Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is the fourth largest publisher of school textbooks in the US.
A helpful way to recognize a perfect fourth is to hum the starting of the “Bridal Chorus” from Wagner’s Lohengrin (“Treulich geführt”, the colloquially-titled “Here Comes the Bride”). Other examples are the first two notes of the Christmas carol “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” or “El Cóndor Pasa”, and, for a descending perfect fourth, the second and third notes of “O Come All Ye Faithful”.
Another guide to recognize an ascending perfect fourth is the tune for Amazing Grace. Other guides are:
- descending perfect 4th: A Mighty Fortress is our God
- ascending major 3rd: Marines’ Hymn
- descending major 3rd: Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
- ascending perfect 5th: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
- descending perfect 5th: theme song for Flintstones
These guides come in handy for, among others, choir singers.
The lyrics to “Amazing Grace”, “House of the Rising Sun”, and “Gilligan’s Island” can all be sung to the tune of any of those three songs.
In 1835 the words to Amazing Grace, originally written in 1779, were joined to a tune named “New Britain” and it is this rendition that is most frequently sung today.
1835 (MDCCCXXXV) was a common year starting on Thursday (dominical letter D) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Tuesday (dominical letter F) of the Julian calendar, the 1835th year of the Common Era (CE) and *Anno Domini *(AD) designations, the 835th year of the 2nd millennium, the 35th year of the 19th century, and the 6th year of the 1830s decade. As of the start of 1835, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1918.
Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar in 1582. In the Julian calendar a leap year occurs every 4 years, but the Gregorian calendar omits 3 leap days every 400 years.
The Madden–Julian oscillation is the largest element of the intraseasonal (30- to 90-day) variability in the tropical atmosphere… It is characterized by an eastward progression of large regions of both enhanced and suppressed tropical rainfall, observed mainly over the Indian and Pacific Ocean. It is poorly understood, and for decades has defied explanatory computer anaylsis and stands as one of the great mysteries of science…
Cellist Julian Lloyd Webber has all six vowels in his name, with only the “e” repeated once (and boy, do I feel stupid posting this one after the above post).
Tobey Maguire, except for the quirky spelling of his first name, would have each vowel once in his name. Marion, Kentucky, is one of the rare cities that meets that orthography.
(Maybe you’re a friend of the cellist. The only way I knew about the Madden-Julian oscillation, is because Paul Julian (who discovered it) is one of my best friends.)
The ‘Marion’ cultivar (Rubus L. subgenus Rubus) or Marion blackberry, marketed as marionberry, is an indigenous blackberry developed by the USDA ARS breeding program in cooperation with Oregon State University. It is a cross between the ‘Chehalem’ and ‘Olallie’ blackberries. The marionberry is currently the most common blackberry cultivar, accounting for over half of all blackberries produced in Oregon.
It is not related to the late former mayor of Washington, D.C., Marion Barry.
With the blackberry bush, the berry producing vines have groups of 3 leaves while the runners (vines without berries) have groups of 5 leaves.
“Blackberrying” was a Middle English expression meaning to go wandering; Geoffrey Chaucer uses it in the Pardoner’s Tale in The Canterbury Tales.
Two different translations of the Pardoner’s words are as follows: “Once dead what matter how their souls may fare? They can go a-blackberrying for all I care!” or “I don’t care, once they’ve had their burying, If their souls then go blackberrying!” These words show that the Pardoner doesn’t care whether the souls he was supposed to save go to Heaven, or wander off to Purgatory or Hell.
The Christmas carol"I Wonder as I Wander" has its origins in a song fragment collected by John Jacob Niles on July 16, 1933
While in the town of Murphy in Appalachian North Carolina, Niles attended a fundraising meeting held by evangelicals who had been ordered out of town by the police.[n his unpublished autobiography, he wrote of hearing the song:
A girl had stepped out to the edge of the little platform attached to the automobile. She began to sing. Her clothes were unbelievable dirty and ragged, and she, too, was unwashed. Her ash-blond hair hung down in long skeins… But, best of all, she was beautiful, and in her untutored way, she could sing. She smiled as she sang, smiled rather sadly, and sang only a single line of a song.
The girl, named Annie Morgan, repeated the fragment seven times in exchange for a quarter per performance, and Niles left with “three lines of verse, a garbled fragment of melodic material—and a magnificent idea”. Based on this fragment, Niles composed the version of “I Wonder as I Wander” that is known today, extending the melody to four lines and the lyrics to three stanzas.]His composition was completed on October 4, 1933. Niles first performed the song on December 19, 1933, at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina. It was originally published in Songs of the Hill Folk in 1934.
Niles Crane describes his profession as “the saving grace of my life”, and is greatly respected professionally. He has a Jungian practice, and specializes in marriage and family therapy. (While substituting for his brother on the radio, he says, “While Frasier is a Freudian, I am a Jungian. So there’ll be no blaming mother today!”) Niles is an authority on clinical psychosis, has had his research published in several psychiatric journals, serves on the board of the American Psychiatric Association, and four of his patients have been elected to political office.
Because its flowers resembled a type of bird, Vaccinium oxycoccos was named the craneberry, now shortened to cranberry.
Martin Crane (on Frasier" is the only well-known character whose first and last names are kinds of birds. But Robin Fox and Lionel Tiger are well-known writers who collaborated on several important research books on anthropology, including “The Imperial Animal” and “Men in Groups”.
Shortly before the recent Scottish independence referendum, a pro-independence campaigner rode a rickshaw alongside a group of anti-independence Labour party politicians, who had travelled by train from London to Glasgow for a highly publicised visit, as they paraded through the centre of the city, playing the Imperial March from Star Wars and announcing to Glaswegians: “Your Imperial Masters have arrived. Bow down before your Imperial Masters!”
The largest cities in the United Kingdom are London, Manchester, Midlands, Yorkshire, Glasgow, and Liverpool.
When wheat flour began to come into common use for making cakes and puddings, cooks in the north of England devised a means of making use of the fat that dropped into the dripping pan to cook a batter pudding while the meat roasted. During 1737, a recipe for “a dripping pudding” (later named “The Yorkshire Pudding”) was published in the book The Whole Duty of a Woman:
“Make a good batter as for pancakes; put in a hot toss-pan over the fire with a bit of butter to fry the bottom a little then put the pan and butter under a shoulder of mutton, instead of a dripping pan, keeping frequently shaking it by the handle and it will be light and savoury, and fit to take up when your mutton is enough; then turn it in a dish and serve it hot.”