For about 40 years, David by Michelangelo wore a prim brass wire girdle supporting 28 copper leaves. Leonardo da Vinci liked it.
In the Oscar-nominated 1962 movie Knife in the Water, directed by Roman Polanski, Polish actor Leon Niemczyk’s character Andrzej smokes a pipe. His tobacco brand is Prince Albert (in a can).
In 2001, the Federal Reserve estimated that 90% of the $100 bills it ordered were paid out to foreign banks “to satisfy foreign demand.”
Scientists now believe that woolly mammoths survived well past the end of the last Ice Age until about 5,500 years ago on St. Paul Island in the Bering Sea. No humans lived there at the time, so the mammoths’ final demise must have been due to climate change and rising sea levels.
Frank Zappa was an early fan of Steely Dan.
This article appears in December 23 • 2016.