According to writer Megan Cohen, people in the Middle Ages kept their valuables in a vessel made of pygg – an orange clay jar.
Walt Disney refused to let Alfred Hitchcock visit Disneyland in the early 1960s because he objected to the movie Psycho.
According to writer Bryan Garner, the phrase “spitting image,” meaning “the exact likeness; an identical duplicate” is actually a corruption of “spit and image,” from the notion of God using spit and dust to form the clay to make Adam in his image.
A Canadian dollar coin is called a “loony,” for the common loon shown on the reverse side. The two-dollar coin is a “toony.”
Ramin Setoodeh says that 20 years ago, the average running time of the top-five grossing movies of the year was 118.4 minutes. In 2012 that number averaged 142 minutes. Longer movies are now becoming a mainstay of the summer, as well as fall and winter.
This article appears in January 25 • 2013.