Madeira is a type of fortified wine, made on Portugal’s Madeira Islands. Originally developed simply as a fortified wine (i.e., a wine to which a bit of additional alcohol has been added), when some Madeira wine was returned to the islands after being in the hold of a ship during a long voyage, it was discovered that the extended time in the heat of the ship’s hold had a positive effect on the quality of the wine.
Since then, makers of Madeira have developed other techniques for applying heat to the wine during aging, to achieve similar effects.
Playing cards may have been invented during the Tang dynasty around the 9th century AD as a result of the usage of woodblock printing technology. They played the “Leaf Game.” The earliest dated instance of a game involving cards with suits and numerals occurred on 17 July 1294 when two men were caught playing cards [zhi pai] and that wood blocks for printing them had been impounded, together with nine of the actual cards. Four-suited playing cards are first attributed in Southern Europe in 1365, and are likely derived from the Mamluk suits of cups, coins, swords, and polo-sticks, A card manufacturer provided crates of Ace of Spades cards for U.S. soldiers in the Vietnam War. It was erroneously believed that the Viet Cong believed the Ace of Spades to be a symbol of death and would flee at the sight of the card. In actuality, the Ace meant nothing to the Viet Cong, but the belief that the enemy was afraid of the cards improved the U.S. soldiers’ morale.
The word ‘ace’ comes from the Old French word as meaning ‘one unit’, from the name of a small Roman coin. It originally meant the side of a die with only one pip. Since this was the lowest roll of the die, it traditionally meant bad luck or trouble, but as the ace is often the highest playing card, its meaning has since changed to mean high-quality or excellence.
Ten Roman as coins added up to a denarius, the standard Roman silver coin. The word denarius is derived from the Latin dēnī, “containing ten”. The word for “money” descends from it in Italian (denaro), Slovene (denar), Portuguese (dinheiro), and Spanish (dinero). Its name also survives in the many past and dinar currencies used in the Balkans, North Africa and the Middle East.
The musical Oh Calcutta!, consisting of sketches on sex-related topics, got its title from a painting by Clovis Trouille, itself a pun on “O quel cul t’as!” French for “What an arse you have!”. One of the composers was Peter Schickele, better known as P.D.Q. Bach.
A London workshop recently took place for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s modern musical remake of Cinderella, which welcomed some of Broadway’s most notable producers and theatre owners. Now the composer has revealed in an recent interview with Good Morning Britain that the musical will open on Broadway next year.
Actresses who have performed or voiced the character of Cinderella - from a tale of which the earliest variant may date back to Ancient Greece - include Mary Pickford, Colleen Moore, Yanina Zhejmo, Leslie Caron, Julie Andrews, Lesley Ann Warren, Shelly Duvall, Brandy Norwood, Drew Barrymore, Hilary Duff, Selena Gomez and Lily James.
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II created a musical version of Cinderella, specifically for television. The musical was first performed live on CBS, on March 31st, 1957, with Julie Andrews (then only 21 years old) in the title role.
In 1965, CBS aired a new production of the musical, starring Lesley Ann Warren (who was only 18) as Cinderella. A 1997 adaptation was created by Disney, and first aired on ABC, with Brandy Norwood (also 18 at the time) as Cinderella.
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II created nine Broadway musicals in the years 1943-1959. Five of these shows were outstanding successes, including the first and the last, Oklahoma! and The Sound of Music. The other successful shows were Carousel, South Pacific, and The King and I.
George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess was first performed in Boston on September 30, 1935, before it moved to Broadway in New York City. It featured a cast of classically trained African-American singers—a daring artistic choice at the time. After suffering from an initially unpopular public reception, a 1976 Houston Grand Opera production gained it new popularity, and it is now one of the best-known and most frequently performed operas.
Porgy and Bess, set in Charleston’s fictional Catfish Row, is the official state opera of South Carolina, the only state which has one. Gershwin wrote the character of Sportin’ Life, the local pimp and pusher, for bandleader Cab Calloway, but he did not take the role until a later revival production.
Cab Calloway’s parents wanted him to become a lawyer, like his father, and he began prelaw studies at Crane College in Chicago, but he was more interested in music and eventually made his highly successful career in that field.
Northern J. Calloway replaced Tony winner Ben Vereen as the Leading Player in Broadway’s original cast of Pippin. He would later play David on Sesame Street, and take over Mr. Hooper’s store, but his later years were marked by legal troubles and deteriorating physical and mental health. He died in 1990, age 41.
The Northern League is a right-wing Italian political party which advocates the transformation of Italy into a federal state, fiscal federalism, regionalism and greater regional autonomy, especially for northern regions. At times, the party has advocated the secession of the North, referred to as “Padania”, and consequently Padanian nationalism. The party has always opposed illegal immigration, especially when involving non-Europeans and Muslims. It is allied with other European right-wing populist parties such as France’s National Rally, the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom and the Freedom Party of Austria.
The musical CATS has been translated into more than 10 languages including Japanese, German, (three versions for Germany, Austria and Switzerland), Hungarian, Norwegian, Finnish, Dutch, Swedish, Chinese, French, Spanish (two versions for Mexico and Argentina) and Italian. The Swiss production required a bilingual cast who performed in German and English on alternate nights. The title of the show has rarely been translated, the Mexican producers did a survey as to whether the Mexican audience would like their production to be called Gatos – the response in favor of keeping the English original was unanimous.
Cats ranks #10 on the list of highest-grossing Broadway Musicals all-time. The Lion King, Wicked, and The Phantom of the Opera are the top three on this list.
Hamiltonian mechanics was first formulated by William Rowan Hamilton in 1833, starting from Lagrangian mechanics, a previous reformulation of classical mechanics introduced by Joseph Louis Lagrange in 1788. Historically, it was an important reformulation of classical mechanics, which later contributed to the formulation of statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics.
The film That Hamilton Woman, (1941) with Laurence Olivier as Horatio Nelson and Vivien Leigh as Emma Hamilton, was one of several Hollywood films made to encourage pro-British sentiment among American audiences, especially with the United States not yet having entered the war. The film was popular in the United States and an outstanding success in the Soviet Union and was one of Winston Churchill’s favorites.
In July 1941, the isolationist group America First Committee (AFC) targeted That Hamilton Woman and three other Hollywood feature films (The Great Dictator, Foreign Correspondent, and The Mortal Storm) as productions that “seemed to be preparing Americans for war.” The AFC called on the American public to boycott theaters showing these movies.