For more than 30 years, plastic phones shaped like the cartoon cat Garfield have been washing up on French beaches.
The mystery is now solved: a shipping container which washed up during a storm in the 1980s was found in a hidden sea cave.
President James Garfield was a true ambidextrous person. He could write with either hand. As a parlour trick, he would write with both hands simultaneously on separate sheets of paper.
Better yet… in Greek and Latin!
In play:
Gen. James A. Garfield was chief of staff to U.S. Army Gen. William Rosecrans at the Sept. 1863 Battle of Chickamauga. Rosecrans left the field in haste when it appeared the battle was lost, but Gen. George Henry Thomas made a brave stand on Snodgrass Hill, earning the nickname “the Rock of Chickamauga.” Garfield returned to the hill without Rosecrans, and praised Thomas for saving the day.
Even though Rosencrantz and Guildenstern die before Hamlet’s mass death scene in Act V, Shakespeare woreds it so that he reveals they’ve been killed at the same time everyone else is dying. A British ambassador shows up in the final scene for the sole purpose of saying, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.” Contemporary playwright Tom Stoppard liked this line so much that he wrote a play from the perspective of the two characters and titled it Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
Between about 1590 and 1613, Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays and probably collaborated on several more.
While the number of scenes per act vary, all of Shakespeare’s plays contain five acts.
Although he was English and wrote and performed for English audiences, more of Shakespeare’s plays were set in Italy than in any other country.
The only time where Shakespeare mentions America is in The Comedy of Errors: One of the twins named Dromio is talking with his master Antipholus about an overweight servant, and Dromio describes her by comparing parts of her body to parts of the globe. Antipholus asks where America is on her body, and Dromio says upon her nose:
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: Where America, the Indies?
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: Oh, sir, upon her nose all o’er embellished with rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich aspect to the hot breath of Spain; who sent whole armadoes of caracks to be ballast at her nose.
In the DC comic universe, the Green Lantern Corps are a galactic police force, whose “power rings” let them harness their willpower to perform various superheroic tasks.
Over time, the writers of the Green Lantern books have developed an full “emotional electromagnetic spectrum,” with each of the seven colors corresponding to an emotion, and having an associated group of people who use power rings keyed to that color. The spectrum is:
- Red / rage / Red Lantern Corps
- Orange / avarice / Larfleeze (effectively the only member)
- Yellow / fear / Sinestro Corps
- Green / will / Green Lantern Corps
- Blue / hope / Blue Lantern Corps
- Indigo / compassion / Indigo Tribe
- Violet / love / Star Sapphires
In addition, there are rings for black (death, the Black Lanterns) and white (life, the White Lanterns).
Two mnemonic devices for the order of the colors of the rainbow (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet) are the initialism ROYGBIV (or Roy G. Biv) and the sentences “Read Out Your Good Book In Verse” and “Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain,” which is more commonly used in Britain.
IndiGo is a low-cost airline which has its headquarters in Gurgaon, India. The airlines hub is at Indira Gandhi International Airport, located in Delhi. IndiGo is the largest airline in India by both fleet size and passengers carried; it had 41.3% of the domestic market in 2018.
The Indigo Girls Amy Ray and Emily Saliers performed onstage in the 1994 revival of Jesus Christ Superstar in Atlanta, titled Jesus Christ Superstar: A Resurrection. Ray played the role of Jesus and Saliers played the role of Mary Magdalene. They later reprised their roles in stagings of the musical in Austin, at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival, and in Seattle. A 2CD set and a video of the show were released.
Jesus Christ Superstar, by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, was originally released as a rock opera concert album in 1970. It was adapted for stage and premiered on Broadway in October of 1971. The show was nominated for five Tony Awards but won none.
Tommy, the 1968 rock opera / concert album by The Who, was primarily composed by Pete Townshend, and inspired by the writings of Indian spirtual master Meher Baba. The album served as the basis for a film in 1975, and a Broadway musical in 1993.
Baba Ghanoush, made from mashed cooked eggplant mixed with tahini, lemon juice, garlic and olive oil, is a popular Middle Eastern appetizer. “Bābā” is an Arabic word that means “father” and is also a term of endearment, while “Ghanoush” could be a personal name. The word combination is also interpreted as “father of coquetry” or “indulged/pampered daddy” or “spoiled old daddy”.
“Baba au rhum” is a French pastry, where dried cakes are soaked in rum or another liquor, then given a cream filling.
“Baba” is the word for “grandmother” in several Slavic languages.
As is “Babka”, at least in Polish.
Bolesław III Wrymouth, the last reigning duke of the early period of Polish history, succeeded in defending his country and recovering territories previously lost. Upon his death in 1138, Poland was divided among his sons.
Polish jokes to the contrary, many luminaries were Polish, including Frederic Chopin, Pope John Paul II, Marie Curie, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Arthur Rubenstein, Agnieszka Holland, Joseph Conrad, and Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Pope John Paul II, who served as head of the Catholic Church from 1978 to 2005, was the first non-Italian Pope since the Dutch Pope Adrian VI, who served from 1522 to 1523. John Paul II was the second longest-serving pope in modern history after Pope Pius IX, who served for nearly 32 years from 1846 to 1878. John Paul II’s predecessor, John Paul I, served just 33 days.