Solomon Popoli Ntsele Linda never benefited from the success of his song “Mbube”, which was adapted as “Wimoweh” and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. He was well known for the song in South Africa but even after Pete Seeger, The Weavers and The Tokens covered it, he died in poverty in 1962. It was not until February 2006 that Linda’s heirs were able to share in the song’s profits when they attained a legal settlement with Abilene Music company, which had the worldwide rights and had licensed the song to Disney for the film The Lion King.
Pete Seeger’s version of Mbube, or The Lion Sleeps Tonight, from 1952, was titled Wimoweh. In Zulu, “Mbube” means “lion”. When Solomon Linda and his group, the Original Evening Birds, cut a 78-rpm recording of the song in 1939, it became the first African record to sell over 100,000 copies. The best known version of the song in the USA is from 1961 by The Tokens. It was a #1 hit single that year.
The next big African hit was “Skokiaan”, bu the Bulawayo Sweet Rhythm Band, in what was then Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). It ws quickly covered in the US by Ralph Marterie’s Band. A set of lyrics were written for it, recorded by the Four Ladss, in 1954.
Intersting. Never heard it before.
YouTube:
- https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oxnXcBBdUBU (Bulawayo Sweet Rhythm Band, 1947)
- https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zpndaJnGzz0 (Four Lads, 1954)
Cecil John Rhodes was the only Brit ever to have a country named after him. He went on to become Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and to found the Rhodes Scholarships. Money donated by him was also used to establish Rhodes House, Oxford, and its library. The former territory named Rhodesia is now Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The Colossus of Rhodes is estimated to have been about the same height as the Statue of Liberty. It is mentioned in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, where Cassius in tempting Brutus refers to Caesar as a colossus best riding the world.
Local culinary specialities of Rhodes include: avranies, koulouria, pitaroudia, pouggia, tsirigia, fanouropita, katimeria, melekouni, pouggakia, takakia, or mantinades, and muchalebi.
In economics, a monopoly is where one seller interacts with many buyers, and a monopsony is where one buyer interacts with many sellers. The De Beers diamond company, throughout most of the 20th century, had almost total control of the diamond market as both a monopoly and a monopsony. De Beers used its dominant position to manipulate and control the international diamond market. De Beers’ market share of rough diamonds was as high as 90% in the 1980s. De Beers was founded in 1888 by Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes lived from 1853 to 1902.
In Monopoly, the least probable square you can land on is Park Place. Because seven is the most frequent roll and it is impossible to land on Park Place with a roll of seven. It is also not one of the 14 squares you can be sent to by order of a Chance or Community Chest card.
On April 5, 1847, Britain’s first civic public** park** opened in in Birkenhead, Merseyside. It included the Swiss Bridge, a wood 23-foot covered bridge for pedestrians made of stringer construction. It was, and is still today, unique as being the only covered bridge of traditional wooden construction in the UK, being similar to North American and European covered bridges. In addition to the bridge— and paths, lawns, woods, and gardens later greatly admired by Frederick Law Olmsted—motorists today can drive around the outer circular road and park along it anywhere.
Not quite: “Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world. Like a Colossus, and we petty men…” Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2
In play:
Adolf Hitler had a portrait of Frederick the Great of Prussia, whom he greatly admired, hanging in his private quarters in the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin.
Blame fat fingers and auto-correct!
In-play one of the ironies of Hitler’s search for “racial purity” is that it is believed that the name “Berlin” is derived from a West Slavic language, Old Polabian, rather than being etymologically German.
About 2800 Polabian words are known (but of prosaic writings, only a few prayers, one wedding song and a few folktales). Immediately before the language became extinct several people started to collect phrases, compile wordlists and were engaged with folklore of the Polabian Slavs, but only one of them appears to have been a native speaker of Polabian (himself leaving only 13 pages of linguistically relevant material from a 310-page manuscript). The last native speaker of Polabian, a woman, died in 1756, and the last person who spoke limited Polabian died in 1825.
Today, Slavs range from the west at central Europe and the eastern Adriatic coast, and east into Asia. Slavs are comprised of Poles, Czechs and Slovaks at the west; Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians at the east; and Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, ethnic Macedonians, Slovenes, Montenegrins, and Bulgarians at the south. The first written use of the name “Slavs” dates to the sixth century, when the Slavic tribes inhabited a large portion of Central and Eastern Europe. By that century, native Iranian ethnic groups (the Scythians, Sarmatians, and Alans) had been absorbed by the region’s Slavic population.
In June 1876, Serbia and the Ottoman Empire were engaged in the Serbo-Turkish War (1876–78). Russia openly supported Serbia. The Russian Musical Society commissioned an orchestral piece from the composer Tchaikovsky for a concert for the Red Cross Society, and the benefit of wounded Serbian veterans. Many Russians sympathized with their fellow Slavs and Orthodox Christians and sent volunteer soldiers and aid to assist Serbia.
Tchaikovsky referred to the piece as his “Serbo-Russian March” while writing it. It was premiered in Moscow in November 1876, and is widely known today by its French name, Marche Slave.
My maternal grandfather, Alexander Artymiak, a Russian with family in St. Petersburg and Moscow, played violin and studied under Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. My sister and I both grew up playing violin, at one point I was my school’s concertmaster, and we sought and bought my grandfather’s old violin. It remains in the family.
If you are ever in Yellowknife, be sure to have Arctic Char at Bullocks Bistro on the shores of Great Slave Lake.
On August 21, 1791, slaves of Saint Domingue (present-day Haiti) rose in revolt, starting the Haitian Revolution. The result was the elimination of slavery and the founding of the Republic of Haiti. The Haitian Revolution is the only slave revolt that led to the founding of a state. It is generally considered the most successful slave rebellion ever.
Toussaint Louverture, leader of the Haitian Revolution, has been called “Napoleon Noir” (french for Black Napoleon) and “Black Spartacus.”
In Latin, the English word trivium (plural trivia) means “triple-way” - three roads, tri and viae. This word was used referring to areas where “three ways meet” (e.g. roads and rivers).
During medieval times, a basic liberal arts education from a university consisted primarily of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, called a “*trivium/I]” - the liberal arts, the arte trivialle. After the trivium was completed, students would then be commonly taught the more complex quadrivium of geometry, astronomy, music, and arithmetic. In this context, “trivial” meant of interest only to the undergraduate.
In the 1500s William Shakespeare used the word trivia to mean trite, commonplace, unimportant, and slight.
The game Trivial Pursuit was created in December 1979 in Montreal, Quebec (where they speak French), by Canadian Chris Haney, a photo editor for Montreal’s The Gazette, and Scott Abbott, a sports editor for The Canadian Press. In North America, the game’s popularity peaked in 1984 when over 20 million games were sold.
Well, that makes 5,000 and 20,000 for me here - see ya, it’s been fun but I’m taking a break. Thank you, fellow trivia gamers. I have enjoyed this game and the banter. Take care, y’all, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and a Happy and Healthy New Year in 2017 to you and yours.
Sincerely,
Bullitt
The abacus, also called a counting frame, is a calculating tool that was in use in Europe, China and Russia and is still used by merchants, traders and clerks in some parts of Eastern Europe, Russia, China and Africa. It can be used to do various types of arithmetic.