Theodor Giesel (aka “Dr. Seuss”) wrote Green Eggs and Ham after making a bet with his publisher, Bennet Cerf, that he could not write a complete book using only fifty words.
Per Wiki, “Random House was founded in 1927 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, two years after they acquired the Modern Library imprint from publisher Horace Liveright, which reprints classic works of literature. Cerf is quoted as saying, ‘We just said we were going to publish a few books on the side at random.’”
Dear Donald, Dear Bennett: The Wartime Correspondence of Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer is a book of letters between Random House co-founders Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, chronicling their correspondence during World War II when Klopfer served in the U.S. Army Air Forces. Klopfer joined when he was over forty years old.
In addition to being a book publisher, Bennett Cerf was well-known as a writer and raconteur. He published numerous humor books, and was a regular member of the celebrity panel on the television game show What’s My Line?
The Russian game show What? Where? When? has been broadcast over the air to many former USSR states, including Belarus and Ukraine, since 1975. It is played with a team of six experts, who attempt to answer questions sent in by viewers. For each question, the time limit is one minute. If viewers send in the answers before the panel correctly guesses, they win a monetary prize.
An example question:
- Question: Continue the sequence: love, breath, Reich, estate, column, sense, heaven…
- Answer: Wonder. (The question is based upon popular set expressions: the first love, the second breath, the third Reich, the fourth estate, the fifth column, the sixth sense, the seventh heaven, and the eighth wonder.)
The “Fourth Estate” is a term which refers to the press and journalism, particularly in regards to its ability to wield political power and influence with the government and society.
The term stems from the three traditional “estates” in Christian Europe, particularly France:
- The first estate being the clergy/church
- The second estate being the nobility
- The third estate being the commoners
Freedom of the press is guaranteed in the United States by the First Amendment to the Constitution, ratified, along with the other nine amendments contained in the Bill of Rights, in 1791. It reads simply, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Several decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court have, beginning in 1925, held that state and local governments are also bound by the First Amendment.
In 1995, Northwestern University created a basketball magazine called Freedom of the Full Court Press.
(Lifted from Wikipedia)
When John Wooden arrived at UCLA for the 1948–1949 season, he inherited a little-known basketball program that played in a cramped gym. He left it as a national powerhouse with 10 national championships— the most successful rebuilding project in college basketball history. Wooden ended his UCLA coaching career with a 620–147 overall record and a winning percentage of .808. These figures do not include his two-year record at Indiana State prior to taking over the duties at UCLA.
There have been 15 Division 1 basketball teams to win multiple NCAA championships. UCLA leads with 11, followed by Kentucky with 8 and North Carolina with 6. Duke, Connecticut, and Indiana all have 5 championships, Kansas has 4, and Villanova has 3. Cincinnati, Florida, Louisville, Michigan State, North Carolina State, Oklahoma State, and San Francisco all have 2.
The University of Kansas’ mascot is the Jayhawk, rendered as a bird.
There is no such bird. Rather, the name came from a combination of two birds, both used to refer to a theif and, later, to abolitionists. It’s a source of pride among the people of Kansas.
Guitarist Rich Williams was a founding member of the rock group Kansas, and continues to work with the band today.
As a teenager, Williams lost his right eye in a fireworks accident. During Kansas’ heyday, Williams wore a prosthetic eye on stage and in videos, but he now performs wearing an eyepatch.
Williams (third from left) in a 1970s promotional photo:
A more recent photo:
In 1966 Peanuts cartoonist Charles M Schulz drew a series of strip where Sally Brown is diagnosed with amblyopia, or “lazy eye” and must wear a patch over her left eye, forcing the right to work harder. But apparently Schulz offended optometrists by sending Sally to an ophthalmologist:
“In all the years I have been drawing Peanuts, I believe I have upset no other professional group more than optometrists. This is because every time any of the children in Peanuts have an eye problem, they always visit an ophthalmologist. The reason for this is that I have several friends who are ophthalmologists, and they have acquainted me with the nature of childhood eye problems. In 1966 I drew a series of episodes that showed Sally going to her ophthalmologist and having one of her eyes patched because “lazy eye” had been diagnosed. I immediately received angry letters from optometrists who said that she could just as well have gone to one of them as to an ophthalmologist. My research disagrees with them. However, they are still convinced that it was all a plot to discredit their profession, which, of course, is not true at all. I was concerned only for the children.”
The future King Charles III was Prince of Wales longer than anyone in British history: 64 years and 44 days. His eldest son, Prince William, has been Prince of Wales since Sept. 9, 2022.
In 1974, after a period of rapid expansion from six teams to eighteen, the National Hockey League reorganized its teams and divisions.
The league was divided into two conferences: the Clarence Campbell Conference (named after a former president of the league) and the Prince of Wales Conference (named for Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII), who donated a trophy to the NHL in 1925).
The Campbell Conference was subdivided into the Patrick Division (named after longtime New York Rangers player/coach Lester Patrick) and the Smythe Division (named after longtime Toronto Maple Leafs owner Conn Smythe). The Prince of Wales Conference was subdivided into the Norris Division (named after James E. Norris, longtime owner of the Detroit Red Wings) and the Adams Division (named after Charles Adams, founder of the Boston Bruins).
The NHL used these conference and division names until 1993, when another reorganization divided the teams into conferences and divisions with geographic/directional names.
Charles Addams created The Addams Family in 1938 as a series of single-panel comics. Originally, the characters did not have names; they were only added when the property was adapted for television.
Charles Addams was something of a bon vivant and raconteur. He married three times, to Barbara Jean Day, Estelle (Barbara) Barb, and Marilyn Matthews Miller. Of the three wives, 2nd wife Barbara Barb looked even more like Morticia than Barbara Day or Marilyn. (She even got a nose job to match the character.) But she was an abusive woman who once attacked her husband with an African spear. She was also a lawyer, and she used her legal skills to force Addams to sign over the rights to many of his cartoons. By the time the couple divorced just two years into their marriage, Barb had complete control of The Addams Family rights, and she stalled production on the television show until the producers agreed to give her more money.
Per Wiki, “Major Charles Emerson Winchester III [was] a supporting character in the television series [MASH], played by David Ogden Stiers. The name… was derived from three real street names in the city of Boston.”