In 1998, as aerospace engineer Homer Hickam’s memoir Rocket Boys was being adapted for the screen, Universal Studios’ research warned that women over 30 would not see a movie with that title.
So the name was changed to October Sky — the same 10 letters in a different order.
“No general proposition is worth a damn.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (a general proposition)
For no reason, here’s a recipe for waffles that John Kennedy ate in the White House, “his breakfast treat for special occasions”:
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 egg yolks
1 cup and 1 tablespoon sifted cake flour
7/8 cup milk or 1 cup buttermilk
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 egg whites, stiffly beaten
4 teaspoons baking powderCream the sugar and butter. Add the egg yolks and beat. Then add the flour and milk alternately. This mixture may be kept in the refrigerator until you are ready to use it. When you are ready to bake it, fold in the egg whites, and add the baking powder and salt. Bake on a waffle iron. Serves 3.
“President Kennedy liked melted butter and maple syrup on his waffles.”
From White House chef François Rysavy’s 1972 collection A Treasury of White House Cooking.
Thomas Jefferson coined the word pedicure (at least in the sense “a person responsible for pedicure”).
His memorandum book for February 7, 1785, reads “P[ai]d La Forest, pedicure 12f.”
(Thanks, Joseph.)
An Irish riddle: Yonder he is through the stream, a man without a coat, a man without a belt, a man of hard slender legs, it is my woe that I cannot run. Death.
These are the punts of Trinity College, Cambridge, moored on the River Cam. What is the significance of their names?
(Colin Rose)Lord David Cecil called Samuel Johnson “an outstanding example of the charm that comes from an unexpected combination of qualities. In general, odd people are not sensible and sensible people are not odd. Johnson was both and often both at the same time.”
The number of seconds in a year is 365.2425 × 24 × 60 × 60 = 31,556,952.
By an unlikely coincidence, that value falls within 1 percent of π × 107.
