The “Wicked Bible”, printed in 1631, omits the word"not" in the seventh commandment, thus resulting in the command “Thou shalt commit adultery.” A copy was auctioned for $41,890 in 2015
There are estimated to be around 10 extant copies because the entire edition was ordered to be destroyed when the error was discovered. It was possibly an act of sabotage. The printer was fined and imprisoned.
Missed the edit window, the printer was imprisoned not for the typo, but later, for debt.
Actors who have portrayed The Wizard in the musical Wicked include Joel Grey, George Hearn, Ben Vereen, and David Garrison. His name is not given in the musical, but in the books The Wizard’s name is Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs, giving him the initials OZ PINHEAD.
Garrison is the collective term for a body of troops stationed in a particular location, originally to guard it, but now often simply using it as a home base.
David Garrison, best known for playing the role of Steve Rhodes on Married…With Children,is an accomplished musical theatre actor, singer, and dancer. He originated the role of the The Wizard in the original touring company of Wicked when it began on March 8, 2005. He finished his year-long run on March 6, 2006 and was replaced by PJ Benjamin. Later he starred again as the Wizard in the Broadway company from April 4, 2006 replacing Ben Vereen. After 15 months in the role he played his final performance on July 8, 2007 and was replaced by Lenny Wolpe. Then he temporarily starred in the Chicago company from September 30 – October 28, 2007 while Peter Kevoian was on medical leave. Then he starred in the Los Angeles company beginning August 26, 2008 replacing John Rubinstein, until its closure on January 11, 2009. More recently he played the role in the San Francisco production which officially opened on February 6, 2009. He played his final performance with the production on May 31, 2010.
In the movie “The Big Easy”, former New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison played the role of the judge in a courtroom scene. Garrison was well known as the prosecutor who accused accomplices in the JFK assassination.
The Simpsons’s episode A Streetcar Named Marge, featuring a musical adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire, generated controversy for its original song about New Orleans, which contains several unflattering lyrics about the city.
New Or-le-ans,
Home of pirates, drunks, and whores,
New Or-le-ans,
Tacky overpriced souvenir stores.
If you want to go to Hell, you should take a trip
To the Sodom and Gomorra on the Mississip.
New Or-le-ans,
Stinky, rotten, vomiting, vile,
New Or-le-ans,
Putrid, brackish, maggoty, foul.
New Or-le-ans,
Crummy, lousy, rancid, and rank,
New Or-le-ans.
Several possible locations have been proposed for the house in New Orleans referred to in the song “House of the Rising Sun.” One is the brothel owned by a Madame LeSoleil Levant which is French for rising sun. Another is a hotel named. Rising Sun, a small, short-lived hotel on Conti Street in the French Quarter in the 1820s. It burned down in 1822. An excavation and document search in early 2005 found evidence that supported this claim, including an advertisement with language that may have euphemistically indicated prostitution. Archaeologists found an unusually large number of pots of rouge and cosmetics at the site.[
Bob Dylan included his version of The House of the Rising Sun, a song he learned from Dave Van Ronk, on his self-titled 1961 debut album.When Eric Burdon and The Animals released their 1964 version, the band enjoyed a huge hit with the song, much to Dylan’s chagrin when his version was referred to as a cover. The irony of this was not lost on Dave Van Ronk, who said the whole issue was a “tempest in a teapot.” He also claimed that the Animals’s version was based on his arrangement of the song. Dylan stopped playing the song after the Animals’ recording became a hit, because fans accused him of plagiarism. Dylan has said he first heard the Animals’ version on his car radio and “jumped out of his car seat” because he liked it so much.
George Washington’s younger brother Charles built a house in Fredericksburg, Virginia that was later sold and became the Rising Sun Tavern. George slept there both as a guest in his brother’s house and as a guest at the tavern.
Henry Washington, one of George’s former slaves, escaped from Mount Vernon, fought against him in the Revolution with Virginia governor Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment and later with a corps of Black Pioneers attached to a British artillery unit. After a stop in Nova Scotia with a number of other self-freed and British-freed slaves, he became one of the founding leaders of the Sierra Leone colony where Africans could return to their home continent.
The Sierra Nevada is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Basin and Range Province. Notable Sierra features include Lake Tahoe, the largest alpine lake in North America; Mount Whitney at 14,505 ft the highest point in the contiguous United States; and the Yosemite Valley, sculpted by glaciers out of hundred million year-old granite.
Sierra Nevada is a Spanish term meaning “snowy mountain range”. The first mountain range with this name is in Andalusia, Spain. There in one in Mexico and several in South America.
Eli Whitney, after whom a mountain in the Sierra Nevadas is not named, made no wealth from his cotton gin. He tried to monopolize ginning, requiring everyone to bring their cotton to his company’s gin, but the gin was so mechanically easy to produce, there were many violations of his patent. Legal costs of defending his patent ate up virtually all the income he derived from his machines.
In July 1864, the members of the California Geological Survey named the tallest peak in the 48 contiguous states after Josiah Whitney, the State Geologist of California and benefactor of the survey.
Before Eli Whitney’s gin entered into widespread use, the United States produced roughly 750,000 bales of cotton, in 1830. By 1850 that amount had quadrupled to 2.85 million bales. This production required more slave labor; slave numbers similarly increased from 700,000 in 1830 to 3 million in 1850. Many historians argue that the cotton gin was thus one of the causes of the Civil War.
Although the great migration of much of the South’s black population to the industrial cities of the North in the early 20th century is well known, much less is documented about an earlier one before the Civil War - the mass sales of slaves from the tobacco-growing areas of the slave states to cotton-growing areas further south, to satisfy the booming cotton economy. The widespread abuse and splitting of families horrified a white population used to considering the “peculiar institution” essentially benign. Stephen Foster’s “My Old Kentucky Home”, in its original form prior to it being cleansed of its uncomfortable parts, described the destruction of a tobacco-plantation slave family by sales “down the river”.
In March 1859 a large slave sale took place outside Savannah GA where 429 slaves were sold. Families were sold together to keep members together, as was common practice. The total of the sale netted $303,850 which equals $6.7M in today’s dollars. That averages to almost $16,000 on average per slave in today’s dollars.
The savannah monitor (Varanus exanthematicus) is a medium-sized species of monitor lizard native to Africa. The species is known as Bosc’s monitor in Europe, since French scientist Louis Bosc first described the species.
(Say “Bosc’s savannah monitor” fast five times.)
In play:
Sliced white bread was first sold in Chillicothe, Missouri in 1928. Otto Rohwedder, a bakery employee, invented a machine to slice loaves of white bread, and packages of white bread already sliced were first put on sale in Chillicothe.