Category Archives: Wednesday’s Factbox 5

5Things I Learned About “At Day’s Close: Night in Time’s Past” by A. Roger Ekirch * Nighttime was dangerous for pedestrians in the city. Walk in the middle of the street and you chance getting run over by drovers in … Continue reading →

Five Things I Learned Reading “Life Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without A Cause” by Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel: * The title “Rebel Without A Cause” was taken from a 1944 best-seller by Dr. Robert … Continue reading →

5things I learned about capital punishment through the ages, from Geoffrey Abbott’s book “Execution” * The Brazen Bull was invented in Sicily (and if you’ve seen “The Princess Bride,” you know about Sicilians, don’t you?). It was a casting of … Continue reading →

In honor of the recent release of “The Godfather” video game, here’s 5 facts about the movie that I picked up from the re-released edition of “The Godfather Legacy” by Harlan Lebo. * The film rights went for $80,000 because … Continue reading →

Lisa Picard has visited London during the time of Queen Elizabeth, Dr. “Dictionary” Johnson and the Restoration, and returned with books that are crammed with anedcotes. Here are five from her latest: “Victorian London.: * It was probably best to … Continue reading →

The American language is full of words borrowed from other countries, and we never, ever give them back. To a native of Easter Island, that may be described with a sneer as tingo behavior, which Adam Jacot De Boinod described … Continue reading →

Thinking of visiting Great Britain and maybe staying awhile? Think about it; they may speak English, but they’re not like Americans, and “Rules, Britannia,” by Toni Summers Hargis is an amusing guidebook that teaches the A to Zed of English … Continue reading →

Here’s five things I learned about food fads, from Sylvia Lovegren’s “Fashionable Food,” a history with recipes of American food trends from the 1920s to the 1990s. * New York Times food writer Craig Claiborne is credited with popularlizing pasta … Continue reading →

Some of these are from “Benjamin Franklin” by Edmund S. Morgan. It’s an excellent short biography. Instead of listing all the facts of Franklin’s life, Morgan uses them to discuss his personality, his accomplishments and the sometimes wide gap between … Continue reading →