The use of “bread” meaning money was associated for a short time with the 1960’s hippies, and obviously is an offshoot of “dough.”
However, in the 1930s, Lester Young - known as the ‘President of Jazz’ or simply ‘The Prez’ - led a revolution on the tenor saxophone that influenced generations to follow…Young also had a flair for language: He said he had ‘big eyes’ for the things he liked, he nicknamed Billie Holiday ‘Lady Day,’ and he called women’s feet in open-toed shoes ‘nice biscuits.’ He also made up new words that found their way into songs. Young’s cachet among hipsters led to his popularizing now-common words. Everyone started using the word ‘cool’ after they heard him say it, according to jazz historian Phil Schaap. ‘But the one that really makes the most sense,’ Schaap says, 'you call up Lester Young for a gig, he’d say, ‘Okay, how does the bread smell?’ So he used ‘bread’ for money for the first time.
Andrew Young, who turned 87 last month, was born in New Orleans. After graduating from Howard University and earning a divinity degree from Hartford Seminary, he began his career as a pastor of a church in Marion, Alabama. He soon became involved in the civil rights movement, serving as executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a close confidant to Martin Luther King Jr. Young later became active in politics, serving first as a U.S. Congressman from Georgia, then United States Ambassador to the United Nations, and finally Mayor of Atlanta.
The city of Hartford, Connecticut is regarded as the traditional home of the insurance industry. Many insurance companies were founded in Hartford, and a number of major companies, such as The Hartford, Aetna, Prudential, Travelers, and UnitedHealth, are still headquartered in, or have major operations in, the city.
The Revered Thomas Hooker was a prominent Puritan colonial leader, who founded the Colony of Connecticut after dissenting with Puritan leaders in Massachusetts.Each year in October, organizations and citizens of Hartford dress up in outrageous costumes to celebrate Hooker Day with the Hooker Day Parade. T-shirts sold in the Old State House proclaim “Hartford was founded by a Hooker.”
Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, appointed in Jan. 1863 to command the Army of the Potomac by President Abraham Lincoln not long before the Battle of Chancellorsville, also received a private letter from the President. Although it was somewhat critical of him, he showed to fellow officers, saying, “That is just such a letter as a father might write to his son.”
Folk etomoly has the “Hooker” meaning a prostitute coming from Jospeh Hooker, who apparently was a visitor to brothels. However, there’s a fatal flaw: the word is recorded several times before the Civil War. It’s listed in the second edition of John Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms of 1859 and another example is known from North Carolina in 1845. An even earlier instance was turned up by George Thompson of New York University in The New York Transcript of September 25, 1835, which contains a whimsical report of a police court hearing in which a woman of no reputation at all is called a hooker because she “hangs around the hook”.
This obscure reference is to Corlear’s Hook, an area of New York. Bartlett suggests the same origin for the term, based on “the number of houses of ill-fame frequented by sailors” in the area.
There is a park at Corlear’s Hook now. It’s in the Lower East Side, near the Williamsburg Bridge. Across from it in Brooklyn you can find the Peter Luger Steak House, often reputed as perhaps the finest in the world.
Peter Luger’s locations - there’s only two, that one and one in Great Neck - will not accept any common credit card; not Amex, not Mastercard, not Visa, not Discovery. They have their own card, or you pay cash, or you pay with a personal check and you’d better have ID.
The “Miller’s Tale” in the Canterbury Tales is a bawdy story, meant as a contrast to the “Knight’s Tale” of courtly love.
The husband ends up cuckolded and with a broken arm; the young lover of his wife, Nicolas, has enjoyed a night with her but has been branded on his arse by the would-be rival young lover, Absalon; and Absalon has been tricked into kissing the young wife’s arse-hole and having Nicholas fart in his face.
The only one who comes out ahead is the young wife, who has enjoyed a night of illicit love with her lover.
The French performer Joseph Pujol, who went by the stage name Le Pétomane (“the fartomaniac”) was a professional “flatulist,” or “fartiste.” He had learned how to take air into his rectum, which he then was able to use to create various sound effects through his anus. His act also included impressions of different styles of farts, as well as playing musical instruments via the air expelled from his anus.
Le Pétomane was an extremely popular performer in France in the 1890s and 1900s, and was a star attraction at the Moulin Rouge for a time. Pujol retired from performing during World War I, and spent the remainder of his life as a baker.
Franz Joseph Haydn’s first opera, Der krumme Teufel, “The Limping Devil”, was written when he was 20 for the comic actor Johann Joseph Felix Kurz. The work was premiered successfully in 1753, but was soon closed down by the Vienna censors due to “offensive remarks”.
Haydn’s contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets “Father of the Symphony” and “Father of the String Quartet”. Although the most celebrated composer in Europe, his employment by the Esterhazy family at their remote estate, as a musician and conductor as well as composer, required him to wear a servant’s livery. Haydn acknowledged that his isolation “forced him to become original”.
The Chicago Seven (originally Chicago Eight, also Conspiracy Eight/Conspiracy Seven) were seven defendants—Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner—charged by the federal government with conspiracy, inciting to riot, and other charges related to anti-Vietnam War and countercultural protests that took place in Chicago, Illinois, on the occasion of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Bobby Seale, the eighth man charged, had his trial severed during the proceedings, lowering the number of defendants from eight to seven.
Seale was eventually sentenced to four years in prison for contempt of court, although this ruling was later reversed.
After a federal trial resulting in both acquittals and convictions, followed by appeals, and reversals, some of the seven defendants were finally convicted, although all of the convictions were ultimately overturned.
The United States is divided into 93 Federal court districts. Smaller or less-populous states such as Vermont or Wyoming comprise just a single district; Ohio, Wisconsin, Missouri and some others have two (northern and southern, in the Buckeye State’s case), while California, Texas and New York have the most with four each.
Most criminal cases are filed and heard in the State court system. The State court system also hears tort, probate, family law, and most contract cases. The Federal court system hears cases that deal with the constitutionality of a law, cases involving the laws and treaties of the U.S., cases involving ambassadors and public ministers, disputes between two or more states, admiralty law, habeas corpus issues, and (surprisingly, to me) bankruptcy cases.
Located at the western end of the Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, Russia (not Florida), The Admiralty with its gilded spire topped by a golden weather-vane in the shape of a small sail warship (Korablik), is one of the city’s most conspicuous landmarks and the focal point of old St. Petersburg’s three main streets - Nevsky Prospect, Gorokhovaya Street, and Voznesensky Avenue - underscoring the importance Peter I placed on Russia’s Navy.
The Russian Navy has only a single aircraft carrier: the Admiral Kuznetsov, which was launched in 1985 by the Soviet Navy. The Soviet Union had also partially constructed a second ship of the class, which then sat unfinished for several years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The hull of the unfinished ship was eventually sold, and China completed construction of it, commissioning it as their own aircraft carrier, the Liaoning.
The Kuznetsov itself was undergoing upgrades in 2018, when the floating dry dock in which it was located sunk, badly damaging the carrier. Last week, Russia publicly acknowledged that the damage to the Kuznetsov is so extensive, and their options for repairing it so limited, that they may be forced to scrap it.
An extensive 1760 dictionary of cant is accessible at Project Gutenbberg, the entry being _
A DICTIONARY OF MODERN SLANG, CANT, AND VULGAR WORDS_ by A LONDON ANTIQUARY
In that book, at page 155, there is an entry as follows:
HOOK, to steal or rob.
I read this to suggest that the noun form “hooker” existed at that early date.
The Japanese Navy (technically the “Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force”) has four aircraft carriers (referred to as “helicopter destroyers,” for geopolitical reasons) in current service.
Japan’s Shiki Theatre Company was the first theatre company to buy the performing rights to Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice’s Jesus Christ Superstar, with the clause that they would have the right of first refusal for all of Rice’s and ALW’s future works.
Shiki has since performed Evita, CATS, Phantom of the Opera, Aladdin, AIDA, Beauty & The Beast & Lion King.