February 2012
1 post
“Also known as: Mac Drizzle, Mac Dreezy, Mac Dregos, Mac Drevious, Thizzelle...”
– Mac Dre
January 2012
3 posts
“Beach Boys co-founder Brian Wilson saw the movie during its initial release,...”
– Seconds (film)
Due to the use of their names as call signs, the Peanuts characters Charlie Brown and Snoopy became semi-official mascots for the [Apollo 10] mission. Peanuts creator Charles Schulz also drew some special mission-related artwork for NASA.
(Hat tip to this post at the Atlantic)
Changaa or Chang’aa (literal meaning “kill me quick”) is an alcoholic drink which is popular in Kenya. Distilled from grains like millet, maize and sorghum, it is very potent….The alcoholic content is sometimes increased by adding substances like jet fuel, embalming fluid or battery acid, which has the effect of giving the beverage more ‘kick’.Drinkers have...
December 2011
2 posts
“Die Geschichte von dem wilden Jäger” (The Story of the Wild Huntsman) is...”
– Summary of a story in Der Struwwelpeter.
October 2011
1 post
August 2011
5 posts
1 tag
The Glasgow Ice Cream Wars were conflicts in the East End of Glasgow in Scotland in the 1980s between rival ice cream van operators over lucrative territory…The conflicts, in which vendors raided one another’s vans and fired shotguns into one another’s windscreens, were more violent than might typically be expected between ice-cream salesmen.
Superficially, the violence...
July 2011
2 posts
A columbarium is a place for the respectful and usually public storage of cinerary urns (i.e. urns holding a deceased’s cremated remains). The term comes from the Latin columba (dove) and originally referred to compartmentalized housing for doves and pigeons (see dovecote).
“In 1917, an orangutan escaped from a nearby ménagerie, entered the [Élysée Palace] and was said to have tried to haul the wife of President Raymond Poincaré into a tree only to be foiled by Élysée guards. President Paul Deschanel, who resigned in 1920 because of mental illness, was said to have been so impressed by the orangutan’s feat that, to the alarm of his guests, he took to...
May 2011
2 posts
Wojtek (1942–1963; Polish pronunciation: [ˈvɔjtɛk]) was a Syrian brown bear cub found in Iran and adopted by soldiers of the 22nd Artillery Supply Company of the Polish II Corps. During the Battle of Monte Cassino, Wojtek helped move ammunition. The name “Wojtek” or “Wojciech” is an old Slavic name that is still very common in Poland today. It derives from two words:...
April 2011
3 posts
Colonel-in-Chief Sir Nils Olav is a King Penguin living in Edinburgh Zoo, Scotland. He is the mascot and Colonel-in-Chief of the Norwegian King’s Guard. Nils was visited by the Norwegian King’s Guard on the 15 August 2008 and awarded a knighthood.
Nils Olav was given the rank of visekorporal (lance corporal) and has been promoted each time the King’s Guard has returned to the...
During a party in Weimar in the winter of 1785, Goethe had a late-night conversation on his theory of primary colours with the South American revolutionary Francisco de Miranda. This conversation inspired Miranda, as he later recounted, in his designing the yellow, blue and red flag of Gran Colombia, from which the present national flags of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador are derived.
LOLCODE
LOLCODE is an esoteric programming language inspired by the language expressed in examples of the lolcat Internet meme. The language was created in 2007 by Adam Lindsay, researcher at the Computing Department of Lancaster University.
The language is not clearly defined in terms of operator priorities and correct syntax, but several functioning interpreters and compilers already exist. The...
March 2011
2 posts
Victor of Aveyron (also The Wild Boy of Aveyron) was a feral child who apparently lived his entire childhood naked and alone in the woods before being found wandering the woods near Saint-Sernin-sur-Rance, France, in 1797. He was captured, but soon escaped, after being displayed in the town. He was additionally periodically spotted in 1798 and 1799.
However, on January 8, 1800, he emerged...
Honi soit qui mal y pense is the motto of the English chivalric Order of the Garter. Its literal translation from Old French is “Shame be to him who thinks evil of it”, or more strictly: “Let he who thinks ill there be shamed.”
This statement supposedly originated when King Edward III was dancing with his first cousin and daughter-in-law, Joan of Kent. Her garter slipped...
February 2011
3 posts
[The Generation Game] introduced a number of catchphrases, famously Bruce Forsyth’s “Didn’t he/she/they do well?”, “Let’s meet the eight who are going to generate”, “Let’s have a look at the old scoreboard” (later, when the show was revived, Forsyth’s assistant was Rosemarie Ford, so the catchphrase was amended to...
List of films considered the worst →
January 2011
5 posts
The Potsdam Giants was the Prussian infantry regiment No 6, composed of taller-than-average soldiers. The regiment was founded in 1675 and dissolved in 1806 after the Prussian defeat against Napoleon.
The original required height was 6 Prussian Foot (about 6’2” or 1.88 meters), well above average then and now. One of the tallest soldiers, the Irish James Kirkland, was...
December 2010
1 post
Another story states that pulque was discovered by the Tlacuache (opossum), who used his human-like hands to dig into the maguey and extract the naturally fermenting juice. He became the first drunk. Tlacuache was thought to set the course of rivers. The rivers he set were generally straight except when he was drunk. Then they follow Tlacuache’s meandering path from cantina to cantina.
...
November 2010
3 posts
“Exotic Thrill”
– The name of a flavor of Fanta that is only available in Denmark.
October 2010
2 posts
“Journeyman screenwriter F. Scott Fitzgerald was nursing a hangover in the studio...”
– Freaks
September 2010
2 posts
August 2010
6 posts
“There is a cat shut inside.”
– The English translation of the Spanish hay gato encerrado, which is in turn the Spanish idiom for the Pig In a Poke trick, a scheme popular in the middle ages, “when meat was scare and cats were not.”
It “entailed the sale of a suckling pig in a poke (bag). The wriggling bag...
In 1984 [Errol Morris] married Julia Sheehan, whom he had met in Wisconsin while researching Ed Gein and other serial killers. Morris would later recall an early conversation with Julia: “I was talking to a mass murderer but I was thinking of you,” he said, and instantly regretted it, afraid that it might not have sounded as affectionate as he had wished. But Julia was actually flattered: “I...
Harold Nathan Braunhut aka Harold von Braunhut (31 March 1926 - 28 November 2003) was an American mail-order marketer and inventor, most famous as the creator and seller of both the Amazing Sea-Monkeys and the X-Ray Specs.
Braunhut used comic book advertisements to sell an assortment of quirky products. Braunhut held 195 patents for various products, many of which became cultural icons. Some of...
Late Elizabethan drama contains a profusion of minced oaths, probably due to Puritan opposition to swearing. Seven new minced oaths are first recorded between 1598 and 1602, including ‘sblood for By God’s blood from Shakespeare, ‘slight for God’s light from Ben Jonson, and ‘snails for By God’s nails from the historian John Hayward. Swearing on stage was...
July 2010
5 posts
The Big Mac Index →
The Big Mac PPP exchange rate between two countries is obtained by dividing the price of a Big Mac in one country (in its currency) by the price of a Big Mac in another country (in its currency). This value is then compared with the actual exchange rate; if it is lower, then the first currency is under-valued (according to PPP theory) compared with the second, and conversely, if it is higher, then...
June 2010
6 posts
“A 1981 case tried a cast member who was playing Winnie the Pooh in 1978. It was...”
– Incidents At Disney Parks
