The winged woman disappears. The magician crawls around on the floor as the water turns into fireworks, and then into a spinning wheel of fire...” is a description of an early 20th c. magic film. They get weirder. 

4. Thomas Jefferson had a macaroni machine.

5. In the original “Swan Lake”, the entire stage was flooded with water and there was a whirlpool.  

6. In the early 18th century, Robin Hood was considered a murderer, not a hero, and died when a nun bled him to death. 

7. Since 1891, officials in Kentucky have had to swear that they have never fought a duel. 

[weekstuff]

Stuff I Learned This Week 9/27 - 10/3

1. The first pap smears were done on drunk guinea pigs. 

2. “Masturbation” first appears in English - along with “dis-wench”,“codburst” and “ninny-hammer” - in John Florio’s translation of Montagne, a work that Shakespeare consulted for The Tempest. 

3. In 16th century France, farthingales were known as cache-bâtards, or ‘bastard-hiders’, because of the wide hoop skirts’ ability to hide a pregnancy. 

4. Mark Twain's name and image have been used to promote a wide variety of products including tobacco, oldsmobiles, ink blotters, shoes, flour, citrus fruit, mink coats, and oysters. He also helped buy the cabin where Abraham Lincoln was born and patented a self-pasting scrapbook. 

5. Prior to the 18th century, suggested locations for where migrating birds went in the winter included inside the muddy banks of lakes, the moon, and no where. Aristotle believed that one kind of bird simply turned into different kind of bird when it got cold. 

6. Pope Julius II - Michelangelo’s patron - occasionally flooded Belvedere Courtyard in the Vatican for mock naval battles. 

7. In the underground Russian language mat, the expression khuem grushi okolachivat, translated as “knocking pears out of a tree with one’s d*ck” is used to describe a state of doing nothing. 

[weekstuff]

Word of the Week 9/27 -10/3

ultracrepidate - verb. to go beyond one's scope or province, esp to criticize beyond one's sphere of knowledge. 

From Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris.