The human body reacts to raucous music, like rock and roll and rap and such, by cooling down. Soothing music warms you up. Not a lot, but enough to be measured with a thermometer. Which I guess means something called hot music is cool, temperature-wise and possibly otherwise. Unless you dance to it then it's hot, or something.
I'm guessing this might help lullabies put babies to sleep by making them feel all warm and cuddly. Then again, maybe they just bore them to sleep. What do I know.
Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra? Don't scoff, it isn't a far-fetched bit of casting.
There seems to be a tendency now-a-days to imagine Cleopatra was exotic-looking, a bronzed beauty of sorts. I presume in a belief this is historically accurate, her being Egyptian, African. This, however, is historically inaccurate.
Cleopatra was part of the Ptolemy dynasty which took the throne of Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great who had conquered it. The Ptolemys were not Egyptian, they were Greek and pretty much stayed Greek through familial intermarriage. Even going so far as to marry brother and sister in the mistaken belief that this was an Egyptian tradition. Just trying to "go native", but never so far as to become Egyptian in bloodlines.
Japanese names are often as not mispronounced by English speakers. There's a tendency to say them as if they were Italian where you stress the penultimate (next to last) syllable. As in spaghetti, "spa GEH tee" or Fellini, "fa LEE nee." For instance, the manufacturer Matsushita is sometimes pronounced, "mat-su SHEE-ta" and most folks say "koo-row SOW-wa" for the movie director Kurosawa. Neither is the way the Japanese say them.
I'm told the Japanese don't stress any syllables at all. They more or less just run it all together, no syllable is longer or louder or whatever. There's no distinct gap between syllables which can sometimes sound as if they're not there. To a western ear Matsushita sounds something like "ma-soosh ta" and Kurosawa might sound like "ka-ros wa."
Listen for the names spelled out in the dialog of subtitled Japanese films. They go by so fast and sound so different than you'd expect you might not even be able to pick them out.
Fighter pilots in World War II generally fell into one of two categories, aces and targets. There were few of what you might call average pilots. Basically aces shot down targets, sometimes aces shot down other aces, but targets didn't shoot down anyone. It's one thing to be able to fly, many people can learn that skill, while it's something else altogether to be a natural born killer, a warrior.
This fact was not lost on the military after the war which is why they started programs like the Top Gun School. By simulating real combat conditions, as well as actually can be done in training, they're trying to find aces and eliminate the targets before the real shooting begins. After all, you don't want to send some poor soul into combat if he's just going to lose both a valuable piece of military hardware and his life. On the job training in this case is a poor option. As WWII was proof.
Beyond the pale. You've likely heard this expression meaning outrageous, unacceptable, uncivilized behavior. Have you ever wondered where it came from?
Centuries back when the English were in their endless attempts to pacify Ireland, their efforts were centered around Dublin spreading outward. This area under English control was called the Pale. Anything beyond the Pale was considered the wild lands of the savage Irish. Hence the phrase.
The Irish had a different view of this pacification, of course. They called it conquest. I imagine to them inside the Pale would mean subjugation. But that usage never caught on.
Jingle Bells is not really a Christmas carol per se. It's actually a song about people on their way to a Thanksgiving feast. There's nothing in the lyrics about Christmas at all. At least, that's what I've heard. Not exactly a stunning revelation, but it fits with the season.
The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 by a criminal gang master-minded by Marques Eduardo de Valfierno in the most sensational art theft of the 20th century. Oddly enough, more people went to see the spot where Da Vinci's masterpiece used to hang in the Salle Carre than to see the painting itself, many leaving flowers as at a grave or death spot.
The real twist in the caper was the perpetrators never intended to sell or ransom the painting, they stole it to generate headlines. Why? To provide plausible "provenance" so they could sell six forgeries on the black market to unscrupulous art collectors. That the genuine article might turn up someday didn't matter. After all, the buyers couldn't exactly sue them or complain to the authorities they had been defrauded into buying a fake stolen painting.
La Joconde, as the painting was called in France, was left with an Italian accomplice, Vincenzo Perugia, who sat on the hot goods for two years expecting an eventual payoff when it was ransomed back to the Louvre. As this never happened, and unbeknownst to Perugia wasn't part of the scheme from the git-go, he later tried to "repatriate" La Gioconda, as it was called in Italy, back to his homeland. For a little profit, of course. In the end Perugia was the only member of the gang to do time and became something of an Italian folk hero, as all Italy believes the Mona Lisa was stolen from them by the French to begin with.
Are you needlessly afraid of asbestos? Maybe, maybe not.
That's because it comes in three varieties. Crocidolite, or blue asbestos, and amosite, or brown asbestos, contain long fibres which, if inhaled, can trigger cancer and respiratory disease up to 60 years later. About 90% of what is called asbestos is crysotile, or white asbestos, containing short round fibres and is benign if inhaled.
So, I ask again, are you needlessly afraid of asbestos? Well, it depends on which variety you're talking about.
"Train as you fight. Fight as you train." is the current philosophy of the US military. This isn't a totally new idea, but the modern take on the way the Roman legions trained. Of whom it was said, "Their drills were bloodless battles and their battles were bloody drills."
Like they say, everything old is new again.
Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, the Third Reich's spy organization, was a member of the Schwarze Kapelle (Black Orchestra), an underground anti-Nazi group. The gray-haired admiral made overtures to MI-6 prior to The Overlord invasion of France to seek public encouragement from the Allies for those in Germany apposed to Hitler and seeking to end the war, but was rebuffed. Throughout World War II he worked to undermine the Nazi regime and was a co-conspirator in the famous failed plot to kill Hitler. He was eventually exposed and was personally arrested by his arch-rival Brigadefuhrer Walther Schellenberg the head of the SD, the political intelligence branch of the SS.
To understand his split pro-German, anti-Nazi loyalties you need only read this quote from him, "A defeat for Germany in this war might be disastrous, but a victory for Hilter would be catastrophic."