“What was Maurice Sendak’s first book? The author/illustrator was a designer of window displays in a toy store when he was commissioned to illustrate The Wonderful Farm by Marcel Ayme in 1951. Sendak wrote and illustrated his first children’s book, Kenny’s Window, in 1956.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“Communism is like one big phone company.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, united states history
“Holy Roman Empire: A loose confederation of German states ruled by various royal German houses who claimed the authority of ancient Rome. The butt of generations of joking students (it was neither Holy, Roman, nor an Empire), the Holy Roman Empire lasted in name for over one thousand years (800-1806). It began when Charlemagne was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III and ended when Francis II (Francis I of Austria) abdicated. While the power of the emperor and the cohesion of the empire always existed more in theory than in practice, the Holy Roman Empire did give a certain unity to the many German states.
The first German emperor was Henry the Fowler, who was crowned in 919. Since the title was not hereditary, the emperor being elected by seven electors, the crown was held at various times by nearly all the royal German houses. The uninterrupted line of Hapsburg emperors began in 1438. The power and prestige of the Austrian Hapsburgs reflected on the empire as well. Under Maximilian I and Charles V the empire had its greatest strength. After Charles relinquished the crown in 1556, there began the steady decline that ended in 1806 with the empire’s extinction.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“What was the name of Holden Caulfield’s roommate in The Catcher in the Rye (1951)? Stradlater was the rich and conceited roommate.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged fiction/literature, literary oddities
“Bretton Woods: Town in New Hampshire, USA, where representatives of 28 nations attended a financial conference called by Pres. Roosevelt in July 1944 to organize a system of international monetary cooperation in order to prevent financial crashes like those in the interwar period which triggered the 1930s depression. It was agreed that participants would establish a World Bank to provide credit for countries that required finance for major projects. An International Monetary Fund (IMF was also set up for the purpose of operating cash reserves available to members facing balance of payments deficits).”
Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.
“Bet for Betted. The verb to bet forms its preterite regularly, as do wet, wed, knit, quit, and others that are regularly misconjugated. It seems that we clip our short words more than we do our long.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged diction/grammar/style/usage
“Ad Hoc (ad hok) To this matter: for this specific instance or purpose; in this case; immediate; provisional.
‘Polly’s motivating force was love; she wanted a world in which everybody else whether they liked it or not, but she set this overflowing feminine cup in motion with a thoroughly masculine arsenal of charts, graphs, quorums, task forces, ad hocs, tunnel vision, and lists.’ Florence King, When Sisterhood Was in Flower”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“Tole: Items of tinware painted with decorative designs. Also called toleware, it was much practiced by amateurs and artisans in the 18th and 19th centuries.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged art/architecture/design
“Essay (French essai, “attempt”): a composition, usually in prose (Pope’s Moral Essays in verse are an exception), which may only be a few hundred words (like Bacon’s Essays) or book length (like Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding) and which discusses, formally or informally, a topic or a variety of topics. It is one of the most flexible and adaptable of all literary forms….”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“Struggling to pacify the ‘head of protocol’ at a Paris casino, after his companion Harpo Marx had distressed the gentleman with a few good-natured antics, Aleck turned to Harpo and asked, ‘How can I explain you?… There’s no French word for boob.’”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference
Tagged humor, literary oddities
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