On this date, the answer to “The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything” was revealed…

In 2001, the brilliant British writer Douglas Adams left us Earthlings behind.

Before he left, however, he kindly informed us of the answer to the Ultimate Question — more specifically, the answer to “the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.”

In case you missed it, here’s a brief overview…

The answer was first revealed on March 29, 1978, when the fourth episode of Adams’ radio creation The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

In that episode, Earthman Arthur Dent visits the planet Magrathea, where he meets Slartibartfast.

Slartibartfast tells Arthur he is one of the Magrathean planet manufacturers who helped design the Earth long ago, as a project for some hyper-intelligent, pan-dimensional beings who happen to look like little white mice in our dimension.

Of course, Arthur Dent is a bit surprised to learn this. So, Slartibartfast plays an ancient tape recording for him that explains things. Sort of.

The narrator tells us that, millions of years ago, the mice (i.e., the hyper-intelligent, pan-dimensional beings) “got so fed up with the constant bickering about the meaning of life, which used to interrupt their favourite pastime of Brockian Ultra Cricket — a curious game which involved suddenly hitting people for no readily apparent reason and then running away — that they decided to sit down and solve the problem once and for all. And, to this end, they built themselves a stupendous supercomputer…”

The tape includes the initial conversations between computer technicians and the supercomputer, which they had named Deep Thought.

They ask Deep Thought if there is an answer to “the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything” and, if so, whether Deep Thought could provide it.

“Yes,” Deep Thought says thoughtfully. “Life, the Universe, and Everything. There is an answer. But I’ll have to think about it...the program will take me seven-and-a-half million years to run.”

Fast forward to seven-and-a-half million years later. The descendants of Deep Thought’s creators anxiously await the computer’s answer.

Deep Thought tells them, after noting that they’re not going to like it.

He provides the answer in a series of lines that are interrupted by comments from the listeners. When Deep Thought’s lines are pieced together, they comprise one of the two most famous quotations from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the other being “Don’t Panic!”):

“The answer to everything…Life, the Universe, and Everything...is...Forty-two.”

The listeners are flabbergasted. Forty-two!?!

Yes, that’s right. The number 42.

Deep Thought helpfully explains: “Now that you know that the answer to the Ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is forty-two, all you need to do now is find out what the Ultimate Question is.”

When asked if he can tell them what the Ultimate Question is, Deep Thought says ‘no.’

But, he adds, another computer can be built that will: “A computer of such infinite and subtle complexity that organic life itself will form part of its operational matrix. And it shall be called…the Earth.”

If at this point you don’t understand the Ultimate Answer or the Ultimate Question, don’t panic.

Just listen to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series, or read the book version. Or watch the BBC TV adaptation. (Never mind the unfortunate movie version.)

It’ll all make sense. Sort of.

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Comments? Questions? Corrections? Post them on my quotations Facebook group.

Further reading, viewing and listening: by and about Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide...

 

The story behind the famous movie misquote: “Me Tarzan, you Jane.”

On March 25, 1932, the classic film Tarzan the Ape Man, starring former Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan, premiered in New York City.

The famous misquote associated with this movie is “Me Tarzan, you Jane.”

Weissmuller didn’t actually say the line in that film or any of the other Tarzan movies he starred in between 1932 and 1948.

Nor does the line “Me Tarzan, you Jane” appear in any of the original Tarzan stories or books written by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

But Weissmuller did say it, jokingly, in an interview published in the June 1932 issue of Photoplay magazine.

He told the Photoplay reporter:

     “I didn’t have to act in Tarzan, the Ape Man — just said, ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane.’”

After that, his quip became an oft-used comic catchphrase that many people mistakenly assume came from one of Weissmuller’s Tarzan movies.

Another Hollywood star who used the line for humorous effect was Weissmuller’s second wife, the exotic Mexican dancer and actress Lupe Velez, the “Mexican Spitfire.”

Velez was married to Weissmuller for five tempestuous years in the 1930s, at the height of his fame and hers. Their fights were legendary.

After their divorce, Velez joked that she spoke English poorly because “I was married to a guy who can only say, ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane.’”

When Weissmuller died in 1984, the Associated Press obituary noted that a reporter once asked him to explain his movie success, given his lack of acting skills.

Weissmuller responded, this time seriously: “How can a guy climb trees, say ‘Me, Tarzan, you, Jane,’ and make a million? The public forgives my acting because they know I was an athlete. They know I wasn’t make-believe.”

Of course, if you’re a true Tarzan fan, you probably know that Weissmuller’s “Me Tarzan, you Jane” quip is a take-off on a humorous scene in his film Tarzan the Ape Man.

In that scene, Tarzan learns the words me, you, Jane and Tarzan, though he doesn’t put them together in the famous formulation.

After Tarzan saves Jane (actress Maureen O’Sullivan) from a leopard, she tries to communicate with him.

It almost plays like an Abbott and Costello comedy bit.

JANE: “Thank you for protecting me.”

TARZAN: “Me?”

JANE: “I said, thank you for protecting me.”

TARZAN: (Pointing at her.) “Me?”

JANE: “No. I’m only ‘Me’ for me.”

TARZAN: (Pointing at Jane again.) “Me.”

JANE: “No. To you, I’m ‘You.’”

TARZAN: (Pointing at himself.) “You.”

JANE: “No. I’m Jane Parker. Understand? Jane. Jane.”

TARZAN: (Pointing at her.) “Jane. Jane. Jane.”

JANE: “Yes, Jane! (She points at him.) And, you? (She points at herself again.) Jane.”

TARZAN: (Pointing at her) “Jane.”

JANE: “And you? (Pointing at him.) You?”

TARZAN: (Jabbing himself in the chest.) “Tarzan! Tarzan!”

JANE: “Tarzan!”

TARZAN: (Pointing at her and them himself.) “Jane. Tarzan.”

At this point, Weissmuller begins repeatedly poking her chest, then his own, saying “Jane. Tarzan. Jane. Tarzan.” — faster and faster — until O’Sullivan finally begs him to stop.

Of course, in the original Tarzan stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan spoke a number of languages fluently — including grammatically correct English.

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Comments? Questions? Corrections? Post them on my quotations Facebook group.

Related reading…

“Give me liberty or give me death!” – famous words Patrick Henry probably didn’t say...

In late March of 1775, the American Revolution had not yet started. The “shot heard ‘round the world” was still a few weeks away.

But, to a growing number of Americans, a fight seemed inevitable if Great Britain continued to try to enforce its oppressive “Intolerable Acts” and taxes.

Thus, the more militant American “Founding Fathers” — such as Patrick Henry — had begun urging local colonial governments to create militias that could be mustered to defend against or attack British troops.

Henry was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses at the time. And, at a meeting of that legislative body in Richmond on March 23, 1775, he gave an impassioned speech in favor of mobilization.

According to legend, Henry ended his speech with these famous words:

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Henry’s rousing address played a role in the House of Burgesses’ decision in favor of creating a Virginia militia. Henry himself was appointed a Colonel of the First Virginia Regiment.

However, no one knows exactly what he said in his speech on March 23, 1775.

Henry didn’t write down the speech or any notes about it at the time — or in the years before his death in 1799. Nor was any other written record made of the speech when he gave it — or during his lifetime.

So, why is the famous quote that ends with “give me liberty or give me death” attributed to Patrick Henry? And, why do many books and websites reprint what they cite as the “full text” of Henry’s “Liberty or Death” speech?

The answer is: because another Virginia politician named William Wirt created his own reconstructed version of the speech in a biography he wrote about Henry and Wirt’s version became famous. 

Wirt decided to write the biography about five years after Henry died. Over the next ten years, he corresponded and talked with people who knew Henry, including some who were present when he made his moving speech.

One of them was Thomas Jefferson. Another was a judge named St. George Tucker, who gave Wirt extensive notes on what he remembered of the speech.

In 1817, Wirt’s book was published. He titled it Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry.

The version of Henry’s March 23, 1775 speech in that book was based heavily on Judge Tucker’s recollection. 

Obviously, of course, it would be impossible for anyone to recreate, word-for-word, any speech given 42 years earlier, based purely on other people’s memories.

Yet, what seemed to annoy a number of people who knew Henry much more than Wirt’s poetic license in recreating Henry’s speech was his overly idealized portrayal of the man.

Jefferson called Wirt’s biography “a poor book” that gave “an imperfect idea of Patrick Henry.”

John Taylor, another Virginia statesman who knew Henry, called it “a splendid novel.” 

Comments from other contemporaries of Henry were even less kind.

Nonetheless, Wirt’s book was extremely popular and, over the years, his version of the speech that Henry gave on March 23, 1775 came to be thought of and portrayed as a real transcript — until modern historians and quote mavens began to look into it.

Experts on American history and quotations who have carefully studied the facts generally dismiss the idea that Wirt’s recreation of the entire speech is or could be accurate.

One researcher quoted in a post on the Colonial Williamsburg website concluded that “generations have been deceived into believing in the literalness” of the speech.

In The Yale Book of Quotations, editor Fred Shapiro calls the text of the speech as reconstructed by Wirt “questionable.”

Ralph Keyes, author of The Quote Verifier and many other well-researched books about quotations and language, summed up his verdict in an NPR radio interview in 2006. When asked if Patrick Henry actually said “give me liberty or give me death,” Keyes answered: “Unfortunately, he didn’t.”

Keyes said his conclusion is that “William Wirt…put ‘give me liberty or give me death’ in Henry’s mouth.”

Other experts think that Henry might have said “give me liberty or give me death” or at least uttered the phrase “liberty or death.”

Those are certainly memorable words. And, later in 1775, “LIBERTY OR DEATH” was used as a slogan on the flag of the Culpeper Minute Men Battalion, a unit of Patrick Henry’s First Virginia Regiment.

However, the rest of the alleged final sentences at the end of the speech Henry gave on March 23, 1775 — and the “full text” of the speech reprinted by many books and websites — should probably be credited to either William Wirt or St. George Tucker instead of Patrick Henry.

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Comments? Questions? Corrections? Post them on my quotations Facebook group.

Further reading: books about Patrick Henry…

The origin of George Mallory’s famous mountain climbing quote: “Because it’s there.”

In March of 1923, British mountain climber George Leigh Mallory was touring the United States to raise money for a expedition to Mount Everest planned for the following year.

At that time no one had ever made it to the top of Everest — the highest mountain on the planet.

In 1921 and 1922, Mallory was a member of the first two expeditions that tried to reach the summit of the mountain. Both had failed.

During his 1923 fund-raising tour, Mallory was often asked why he wanted to climb Everest. The question seemed somewhat inane to an adventurer like Mallory and eventually he came up with a standard answer.

The answer became famous when it was quoted in a story in the March 18, 1923 issue of the New York Times. The headline was “CLIMBING MOUNT EVEREST IS WORK FOR SUPERMEN.”

Mallory’s reply was included in the opening paragraph:

“Why did you want to climb Mount Everest?” This question was asked of George Leigh Mallory, who was with both expeditions toward the summit of the world’s highest mountain, in 1921 and 1922, and who is now in New York. He plans to go again in 1924, and he gave as the reason for persisting in these repeated attempts to reach the top, “Because it’s there.”

Mallory wasn’t being entirely flippant. He went on to explain:

“Everest is the highest mountain in the world, and no man has reached its summit. Its existence is a challenge. The answer is instinctive, a part, I suppose, of man’s desire to conquer the universe.”

During Mallory’s 1922 expedition, this desire to “conquer” Everest cost the lives of seven Tibetan Sherpa porters, who were killed in an avalanche.

During the 1924 expedition, it cost Mallory his own life.

On June 8th, 1924, Mallory and his climbing partner, Andrew Irvine made a final push to reach the top of Everest.

Observers below saw them reach a height within a thousand feet of the summit. Then they disappeared from sight — and did not return.

In 1953, the dream of conquering Everest was finally achieved by New Zealand mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa companion Tenzing Norgay.

Forty-six years later, in 1999, an expedition funded by the TV show Nova and the BBC discovered the frozen body of George Mallory about 2,000 feet below the summit, where he appeared to have died after a fall.

Andrew Irvine’s body has yet to be found.

Over the years, some people have speculated that Mallory and Irvine may have reached the top of Everest before dying and thus may deserve credit for being the first climbers to achieve that goal, rather than Hillary and Norgay.

When asked about this in an interview in the mid-1980s, Sir Edmund Hillary responded dryly:

“If you climb a mountain for the first time and die on the descent, is it really a complete first ascent of the mountain? I’m rather inclined to think, personally, that maybe it’s quite important, the getting down. And the complete climb of a mountain is reaching the summit and getting safely to the bottom again.”

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Comments? Questions? Corrections? Post them on my quotations Facebook group.

Further reading:

The god-awful origin of “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

On March 7, 1839 the play Richelieu: or, the Conspiracy, by the British politician and author, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, premiered at the Covent Garden Theatre in London.

Few people today have heard of this play. But everyone knows one of the lines in it: “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

The basic meaning of this famous quote — that the written word can be mightier than physical force or military power — was not originated by Bulwer-Lytton. There are similar lines in earlier works by various authors.

But Bulwer-Lytton’s play Richelieu is the origin of the version that became a familiar saying.

Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, a.k.a. the 1st Baron of Lytton, is renowned as a writer, but not for being a good writer. He’s renowned for being one of the worst writers in history.

His novels and plays — including Richelieu — are infamously pompous, long-winded and full of badly-constructed language.

The most notorious example is the oft-quoted opening line of his historical novel Paul Clifford (1830), which begins: “It was a dark and stormy night...”

The complete opening line of Paul Clifford is:

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents-except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

That line and the novel are so memorably bad that “It was a dark and stormy night...” became a cliché and joke, even though most people don’t know what it came from.

It has even inspired an annual contest, The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, in which entrants compete to submit the most convoluted and inane opening sentence for a fictional work of fiction.

Bulwer-Lytton’s “dark and stormy night” is his most famous bad sentence. But he wrote plenty of others that are equally odd, contorted and hard to fathom.

For example, here’s the full quotation in Act II, Scene II of Richelieu that includes the “pen is mightier” line:

“Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
The arch-enchanter’s wand — itself a nothing,
But taking sorcery from the master-hand
To paralyze the Caesars, and to strike
The loud earth breathless! Take away the sword,
States can be saved without it!”

If that strikes you as amazingly confusing and pretentious, then you’re not alone.

However, we have to give Bulwer-Lytton his due. He did create several famous quotes, including “the pen is mightier than the sword” — words that are still used and repurposed today.

Of course, as you probably know, his pen and sword aphorism is also the basis for a popular nudge-nudge, wink-wink pun.

If you don’t know the pun I’m talking about, never mind. It’s not actually that funny, even though a lot of us sniggered at it when we were kids.

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Comments? Questions? Corrections? Post them on my quotations Facebook group.

Further reading: books of and about puns…