The Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop opened in New York City in 1967 as the world’s first bookstore devoted to gay and lesbian authors’ works. It moved from Mercer Street to Christopher Street in 1973, and the word “Memorial” was dropped from the name. The shop closed in 2009.
Sarah Bernhardt, famous actress and courtesan, once met Oscar Wilde. He asked “Do you mind if I smoke?” She replied “I don’t care if you burn.”
Czech Alphonse Mucha was a super famous Art Nouveau painter who had a fortuitous meet up with Sarah Bernhardt.
Among her roles as an actress, Sarah Bernhardt played the lead in La Dame aux Camélias, a famous love story which has been made into over twenty films.
The best-known adaptation of La Dame aux Camélias is likely Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La Traviata, which translates as “The Fallen Woman”. It was also the best-known opera to demonstrate that a person on the verge of dying from tuberculosis can still sing a powerful aria on her deathbed.
The headquarters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, also known as Constitution Hall, in Washington DC is the largest complex of buildings in the world owned exclusively by women.
Businessman Jacob Schwab was the founder of Robert Hall Clothes, a very successful chain of discount men’s clothing in the New York City area in the 1950s and 60s. Bragging about their “low overhead” in their ads, Robert Hall pioneered the techniques that became part of “big box” retail years later, though the chain went bankrupt in 1977. There actually was no Robert Hall with the company; Schwab picked the name at random.
Charles Martin Hall discovered a cost-effective method of refining aluminum, revolutionizing the industry. He went on to found the Aluminum Co. of America (Alcoa) and generously donated to his alma mater, Oberlin College. Hall Auditorium on campus still bears his name.
The first season of Hanna-Barbera’s “The Ruff and Reddy Show”, with Don Messick and Daws Butler voicing a dog and cat, had them visiting the planet of Muni-Mula (aluminum spelled backward). The Mastermind of Muni-Mula had two aluminum heads, one with the voice and personality of Phil Silvers as Sgt. Bilko.
Rhett Butler bids $150 in gold to dance with the widow-in-mourning Scarlet O’Hara Hamilton–a sum worth $3,645 today!
Chamberpots with the image of the hated Maj. Gen. Benjamin “Beast” Butler on the bottom were popular in the Confederacy during his 1862-63 occupation of New Orleans. Although resented for his stringent measures to keep the peace and ensure compliance with martial law, Butler actually improved sanitation and city services.
Running back Jim “Cannonball” Butler, who was in the National Football League from 1965 to '72, is to date the only person to make an NFL roster after playing for Edward Waters College. Located in Jacksonville, the school is the oldest historically black college in Florida.
Johannes Kepler conjectured that cannonballs could not be packed more densely than in the “obvious” crystal-like regular packing, but this fact was not proved until 1998 when Thomas Hales and Samuel Ferguson did so with computer assistance.
The Wabash Railroad named its Detroit-St. Louis express train the “Wabash Cannonball”, however, the train was named for the folk song rather than vice versa. The real Wabash (now part of the Norfolk Southern system) did not run from the great Atlantic Ocean to the wide Pacific Shore, nor the Southland, nor the hills of Minnesota (um, what?).
The song became the second fight song of the Kansas State University Wildcats after a 1968 fire destroyed all the band’s other sheet music, along with their regular instruments, and a jury-rigged band played it continuously through a K-State basketball game.
On Broadway, the musical Guys and Dolls starred Sam Levinson as one of the leads, Nathan Detroit. Levinson couldn’t sing very well, so Nathan has only one song – “Sue Me,” which was designed so that he could find the notes easily. The movie had Frank Sinatra as Nathan and thus had to change things around – adding songs and adding him to the singers in “Fugue for Tinhorns” – so that he could sing.
Frank Sinatra won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in the 1953 film From Here to Eternity. In the original draft of James Jones’s book, Sinatra’s character Maggio made some extra cash on the side as a male prostitute for gay Hawaii civilians.
The lives of male prostitutes in Seattle formed the basis of Gus Van Sant’s 1991 indie film My Own Private Idaho, loosely based on Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1; Henry IV, Part 2; and Henry V, and starring River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves.
One of River Phoenix’s sisters was originally named Rain Joan of Arc. She became known as Rain, then changed to the cheerier Rainbow before reverting to Rain as a teen.
In the 1420’s rumors abounded of a legend that France would be “lost by a woman and saved by a virgin.” The woman was Isabella of Bavaria, Queen of France, who convinced her schizophrenic husband to bequeath France to their son-in-law, England’s Henry V. The virgin was Joan of Arc, “Jehanne la Pucelle, Fille de Dieu.” The legend was attributed to the long-dead Monk of Wearmouth who allegedly wrote:
[QUOTE=Bede the Venerable]
Bis sex cuculli, bis septem se sociabunt, Gallorum pulli Tauro nova bella parabunt Ecce beant bella, tunc fert vexilla Puella.
[/QUOTE]
This is sometimes rendered in French as the scarcely more comprehensible:
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s youngest child, Isabella Aurora, was named after the character Grizabella from CATS and a musical piece composed by his father, William Lloyd Webber.