History, sort of
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EGOT
People win Nobel prizes every year. There’s a world champion in most organized sports, mostly annually. Even Olympic medals, handed out only every four years, are not all that rare, really. But only two people in the history of the world are PEGOT recipients, and only 15 have achieved the nearly-as-difficult EGOT. The problem, of… Continue reading
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Indefinite Hyperbolic Numerology
When you want to talk about a whole lot of something, but not an actual, specific number, or even an actual range, you might use a word like “zillion,” or “umpteen,” “skillion,” or “jillion.” Nowadays these “indefinite hyperbolic numerals” are used pretty much interchangeably and there isn’t much variation in which ones you tend to… Continue reading
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Vril
There’s a story about Germany in the 1930s that may or may not be true, although it’s pretty unlikely that anybody is ever going to find out which it is. The story goes that there was an organization called the “Vril Society” (“society” was probably in German) that was involved in — or maybe responsible… Continue reading
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Standard Fossils
The Latin word “fossilis” means to dig up. You’re probably already thinking of the English word “fossil,” which came from “fossilis” for obvious reasons: fossils are dug up. But there’s another, much more obscure English word also derived from “fossilis”: refossion. “Refossion” is the act of digging up, and specifically the act of digging something… Continue reading
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Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny, who was first seen in the 1930s, has since appeared in more movies than any other cartoon character. If you make a list of all the “movie personalities” in the world, including both cartoons and humans (and, I suppose, animals like Lassie), Bugs is ninth on the list in terms of most-often seen… Continue reading
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1925
The year nineteen hundred and twenty-five is interesting for a few reasons. In the world of art, 1925 was the year that the Paris exposition “Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes” opened, which nowadays is agreed to have been the beginnings of Art Deco. Literature saw the publication of Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.”… Continue reading
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Krazy Kat
Krazy Kat was a comic strip from 1913 to 1944. It was pretty unconventional, from the odd premise to the stylized dialog to being occasionally self-referential — sometimes the characters addressed the cartoonist, criticizing some aspect of that day’s strip. The main characters were Krazy Kat herself (or himself; it was never clear), and his… Continue reading
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Popeye
Popeye the Sailor Man is a cartoon character that first appeared in1929. He wasn’t the star of a comic strip at first; he was just a minor character in Thimble Theatre, a syndicated comic that had already been published daily for ten years. The main characters in Thimble Theatre at the time were Olive Oyl … Continue reading
About Me
I’m Pete Harbeson, a writer located near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to writing my own content, I’ve learned to translate for my loquacious and opinionated pup Chocolate. I shouldn’t be surprised, but she mostly speaks in doggerel. You can find her contributions tagged with Chocolatiana.