TodayILearned
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A Winter’s Tale by David Essex,
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Please Don’t Fall In Love by Cliff Richard, and
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I Feel Like Buddy Holly but Alvin Stardust
#TodayILearned that Rose Madder isn’t just the name of a Stephen King book
Wikipedia says that
Rose madder (also known as madder) is a red paint made from the pigment madder lake, a traditional lake pigment extracted from the common madder plant Rubia tinctorum
#TodayILearned that Lily the Pink is actually Lydia E.Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound
I always liked Clive James’s description of the naked Arnold Schwarzenegger as “a brown condom full of walnuts”.
#TodayILearned that Leonardo da Vinci described Michelangelo’s male sculptures as “a sack full of nuts”
Great minds.
BBC - A Short History of….. Michaelangelo
#TodayILearned that the Bad Sisters theme is a Leonard Cohen song
#TodayILearned that Raphael did a drawing of da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and it seems to be of a different version of the painting. There are columns either side. That original has disappeared…but I’ll check my attic
As people who’ve followed me on various social media are probably sick of hearing, the first record I ever owned was Blue is the Colour by the Chelsea football team
#TodayILearned that the song was written by Daniel Boone and Rod McQueen , who also wrote this
Daniel Boone - Beautiful Sunday
⚽ #ChelseaFC #cfc
I found out today that one of my favourite songs, I Say A Little Prayer is a song about Vietnam.
Growing up in England, this maybe never would have occurred to me
BBC Soul Music - I Say a Little Prayer for You
#TodayILearned
<img src=“https://cdn.uploads.micro.blog/139254/2024/screenshot-20241129-2037172.png" width=“600” height=“478” alt=“A colorful illustration featuring a person with flowing, multicolored hair wearing headphones, along with the text “BBC Soul Music” and a description of a series about music with emotional impact.">
#TodayILearned that Mike Batt wrote 3 hit singles about Julianne White, who is now his wife
(via this month’s Record Collector mag)
#TodayILearned that this postcard sold more copies than any other
via Paul Sinha - Paul Sinha’s Perfect Pub Quiz Series 3 South London - home to Stanleys and Georges and two of the Magnificent Seven
#TodayILearned that
While humans are split between right-handers and left-handers, elephants have a preference for which side of their trunk they use. Wrinkles reveal whether elephants are left- or right-trunked, study finds
#TodayILearned, from watching the TV quiz The Chase, that “Originally, rhinestones were rock crystals gathered from the river Rhine”….that had never occured to me before
Peter Butterworth and the Wooden Horse
#TodayILearned that Carry On actor Peter Butterworth auditioned for a part in the 1949 film ‘The Wooden Horse’, which was about an actual wartime escape from Stalag Luft III
The wooden horse was a vaulting horse which concealed the entrance to a tunnel
Butterworth was rejected because he “didn’t look convincingly heroic or athletic enough”….despite being one of the actual vaulters in the actual prison camp a few years earlier
Via Otto English’s ‘Fake Heroes’
More here: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete…
#TodayILearned that the chant
We know what we are We know what we are Champions of Europe We know what we are
….is Shakespearean, almost
we know what we are but know not what we may be. Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5
#TodayILearned that
“The word “Bronx” originated with Swedish-born (or Faroese-born) Jonas Bronck, who established the first European settlement in the area as part of the New Netherland colony in 1639.”
#TodayILearned that tomatos were thought very poisonous in North America until a chap called Colonel Johnson publicly ate one in 1820
You are there - Colonel Johnson eats a love apple youtu.be/n7_rdLNB6…
This has been one of my favourite reggae songs over the last couple of years
#TodayILearned, via Record Collector magazine, that ‘Niney’ was given that name as a nickname because he lost his thumb in an an accident
Blood and Fire by Niney The Observer songwhip.com/nineytheo…
Room 101 was a meeting room
#TodayILearned, via mastodonapp.uk/@Probertd… that
“The original Room 101 was not in Broadcasting House as the BBC maintains but in 55 Portland Place.
It was where the Eastern Service held Committee meetings some of which Orwell attended, until the Indian Services office moved to 200 Oxford Street.
The point so far as Orwell was concerned was not death by impalement or drowning or the other deathly delights he mentions but attendance at meetings which, though beloved by bureaucrats, to Orwell and anyone else engaged in creative pursuits was a fate worse than death. For evidence and further details see A Life in Letters, p. 197”
Orwell at the BBC: Two Wasted Years? - orwellsociety.com/orwell-at…
#TodayILearned that ‘scarper’ is rhyming slang, derived from Scapa Flow, rhyming with ‘go’….at least according to the attached
Scapa Flow was naval base - it’s probably best known for the scuttling of the German fleet at the end of World War One
“Drummers are like hockey goalies. No-one knows how to talk to them apart from other drummers”
#TodayILearned how much of a drummer Karen Carpenter was
Word In Your Ear Is Karen Carpenter pop music’s saddest story?
#TodayILearned the phrase ‘gish gallop’. It’s means to create a deluge of rubbish in argument, to overwhelm your opponent
Mehdi Hasan | Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking