When Marilyn Monroe returned from entertaining troops in Korea, she told Joe DiMaggio, “You never heard such cheering.”
He said, “Yes, I have.”
Entertainment
Confirmed
In 1964, two students at California’s Pomona College hypothesized that the number 47 appears with unusual frequency in the world. They began to amass examples, starting a campus tradition that continues to this day:
- The Declaration of Independence consists of 47 sentences.
- The New Testament credits Jesus with 47 miracles.
- Tolstoy’s novel The Kreutzer Sonata is named after Beethoven’s Opus 47.
- Pancho Villa was killed by a barrage of 47 bullets.
- The Pythagorean Theorem is Proposition 47 of Euclid’s Elements.
- The tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are located 47 degrees apart.
- Cesar proclaimed “Veni, vidi, vici” in 47 B.C.
Now the hypothesis has produced its own reality: Pomona graduate Joe Menosky became a writer for Star Trek and helped to build a universe where 47 appears oddly often:
- The Enterprise stops at Sub-Space Relay Station 47, a character shrinks to 47 centimeters, and the crew discovers element 247.
- On Voyager, the emergency medical holographic channel is 47.
- On Star Trek: Generations, Scotty beams up 47 El-Aurians before their ship is destroyed.
- According to the 2009 film, the Enterprise was built in Sector 47 of the Riverside Shipyards, and Nero’s ship, the Narada, is said to have destroyed 47 Klingon ships.
Trek producer Brannon Braga has confirmed that Voyager‘s Harry Kim lives in Apartment 4-G because G is the seventh letter in the alphabet.
“Music Under Difficulties”
The Strand of January 1907 presents these photographs of Mr. Leslie Pogson of Anwick, Sleaford, as “an executant on the piano under various strange and trying conditions”:
When exhibiting his abilities for the entertainment of his friends Mr. Pogson begins, as the first six photographs make sufficiently clear, by performing a difficult piece of music in attitudes with which most pianists are quite unfamiliar, going even so far, in one instance, as to dispense with the keyboard altogether and, removing the piano front, to play direct upon the hammers. An assistant then enters, and pretending that he wishes to write a letter, and that he is greatly annoyed by the musical solos, he shouts to the performer to cease playing. This having no effect, he throws two pieces of stick at the player, who picks them up and goes on playing with them instead of with his fingers, even when a table-cloth is spread over the keys. A quilt used in the same way fails to diminish the variety of his attitudes, and even when his hands are handcuffed and he is placed with his back to the instrument the flood of music still flows forth as volubly as ever.
One night Mr. Pogson was passing unobserved through the crush of his late audience when he overheard the somewhat loudly expressed opinion that ‘The whole thing was a fake, my dear. The man never played a note in his life; the piano is an automatic one!’ The photographer did not succeed in portraying Mr. Pogson at that stage of the proceedings.
Working Blue
Actress Alice Jeanne Leppert could have chosen any stage name she liked, but she decided on Alice Faye.
She didn’t notice that this is Pig Latin for phallus.
Brad Pitt’s daughter is named Shiloh … which yields an unfortunate spoonerism.
See Double Feature.
“Napoleon’s Retreat From Moscow”
Russian champion Alexander Petrov composed this study in 1824. Galloping Cossacks chase Napoleon from Moscow (b1) across the Berezina (the long white diagonal) to Paris (h8), “where the Czar achieves his victory, by a ‘check by discovery’.”
White’s knights accomplish the task in 14 moves. All the black king’s moves are forced:
1. Nd2+ 2. Nc3+ 3. Nb1+ 4. Na2+ 5. Na3+ 6. Nb4+ 7. Nb5+ 8. Na6+ 9. Na7+ 10. Nb8+ 11. Nc8+ 12. Nd7+ 13. Ne7+ 14. Kg2#
No Exceptions
In 1907, Wilson Mizner ran a theatrical hotel in New York.
He posted two rules:
“Carry Out Your Own Dead”
“No Opium Smoking in the Elevator”
“Be nice to people on the way up,” he once said, “because you’ll meet them on the way down.”
Mr. October
America’s favorite film monsters, according to a 2005 study by California State University:
- Vampires (Dracula)
- Freddy Krueger
- Godzilla
- Frankenstein
- Chucky
- Michael Myers
- King Kong
- Hannibal Lecter
- Jason Voorhees
- Alien
“Younger people were the more likely to prefer recent and more violent and murderous slasher monsters, and to like them for their killing prowess. Older people were more attracted to non-slashers and attracted for reasons concerned with a monster’s torment, sensitivity, and alienation from normal society. … Overall, … monsters were liked for their intelligence, superhuman powers and their ability to show us the dark side of human nature.”
Finis
The four young stars of Rebel Without a Cause all died prematurely:
- James Dean was killed in an auto accident at 24.
- Natalie Wood drowned at 43.
- Nick Adams overdosed at 37.
- Sal Mineo was murdered at 37.
See Fallout.
Misc
- Can one keep a promise unintentionally?
- The plural of u is us.
- 1676 = 11 + 62 + 73 + 64
- DISMANTLEMENT and SKEPTICISM are typed with alternating hands.
- “He was lucky and he knew it.” — Clark Gable’s proposed epitaph
Offerings
At Frank Sinatra’s funeral, friends and family members were invited to place items of personal significance into his coffin. Reportedly these included:
- several Tootsie Rolls
- a pack of Black Jack chewing gum
- a roll of wild cherry Life Savers
- a ring engraved with the word Dream
- a mini-bottle of Jack Daniel’s
- a pack of Camel cigarettes and a Zippo lighter
- 10 dimes
Why 10 dimes? “He never wanted to get caught not able to make a phone call,” his daughter Tina told Larry King.