For decades, foley artists have snapped celery to make a sound like bones breaking.
Winston Churchill’s statue in front of the British embassy in Washington, D.C., has one foot planted on the British property and the other in U.S. territory.
The game Monopoly was based on Lizzie Magie’s The Landlord’s Game, which she created to demonstrate how rents enrich property owners and impoverish tenants. Magie was also a stenographer, short story and poetry writer, comedian, stage actress, feminist, and engineer.
Clarinetist Pete Fountain left Lawrence Welk’s orchestra because Welk was angry that he improvised a jazzy solo during a Christmas carol.
In 1963, San Francisco Giants manager Alvin Dark said they’d put a man on the moon before pitcher Gaylord Perry hit a home run. On July 20, 1969, just 20 minutes after Neil Armstrong became the first human being ever to walk on the moon, Perry hit the first, and only, home run of his career.
This article appears in November 4 • 2022.