James K Polk died only 103 days after his retirement from the Presidency. It’s believed he died from malaria. He was buried on the grounds of his home in Nashville, Tennessee, but his body and that of his wife were moved to the grounds of the Tennessee State Capitol.
James K. Polk is the earliest US President for whom there are surviving photographs taken during a term in office.
After his own presidency, John Quincy Adams returned to D.C. to serve as a Representative from his native Massachusetts (his district occasionally changed due to redrawing the lines) under his successors Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, and Polk, and also argued on behalf of freedom for the slave-mutineers who commandeered the Amistad before the SCotUS.
The movie Amistad (1997) is about the 1839 mutiny of the schooner, La Amistad off the coast of Cuba, and its 1841 SCOTUS case. It starred Morgan Freeman, Nigel Hawthorne, Anthony Hopkins (as former President John Quincy Adams), Djimon Hounsou, and Matthew McConaughey.
It was directed by Steven Spielberg. Spielberg was an unlikely person to tackle the Amistad story, since his previous picture about black characters, The Color Purple (1985), had been badly received by the black community, its eleven Oscar nominations notwithstanding. “I got such a bollocking for The Color Purple,” he told a New York Times interviewer, “I thought, I’ll never do that again.” But he saw great potential in the Amistad story and decided to take it on, even though his crowded schedule meant doing pre-production while DreamWorks was still being launched and post-production while Saving Private Ryan (1998) was before the camera.
The liturgical colour of the current season, Lent, is purple.
Hexaplex trunculus is a medium-sized species of sea snail found in the Mediterranean Sea. Purple dyes made from these snails are the most expensive dyes in the world.
Largely due to their high cost, the sea snail dyes became so associated with the Imperial families of Constantinople that PORPHYROGENITUS (‘to the Purple born’) was often used as their honorific surname. The dyes were also used by Roman nobles from ancient times until the era of Marozia di Roma, about whom Mississippienne writes:
“Marozia was lover, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-great-grandmother of popes. She forged an empire with little more than her wiles and her thighs,… from her early youth, [Marozia] had been inflamed by the fires of Venus; Marozia set her sights on none other than the pope himself. She flashed him her tits, and soon Sergius III was shacked up with her in happily unwedded bliss… [Much later, she] moved against Pope John X, seized him and threw him into prison, where he was then smothered.”
Purple was the color for royalty during biblical times, in part because the color did not fade in the Middle East sun and heat, like other colors did fade.
Jezebel of the Royal House of Tyre is an interesting biblical character. She was great-aunt of Dido of Carthage, daughter-in-law of Omri of Israel, and lent her name to a Bette Davis movie. Since Solomon’s Temple has never been unearthed, her father-in-law’s ivory palace is one of the oldest known artifacts attributed to the Jewish people.
Because she convinced her husband, King Ahab of Israel, to renounce Yahweh, that LORD responded to her death with "On the plot of ground at Jezreel dogs will devour Jezebel’s flesh. Jezebel’s body will be like dung on the ground in the plot at Jezreel, so that no one will be able to say, ‘This is Jezebel.’ "
Eerie, Indiana was a short-lived TV series about Marshal Teller who moves to the title town, where strange things occurred. In one episode, “Reality Takes a Holiday,” Marshall discovered the town was a set of a sitcom and he was one of the actors; people referred to him by the actor’s name, Omri Katz. The episode was written by Vance Degeneris, brother of Ellen and creator of Mr. Bill for Saturday Night Live.
In the video game Fallout 3, Vance is the leader of “The Family”, a group of human scavengers who have renounced their cannibalistic ways and fashioned themselves as symbolic vampires. Their key motto is: “Feast not on the flesh; consume only the blood. This is our strength.”
Vivian Vance played Lucille Ball’s best friend on both “I Love Lucy” and “The Lucy Show”, under the character names Ethel Mertz and Vivian Bagley respectively. She reportedly hated playing the wife to William Frawley on the former show, since he was old enough (and looked it) to be her father - but the paychecks cleared, so …
In September 1938, several Germans led by Ernst Freiherr von Weizsäcker were plotting to bring their war-mongering Führer to his senses, or to oust him altogether. The crisis was precipitated by Hitler’s brash plan to invade Czechoslvakia. However Weizsäcker and his fellow conspirators gave up in despair when Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich [del]Betrayal[/del] Agreement. Vyvyan Adams was one of the British Conservative M.P.s who opposed the Betrayal.
Ernst Happel Stadium, in Vienna, is the largest stadium in Austria. It was the site of the final of the UEFA Euro 2008, in which Spain defeated Germany.
Austrian singer Falco, due to the smash success of “Rock Me Amadeus”, is often labeled a one-hit wonder in the U.S. However, this is technically incorrect – his follow-up single “Vienna Calling” reached #18 on the Billboard Hot 100.
“Rock Me Amadeus” was once spoofed on The Simpsons, in a fictitious musical version of The Planet of the Apes featuring the song, “Rock Me Dr. Zaius.”
The movie Amadeus came out 30 years ago this year, in 1984. It was filmed mostly in the Czech Republic.
The play Amadeus, on which the film was based, was written by Peter Shaffer.
The classic movie Casablanca (1942) was based on the play Everybody Comes to Rick’s, but that play was never produced.
The comedian Jack Benny may have had an unbilled cameo role in the movie. When asked in his column “Movie Answer Man”, critic Roger Ebert first replied, “It looks something like him. That’s all I can say.” He wrote in a later column, “I think you’re right.”
When Jack Benny was in vaudeville, he was once put on the bill immediately after the Marx Brothers. Now, it was next to impossible for anyone to follow the Marx Brothers: their comedy was so wild and left the audience in hysterics. Anyone coming after was considered at a disadvantage, especially Benny, whose act consisted of him playing a few notes on the violin and the quietly telling jokes. Benny discovered, however, that audiences understood how difficult it was and were willing to give him the benefit of a doubt.