Thanks, septimus, for the info on Nobel-winning Veeps.
In play:
Before becoming President, Jimmy Carter was once seated next to Elizabeth Taylor at a dinner party and was so stunned by her beauty that he eventually said, “I’m sorry, Miss Taylor, but I haven’t heard a single word you’ve said.”
In a notorious Playboy interview while running for president in 1976 the ever-appreciative Carter admitted: “I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.”
Along with Katherine Hepburn, Meryl Streep and Bette Davis, Ingrid Bergman ranks near the top of many “greatest actresses” lists. This is primarily due to her performance in Casablanca, the best film ever. She also played in Alfred Hitchcock’s film Notorious. (With the plot of Notorious focused on smuggling uranium, Hitchcock claimed he came under FBI surveillance.)
The hero of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1946 classic thriller Notorious is Federal agent T.R. Devlin. Although his first and middle names were never spelled out, it is possible that they were “Theodore Roosevelt.” Cary Grant, who played Devlin, was born in 1904, during Roosevelt’s Presidency.
Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, where the great poet wrote “Annabel Lee,” “Ulalume,” and possibly "The Raven,"is preserved in the Bronx, New York. An article titled “Shall We Save the Poe Cottage at Fordham” was published in The Review of Reviews in 1896, urging the New York State Legislature to act on preserving the home with endorsements from Theodore Roosevelt, Hamlin Garland, William Dean Howells, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Cabot Lodge, Horace Scudder and others.
The Whiffenpoofs, Yale University’s men’s glee club, has “The Whiffenpoof Song” (We are poor little lambs who have lost our way, baah, baah baah …) as its signature. The song was freely stolen from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Gentlemen-Rankers”, about high-born men whose financial straits, or disgraceful conduct, kept them from being or remaining officers in Her Majesty’s Army and relegated them to the enlisted ranks, far from the embarrassments of home.
From 1867 to 1937, Singapore residents used the postage stamps of Straits Settlements, which was a British colonial confederation of four disconnected cities located along the west coast of Malaya.
Canada is sometimes referred to as a confederation, even though it more clearly fits the model of a decentralized federation.
The largest city in Penang, in the Federation of Malaysia, is Georgetown, named after King George III. The name ‘Penang’ itself means betel nut tree. The addictive betel nut became familiar to Americans with a song from the Rodgers and Hammerstein play South Pacific:
The best-ever crab cakes I’ve tasted, and I love a good crab cake, is at J. Paul’s in Georgetown. It’s at 3218 M Street NE, at Wisconsin Ave. NE, in Washington, DC. While that isn’t exactly factual trivia, and it is purely my opinion, I’ll add this from J. Paul’s web site: The J. Paul’s bar in Georgetown boasts a 100 year old mahogany shotgun bar built by the Brunswick Balke Coolander Company. Previously housed in a grand saloon in the Chicago stockyards, many will swear over their scotch that Al Capone himself bellied up to that very bar.
Louis Capone, a hitman for “Murder Inc.” and executed at Sing Sing in 1944, was not related to Al Capone. He is shown on the left of this remarkable photo in the company of Mendy Weiss, another Murder Inc. hitman, while both were on their way to their date with ‘The Chair’.
The electric chair is a very humane cpital punishment compared with methods used in the past. The Romans crucified slaves, foreigners and traitors to maximize pain. Vlad Drăculea impaled his enemies.
William Wallace, Guardian of Scotland, was drawn through the streets of London, hanged, cut down while alive, emasculated, eviscerated, and his genitals and entrails were burnt in front of him; his chest was cut open and his heart removed. (History does not record whether Wallace’s heart was still beating at that time.) His preserved head was placed on a pike atop London Bridge, while his limbs were sent to four different cities in the North. Scotsmen were executed this way by the English as recently as 1803:
[QUOTE=Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough]
“You are to be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, where you are to be hanged, but not till you are dead; for while still living, your body is to be taken down, your bowels torn out and burnt before your face; your head is then cut off, and your body divided into four quarters.”
[/QUOTE]
William Kemmlerwas the first person executed in the electric chair. And, Ruth Snyder was the first (and only) person to be photographedas the electricity shot through her.
Mark Twain once commented on being tarred and feathered: “If it were not for the honor of the thing, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it at all.”
Mark Twain may be one of the most quoted Americans in history, but it seems that he is also one of the most frequently misquoted.
And, for the record, Samuel Clemens chose ‘Mark Twain’ as his nom de plume after its original bearer no longer needed it.
The town name of Twain Harte, California, is derived from the last names of two famous authors who lived in California, Mark Twain and Bret Harte.
Mark Twain was not an admirer of Edgar Allan Poe. Nor of Jane Austen.
[QUOTE=Letter to William Dean Howells, 18 January 1909]
To me [Poe’s] prose is unreadable–like Jane Austin’s [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane’s. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.
[/QUOTE]
It is claimed that the Baltimore Ravens football club were named in honour of Edgar Allan Poe, a resident of Baltimore for a good part of his life.
The Baltimore Orioles last won the World Series in 1983 when they beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 4 games to 1.
On My 5, 1938, the Washington Senators beat the Cleveland Indians, 8-6.
