A February 1763 entry in the diary of John Adams of Braintree, Massachusetts, is one of the earliest appearances of Caucas, already with its modern connotations of a “smoke-filled room” where candidates for public election are pre-selected in private:
The Diogenes Club was a fictional London gentlemen’s club in the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, first mentioned and visited in “The Greek Interpreter.” Sherlock Holmes was not a member, although his older brother Mycroft was. Members were not allowed to speak anywhere except in the Strangers’ Room. Later works have suggested that the club was a front for either the Foreign Office or British espionage services.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote four novels and 52 short stories that featured Sherlock Holmes. Over his career, however, he wrote over 40 novels and more than 200 short stories. 13 of his books dealt with spiritualism and the paranormal.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was fooled by a hoax perpetrated by two young cousins, one 16, and one just 9. Known as the Cottingley Fairies, Doyle believed these pictures of fairies cut out from a book were actually real fairies. Holmes would scoff at this.
The movie version of MAS*H has the following exchange:
[Hawkeye asks why two medical officers are being sought, and the dialogue goes…]
SECOND MEDICAL CORPS SERGEANT
They’re supposed to hold short-arm inspection.
DUKE
You can’t be serious, man.
SECOND MEDICAL CORPS SERGEANT
Why not?
DUKE
The reason they’re being shipped home is they’re the two biggest fairies in the Far East Command.
Today, using the word “fairy” to refer to a gay man is considered ofefnsive.
In 1919, Earl “Curly” Lambeau and George Calhoun founded a professional football team in their home town of Green Bay, Wisconsin. At the time, Lambeau was working for a meat-packing company, the Indian Packing Company, and he convinced his employer to provide funds for team uniforms, in exchange for naming the team after the company; thus, the Packers were born.
In their inaugural season of play, the Packers finished with a record of 10 wins and 1 loss; the team losing their final game of the season to the Beloit Fairies, by a score of 6-0. The Fairies’ nickname was a reference to their sponsor, Fairbanks Morse and Company.
Vince Lombardi, best known as the head coach of the Green Bay Packers during the 1960’s, where he led the team to three straight and five total NFL Championships in seven years, in addition to winning the first two Super Bowls at the conclusion of the 1966 and 1967 NFL seasons, began his coaching career as an assistant and later as a head coach at St. Cecilia High School in Englewood, New Jersey. (I currently live in that city, and I did not know that until five minutes ago).
Vince Lombardi is often credited with the quote “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” While Lombardi did repeat this phrase more than once, He did not coin it; it is virtually certain he heard it from Red Sanders, who coached UCLA, and the phrase was used elsewhere, too. There is no known record of it prior to Sanders.
The “Seven Blocks of Granite” was a nickname given to the offensive line of the Fordham University football team in the 1930s, particularly the line from the 1936 team.
Two members of the Seven Blocks are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame: Alex Wojciechowicz (who played center for the Detroit Lions and Philadelphia Eagles) and Vince Lombardi (who coached the Green Bay Packers and Washington Redskins).
In 1988, Barry Sanders had what many consider to be the finest season in college football history. A junior at Oklahoma State University, Sanders averaged 7.6 yards per carry and over 200 yards per game, including rushing for over 300 yards in four games. He also served as the team’s punt and kickoff returner, where he logged another 516 yards on special teams. To the surprise of nobody, Sanders won the 1988 Heisman Trophy.
Sanders left college after that season and went on to play 10 seasons in the NFL and was named to the all-pro team each year. He was elected into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2004.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, despite seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in both 2016 and 2020, has run against Vermont Democrats for various offices 14 times over the course of his political career. He has been an Independent for most of his career, and described himself as one again after losing the nomination to Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The first woman to run for president of the United States was Victoria Woodhull. She was a leader of the women’s suffrage movement, and in 1872 she ran for president as a nominee of the newly-formed Equal Rights party. Her vice-presidential candidate was Frederick Douglass. Woodhull was 33 years old when she announced her candidacy and would not have been eligible for the office of the president until her 35th birthday in September of 1873.
Victoria Wyndham, best known for playing Rachel Cory Hutchins on the soap Another World from 1972 until the show emded in 1999, first started her acting career as understudy in the role of Hodel in the Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof. She went on to perform cabaret with Lily Tomlin for two years at Upstairs at the Downstairs.
“Upstairs Downstairs” was a popular British TV show in the 1970s. The show is about aristocrats and servants in the early 20th centiry; the title refers to the idea that the aristocrats live upstairs, the servants downstairs. The show was a huge international hit, winning several Emmy Awards, in fact.
A British Member of Parliament does not - and may not - actually resign, but applies for appointment to one of several royal sinecures, rendering him or her ineligible to continue to serve in the House of Commons. Sometimes, when there are several people leaving the House in a single day, the former Member might hold the royal post for mere seconds.
One of the “greatest conservative rock songs” listed in conservapedia
is House of the Rising Sun. You know,the one with the [direct quote] Refrain: “In God I know I’ve won.”
Note to consevapedia: The line is “And god, I know I’m one,” and the song is about a brothel. You could at least try to get your facts right.
The British rock group The Animals recorded the traditional American folk ballad “The House of the Rising Sun” in 1964. Their recording, which was a hit in both America and Europe, is considered to be the first successful “folk rock” song, and is said to have been an inspiration for Bob Dylan to move away from his traditional acoustic sound, and embrace electric instruments.
Folk rock emerged from the folk music revival and the influence that the Beatles and other British Invasion bands had on members of that movement. Performers such as Bob Dylan and the Byrds—several of whose members had earlier played in folk ensembles—attempted to blend the sounds of rock with their preexisting folk repertoire, adopting the use of electric instrumentation and drums in a way previously discouraged in the U.S. folk community. The term “folk rock” was initially used in the U.S. music press in June 1965 to describe the Byrds’ music.
Folk rock was just one of many genres explored by the Monkees, who also did country rock, pop rock, bubblegum, psychedelic rock, and even occasionally soul. They were as eclectic as the Beatles were at the time.
“Stay (I Missed You)” by folk rock / soft rock act Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories hit #1 on the charts in 1994; Loeb had at the time never actually signed a record contract, making her the first unsigned artist to have a #1 hit. That unusual feat has been since matched by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s “Thrift Shop,” which hit #1 in 2012 as an independent release.
Loeb’s break came when her neighbor, an actor by the name of Ethan Hawke, prevailed upon some guy named Ben Stiller to put the song in their upcoming movie “Reality Bites.” The song took off from there.