I went to Wikipedia to look up the Colossus of Rhodes, and some accounts had it straddling the harbor entrance. It reminds me of the picture of the great British colonialist who had a cartoon drawing of him straddling Africa in the same way.
The name: Cecil Rhodes.
I remember the name of the Colossus. And I remember the name of the British magnate. And I remember the picture of him straddling Africa, which clearly was a reference to the Colossus and a symbol of his building of the empire.
But until today I never realized that the picture was a pun on the names.
Only accounts from well after the fact, based more on Rule of Cool than on actual evidence. The ancients had some impressive engineering, but not that impressive.
IIRC, it’s now thought that the Colossus was, internally, an ordinary stone tower, with the shaped bronze pieces of the statue hanging off of it.
And he was absolutely correct in doing so. Imagine yourself as the ruler of the universe, and your first order of business is to establish the new calendar. Are you going to make the first year of the first century be zero? Not unless you’re prepared to put up with the pointing and laughing at you, I dare say.
In Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, in the scene where they’re on the bus, there’s that couple heavily making out in the seats next to Neal and Del. After they catch Neal watching them the camera cuts back to Del and Neal for a bit, then back to the couple, who are now sitting in their seats smoking cigarettes. I just realized having them smoking was meant to invoke the old trope of a couple smoking in bed after sex. I’ve seen that movie many times and I never noticed that until now.
The term “Trans-African telegraph” most commonly refers to the ambitious, but ultimately incomplete, Cape-to-Cairo telegraph line project championed by Cecil Rhodes in the late 19th century.
In The Wizard of Oz , the Tin Man sings that if he had a heart, he’d “lock it with a zipper.” Zippers for clothing had been invented a few decades earlier and became trendy only in the early 1930s, which would make it roughly equivalent to a modern-day song referencing smartwatches or 3-D printing.
In The Music Man the mayor wants Harold Hill’s credentials. Since the story takes place in the 1920’s I can’t help wondering how far back you could go and not need or have paperwork identifying yourself. Or is it an anachronism since the play was written in the ‘50’s?
The paperwork wasn’t identification papers. It was proof that he was actually a professor who had had training at a particular musical academy/institute. The problem was that he was claiming he trained there and graduated before the academy was created.
Fawlty Towers. Sybil goes out of town but tasks Basil to get some repairs done for the hotel, but specifically was told not to use O’Reilly for the repairs. Manuel kept talking about the O’Reilly men but It did not click 'til about two decades later, that with his accent, he was calling them the Orally Men
