José Ferrer had to be talked into taking the role of the sadistic Bey in Lawrence of Arabia, dubious about it being such a small part. David Lean convinced him that the Bey was a pivotal character in T.E. Lawrence’s history. Ferrer accepted on condition that he be paid $25,000 - more than Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif combined - plus a factory made Porsche. Ferrer later said about his tiny role that he considered it to be the finest acting of his career.
ninja’ed
Lean meats are meats with a relatively low fat content. Skinless chicken and turkey and red meat, such as pork chops, with the fat trimmed off are examples of lean meat.
The fat on a pork chop accounts for about two thirds of its fat content and the skin on chicken can account for 80 per cent of its fat content.
On September 10, 1945, Mike the Headless Chicken lost most of his head to a farmer’s axe at a farm in Colorado. He survived another 18 months, with national fame, as part of sideshows before dying in Phoenix, Arizona. He is now an institution in Fruita, Colorado, with an annual “Mike the Headless Chicken Day,” the third weekend of May, starting in 1999.
La Fenice, Italian for The Phoenix, is Venice’s opera house, site of the premieres of many famous operas including Verdi’s La Traviata. It has been destroyed by fire three times, most recently in 1996.
The premiere of La Traviata, in 1853, was a total fiasco. The role of Violetta, who is supposed to be young and frail, dying of consumption, was sung by a soprano who was aging and overweight.
Legion of Super-Heroes members Shrinking Violet (Salu Digby) and Lightning Lass (Ayla Ranzz), after breaking up with their long time boyfriends Duplicate Boy and Timber Wolf respectively, were strongly implied (though never explicitly stated) to have had a long serious lesbian romance.
New York University (NYU) sports teams are nicknamed the Violets. However, their mascot is a Bobcat and there is no record of their ever being a violet bobcat (violent ones, obviously).
On the screens of computer monitors and television sets, a color which looks similar to violet is made, with the RGB color model, by mixing red and blue light, with the blue twice as bright as the red. This is not true violet, since it is composed of multiple longer wavelengths rather than a single wavelength shorter than that of blue light.
On April 25, 1990, Violeta Chamorro took office as the President of Nicaragua, the first woman elected in her own right as a head of state in the Americas. Venezuela’s former President, Carlos Andrés Pérez, was put to trial in his country after it was discovered that he had embezzled funds to support the campaign that enabled Violeta Chamorro to be elected.
A former is part of the frame of small aircraft. Their use was more common before modern airplane skins.
A U.S. Air Force pilot describes her experiences after the crash of her C-130 Hercules transport airplane in southern Louisiana zombie territory in Max Brooks’s novel World War Z.
In 2001, having previously won an Emmy, a Grammy and an Oscar, Mel Brooks won a Tony award for The Producers and became the 8th person to join the EGOT club.
The first person to complete the EGOT awards combination was Richard Rogers, in 1962; it took another 15 years for Helen Hayes and Rita Moreno to join him, in 1977.
Rogers also won Pulitzer prizes for South Pacific and Oklahoma. Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals earned a total of 35 Tony Awards, 15 Academy Awards, two Pulitzer Prizes, two Grammy Awards, and two Emmy Awards.
After Oscar Hammerstein II’s death in 1960, Richard Rodgers worked with Stephen Sondheim, Martin Charnin, and Sheldon Harnick as lyricists, and, for the musical “No Strings,” wrote his own lyrics. Before Hammerstein, he worked with Larry Hart, where he had his first successes.
On December 9, 1872, P. B. S. Pinchback took office as Governor of Louisiana, the first African American governor of a US state. The Louisiana legislature had filed impeachment charges against the incumbent Republican governor, Henry Clay Warmoth, due to disputes over certifying returns of a gubernatorial election. State law required that Warmoth step aside until his impeachment case was tried. Pinchback, who was filling in as acting Lieutenant Governor upon the death of Oscar Dunn, took oath as acting governor on December 9, 1872, and served for about six weeks until the end of Warmoth’s term
A pinch-back suit has a closely-fitting jacket with a single pleat in the back.
And the next thing you know, your son is playing for money in a pinch-back suit, and listening to some big out of town jasper here to talk about horse race gamblin’. Not a wholesome trottin race, no, but a race where they sit down right on the horse! Like to see some stuck up jockey boy sitting on Dan-Patch? Make your blood boil? Well, I should say.
The first pirate known to have worn an eyepatch was Rahmah ibn Jabir al-Jalahimah (ca 1800), and Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” also described a fictional pirate wearing an eyepatch, but the connection of the eyepatch to pirates is mostly mythical. There is little support for the theory that pirates wore an eyepatch to acclimate one eye to darkness, so they would not lose tactical advantage when going into the holds of captured ships for booty, althougj such a strategy might have had value.
The Barbary pirates operated from North Africa, based primarily in the ports of Salé, Rabat, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. In addition to seizing ships, they engaged in raids on European coastal towns and villages, mainly in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, but also in the British Isles, the Netherlands and as far away as Iceland. The main purpose of their attacks was to capture Christian slaves for the Ottoman slave trade as well as the general Arabic market in North Africa and the Middle East.
Lord Byron’s narrative poem The Corsair was one of the most popular of its time, selling over 10,000 copies on the day it appeared in 1814. Its exotic plot was in keeping with the fashion of its time, but now the poem is seldom read.
Conrad, the Corsair, is the leader of a pirate band who returns to his island hideaway and immediately prepares for a raid on Seyd Pasha, his enemy. He takes a tearful farewell of Medora, the woman he loves. The raid is all but successful until Conrad is moved by the frightened cries of Seyd’s women and pauses in the fight to rescue them from the burning castle. Seyd’s forces rally, and Conrad is beaten and thrown into the tower prison. Falling in love with him, the harem queen, Gulnare, frees Conrad, and escapes with him to sea where they are joined by the happy remnant of his followers. Back to the island, Conrad discovers that Medora has died, and disappears mysteriously with Gulnare.