The word “chiffon” started out as a French term for a rag or small piece of cloth. Several centuries ago, fabric and clothing manufacturers adopted it as the name of a light, airy fabric.
This led to the use of “chiffon” as a generic or brand name for a number of other consumer products, ranging from cake and toilet paper to margarine, as a way of emphasizing their “fluffiness.”
Chiffon margarine was first manufactured in the 1950s by the Texas-based corporation Anderson, Clayton and Company (ACCO).
ACCO had sold cotton and cotton products since the early 1900s. In 1952, the company created a food division to find uses for hydrogenated cottonseed oil.
Two years later, ACCO began selling products made with this oil, including Seven Seas salad dressing and Chiffon margarine.
Chiffon was one of the first soft, tub-style margarine products. But by the 1960s there were many brands of soft margarines and, to the dismay of ACCO executives, Chiffon lacked notable name recognition among consumers.
That changed in the 1970s, when the company began airing TV commercials for Chiffon that included a memorable character and a slogan that became a pop catchphrase:
“It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”
These classic Chiffon ads featured the talented Hollywood character actress Dena Dietrich as Mother Nature.
The video at right is a typical example.
In this early Chiffon commercial (possibly the first), Mother Nature is given some Chiffon to taste.
She likes it and identifies it as “my delicious butter.”
The narrator then tells her: “That’s Chiffon margarine, not butter…Chiffon’s so delicious it fooled even you, Mother Nature.”
Perturbed at being tricked, Mother Nature responds with her signature line “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” She underscores her displeasure by creating a flash of lightning and a loud peal of thunder.
The ads succeeding in boosting consumer awareness and sales of Chiffon.
Mother Nature’s catchphrase caught on and was trademarked by ACCO. According to the papers filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, it was first used on June 28, 1972.
Based on old newspaper clips and other online sources, I think Chiffon ads with Mother Nature may actually have started airing in 1971 in some media markets. However, the “official” birthday of the trademarked slogan is June 28th.
The line continued to be featured in Chiffon ads throughout the 1970s, then was retired in the ‘80s.
In the 1990s, ACCO sold Chiffon to Kraft. Kraft sold it to ConAgra a few years later. Shortly after that, production of Chiffon was discontinued.
However, the line “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature” lives on as a humorous saying that’s still heard today.
One of the famous quotations associated with today’s date is a line President John F. Kennedy spoke in German on June 26, 1963: “Ich bin ein Berliner.”
Kennedy used the line twice that day in a historic speech in West Berlin, which was then separated from communist-controlled East Berlin by the Berlin Wall.
His intention was to express his solidarity with the people there, by symbolically calling himself a citizen of Berlin. And, the straight literal translation of “Ich bin ein Berliner” is indeed “I am a Berliner.”
However, there’s a long-running debate over whether Kennedy’s grammar was a little off.
His use of “ein” is the issue.
“Ein” does means “a” in English. But Germans use the word “Berliner” without “ein” to mean “a citizen of Berlin.” They say “Ich bin Berliner” when they want to say the English equivalent of “I am a Berliner.”
The term “ein Berliner” — when used as a noun — refers to a a jelly-filled, doughnut-like pastry Germans call “ein Pfannkuchen Berliner” or “ein Berliner” for short.
Some observers say that what Kennedy said in German was essentially “I am a jelly-filled doughnut.” Thus, they find the line laughable.
It has also been suggested that West Germans laughed at Kennedy when he said it.
Other people claim the use of “ein Berliner” is grammatically correct for someone who isn’t really a citizen of Berlin. They say the doughnut theory is an urban legend.
I’m not fluent in German. But a friend of mine who grew up in West Germany and was there in 1963 told me that, technically, Kennedy’s grammar was non-standard and could be interpreted as a reference to the pastry.
What Kennedy should have said, to say it like a German, is “Ich bin Berliner.”
Similarly, he explained, to tell someone you are a citizen of Frankfurt, Germany, you say “Ich bin Frankfurter,” rather than “Ich bin ein Frankfurter.” The latter could theoretically be interpreted to mean “I am a hot dog.”
However, my friend noted that, much more importantly, the people of West Berlin knew what Kennedy actually meant when he said “Ich bin ein Berliner.” They knew he wasn’t talking about a jelly-filled doughnut. And, they found his words inspiring, not laughable.
You can see why by listening to or reading Kennedy’s entire speech. (The text and a link to a historic video are below.)
It’s one of the most famous speeches in history. And, the crowd of more than 120,000 West Germans who were there on June 26, 1963 were cheering loudly, not laughing.
I am proud to come to this city as the guest of your distinguished Mayor, who has symbolized throughout the world the fighting spirit of West Berlin. And I am proud to visit the Federal Republic with your distinguished Chancellor who for so many years has committed Germany to democracy and freedom and progress, and to come here in the company of my fellow American, General Clay, who has been in this city during its great moments of crisis and will come again if ever needed.
Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was “Civis Romanus sum.” [“I am a Roman Citizen”] Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is “Ich bin ein Berliner.”
I appreciate my interpreter translating my German.
There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin.
There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin.
And there are some who say, in Europe and elsewhere, we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin.
And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass’ sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin.
Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect. But we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in — to prevent them from leaving us. I want to say on behalf of my countrymen who live many miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, who are far distant from you, that they take the greatest pride, that they have been able to share with you, even from a distance, the story of the last 18 years. I know of no town, no city, that has been besieged for 18 years that still lives with the vitality and the force, and the hope, and the determination of the city of West Berlin.
While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist system — for all the world to see — we take no satisfaction in it; for it is, as your Mayor has said, an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together.
What is true of this city is true of Germany: Real, lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice. In 18 years of peace and good faith, this generation of Germans has earned the right to be free, including the right to unite their families and their nation in lasting peace, with good will to all people.
You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main. So let me ask you, as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.
Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.
All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin.
And, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner.”
The idiom “back in the saddle again” was already in use before it was immortalized in song by the singing cowboy star Gene Autry.
It was originally applied to cowboys and jockeys who were returning to work, riding on their horses again, after taking a break or recovering from an injury.
By the late 1800s and early 1900s it was being used more broadly as an idiom meaning “a return to normal activities or duties.”
In popular culture, the most famous use is by Autry in the song “Back in the Saddle Again.” He is often credited with writing it.
But, in fact, this familiar cowboy song was not created or first performed by Gene.
Those credits go to Ray Whitley (1901-1979), another early Country Western musician and actor who was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1981.
Whitley awakened at 5:00 a.m. (in 1938) by a phone call. Coming back into the bedroom he said to his wife, “Well, I'm back in the saddle again” and explained that RKO-Radio studio had called asking him for a new song to use in a film. She said to him “You’ve got the title for one right there...‘I’m back in the saddle again.’” He sat down on the edge of the bed and wrote one verse and went to the studio where he performed it in the film “Border G-Man” and also recorded it. Gene Autry heard it and loved it. He and Whitley rewrote it and Autry recorded it, sang it in the films “Rovin’ Tumbleweeds” [1939] and “Back in the Saddle” [1941]. It became Autry's theme song.
Ray Whitley’s film, Border G-Men, which introduced his song “Back in the Saddle Again,” was released to movie theaters nationwide on June 24, 1938.
Of course, it was given much wider fame by Gene Autry and became his signature song. He sang it in several of his movies and used it as the theme song for his “Melody Ranch” TV show, which aired from 1950 to 1956.
You probably know the song or at least the opening lyrics, so come on, podner, sing along with Gene...
“I’m back in the saddle again Out where a friend is a friend Where the longhorn cattle feed On the lowly jimson weed I'm back in the saddle again.
Riding the range once more Toting my old .44 Where you sleep out every night And the only law is right Back in the saddle again
Whoopey-tie-aye-oh Rocking to and fro Back in the saddle again Whoopey-tie-aye-yay I go my way Back in the saddle again”
American poet Robert Frost died in 1963, when he was 88 years old.
But he wrote his epitaph more than two decades before that, in a poem titled “The Lesson for Today.”
Frost first unveiled and recited the poem on June 20, 1941, at an event celebrating the anniversary of Harvard University’s Phi Beta Kappa Society.
In 1942, it was published in the book A Witness Tree, a collection of his recent poetry.
“The Lesson for Today” is not one of Frost’s more accessible poems.
It’s an imaginary discussion in verse with the Medieval scholar Alcuin of York and it includes a number of obscure literary and historical references. (The kinds of references people like Harvard Phi Beta Kappa graduates might know.)
But the last line of the last verse of the poem became one of Frost’s most famous:
“I hold your doctrine of Memento Mori And were an epitaph to be my story, I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.”
It’s unclear whether Frost truly planned for that last line to be his real epitaph when he wrote it.
However, over the next two decades, it became increasingly associated with him.
Public awareness of the line was especially enhanced by its use in the title of a widely-seen documentary about Frost released shortly before his death — Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World.
You can see it there above the name of his wife, Elinor, who died a quarter of a century before him in 1938.
For her epitaph, Frost had chosen the words “TOGETHER WING TO WING AND OAR TO OAR,” a romantic line from a poem he wrote in 1936 for his daughter’s wedding, titled “The Master Speed.”
Below his name on the headstone are the words that became a famous summation of Robert Frost’s own life:
By an odd coincidence, a number of famous war-related quotations were uttered on the date June 18.
On June 18, 1757, at the Battle of Kolin, Prussian King Frederick the Great urged his hesitant troops to attack the larger Austrian army by shouting:
“Rascals, would you live forever?”
Thousands of those rascals didn’t live much longer. The Prussians were defeated and nearly 14,000 were killed or wounded.
On June 18, 1798, at a dinner in Philadelphia honoring John Marshall, a group of U.S. Congressmen were discussing a recent demand made by the government of France.
French vessels had been plundering American ships in a piratical manner. French foreign minister Talleyrand said the attacks would be stopped if the United States paid him $250,000 and gave France 50,000 pounds sterling and a $100 million loan.
As toasts were made at the Congressional dinner, South Carolina Congressman Robert Goodloe Harper sent his own defiant reply to the French with this toast:
“Millions for defense but not one cent for tribute.”
Harper’s famous quote is sometimes attributed to South Carolina politician Charles C. Pinckney, who denied saying it.
Seventeen years later, it was a French leader’s turn to utter famous words of defiance.
On June 18, 1815, Napoleon’s Imperial Guard, led by General Pierre Cambronne, was surrounded by combined British and German forces at the Battle of Waterloo.
When asked to surrender, Cambronne reportedly replied:
“The Guard dies but never surrenders.”
Other reports claimed he simply said “Merde!” (“Shit!”)
The French lost at Waterloo, ending Napoleon’s attempt to return to power. And, historians have questioned whether Cambronne actually uttered either version of his famous fighting words.
In that speech, he famously used the phrase “a place in the sun,” a German nationalistic phrase first given notoriety by German Chancellor Bernhard von Bulow. In 1897, von Bulow had defended Germany’s right to a colonial empire by saying that Germans “demand our own place in the sun.”
“Kaiser Bill” consciously echoed those words in his speech on June 18, 1901, saying:
“We have conquered for ourselves a place in the sun. It will now be my task to see to it that this place in the sun shall remain our undisputed possession.”
Flash forward to World War II, when some other famous fighting words were uttered on June 18th.
In the spring of 1940, Adolph Hitler’s Nazi troops invaded and conquered France, setting up a puppet government under Marshal Philippe Pétain.
French General Charles de Gaulle, and other “Free French” forces refused to recognize Pétain’s “Vichy” government and vowed to fight on.
In exile in London, de Gaulle made a radio address on June 18, 1940, famously saying:
“France has lost a battle. But France has not lost the war!”
After discussing the fall of France and the recent evacuation of British and French troops from Dunkirk, Churchill noted that Hitler now had England in his sights.
“I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin,” Churchill said. “The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war.
If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”
Baseball Hall of Famer Satchel Paige (1906-1982) is considered one of the greatest pitchers in history — despite the fact that he only played for teams in the major leagues for about five years.
Paige actually had an unusually long baseball career that started in 1926. But from the mid-1920s to the late 1940s he was limited to playing for teams in the Negro League, due to the strict racial segregation that continued to be imposed in America during the first half of the 20th century.
In 1947, Paige’s former Negro League teammate Jackie Robinson finally broke baseball’s color barrier. The following year, at age 42, Paige was recruited as a pitcher by the Cleveland Indians.
That simultaneously made him both the first Negro pitcher in the American League and the oldest major league “rookie” ever.
In 1951, Paige moved to Missouri to play for the St. Louis Browns. (I once owned a Topps baseball card showing him in his Browns uniform, with his name misspelled as “Satchell.” Looking at the prices that card fetches now on eBay, I wish I still had it.)
“Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” [Sometimes given as “…may be gaining on you.”]
This the best known of the “Six Rules for a Long Life” attributed to Paige in that article, which was written by sports journalist Richard Donovan and published in the June 13, 1953 issue of Collier’s.
The six rules were featured in a sidebar of the article and recorded as follows:
“1. Avoid fried meats, which angry up the blood. 2. If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts. 3. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move. 4. Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society. The social rumble ain’t restful. 5. Avoid running at all times. 6. Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you.”
The Collier’s article made Paige’s rules famous.
Paige enhanced awareness of them by reciting the rules to fans and reporters throughout the rest of his life. He even had them printed on the back of his business cards.
However, over the years, questions arose about whether Satchel’s rules had actually been created by him or by Richard Donovan.
The truth seems to be somewhere in between.
In Paige’s 1962 memoir, Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever, he said he did have a system of personal rules that helped him be one of the best — and eventually oldest — pitchers in baseball.
“Some sports guy on the East Coast heard me talking about them once and then he went and turned them into a bunch of rules for me to stay young,” Paige recalled.
Regarding the most-quoted rule about not looking back, Paige said: “That last one that fellow wrote was my real rule. When you look back, you know how long you’ve been going and that just might stop you from going any farther...So I didn’t.”
In the excellent biography SATCHEL: The Life and Times of an American Legend, author Larry Tye concludes that the rules were based on things Paige said to Donovan during hours of interviews, but the exact wording was probably Donovan’s.
Paige retired from major league baseball not long after Collier’s published his “Six Rules for a Long Life” in 1953. But he remained a popular celebrity until his death from a heart attack in 1982.
His heart problem may have had something to do with the fact that — by his own admission — Satchel regularly violated Rule #1.
In 1998, the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention decided to update the provisions of the “Baptist Faith and Message,” a set of principles adopted in 1925 to provide guidance to the millions of members of Southern Baptist churches in the United States.
The text of the 1925 version primarily focused on fundamental aspects of the Southern Baptist faith, which are generally similar to other Christian Protestant faiths.
There was nothing in it about the roles of husbands and wives or the definition of marriage.
Back then, what was “normal” with respect to such things was taken for granted.
Seventy years later, in the late 1990s, things were different.
Women were increasingly “liberated.” Homosexuals were increasingly out of the closet. There was even talk of (gasp!) gay marriage.
So, in June of 1998, at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, the church leaders decided it was time to add a new section to the Baptist Faith and Message that addressed these issues.
This section, titled “THE FAMILY,” was unanimously adopted by Convention members on June 9, 1998.
The first part had some language that took a clear shot at the newfangled notion of gay marriage. “Marriage,” it said, “is the uniting of one man and one woman.”
Of course, it wasn’t any big surprise that Southern Baptists opposed gay marriage (and homosexuality in general). They had already staked out that turf.
But there was some other language in the new section that caught the attention of reporters and quickly generated nationwide news coverage, a firestorm of criticism and a lot of jokes.
It was a controversial sentence in the third paragraph that said:
“A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.”
For weeks, this part about wives submitting graciously to their husbands was discussed, criticized and satirized by media columnists, TV commentators, feminists and comedians.
Naturally, many women and social liberals attacked and mocked the idea that wives should graciously submit to their husbands, viewing it as incredibly outdated, wrongheaded and insulting to women.
And, of course, TV comics couldn’t resist commenting on the flap.
For example, Jay Leno quipped: “The Southern Baptists issued a new ruling this week stating that a wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband. What if a husband wants to lead her and the family to Disneyland on Gay Day? What do you do then? What if your husband’s an idiot?”
However, the criticism and jokes had no effect on the policies of the Southern Baptist Convention.
The sentence about a wife submitting graciously to her husband remained and still exists in the current Baptist Faith and Message text.
At least, it still exists on paper and online. I haven’t seen any studies on how strictly it’s actually adhered to in Southern Baptist households.
On June 4, 1940, Houghton Mifflin published the first novel by the American writer Carson McCullers, a sensitive story about misfits and social outcasts in a Southern mill town titled The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.
The success of McCullers’ book made its title a familiar and oft-quoted phrase.
McCullers took the title of her first novel from an old poem by the Scottish poet Fiona Macleod.
This sad, dreamy poem, called “The Lonely Hunter,” is about a girl who mourns her dead lover and thinks about joining him.
It was published in 1896 in the book From the Hills of Dream, a collection of Macleod’s Celtic-flavored poetry.
The line in the poem that inspired McCullers’ book title appears in the third verse:
“Green wind from the green-gold branches, what is the song you bring? What are all songs for me, now, who no more care to sing? Deep in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to me still, But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.”
Between 1894 and 1905, many readers in Scotland and Europe loved the romantic poems, novels and stories of Fiona McCleod. She was celebrated as one of the writers associated with the revival of Celtic literature, along with poets like W.B. Yeats.
Oddly, Fiona never made any public appearances. She declined interviews and speaking engagements.
All communications and business with Macleod were conducted through her agent, the Scottish literary critic and biographer William Sharp.
It wasn’t until Sharp died in 1905 that the truth was revealed.
William Sharp was “Fiona Macleod.”
He apparently created his secret identity, in part, to protect the credibility of his more scholarly (and snootier) works, the collections of poems by famous poets that he edited and his series of biographies about poets such as as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Heinrich Heine and Robert Browning.
Sharp’s deception may also reflect the fact he was, in general, a fairly strange dude.
For example, he is said to have been a member of “The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn,”a little-known cult whose beliefs combine a belief in the “divine feminine” with elements of magic, astrology, Egyptian mysticism, the Qabalah, Gnosticism, Rosicrucianism and other mystic stuff.
When he died, Sharp left behind a letter revealing his long-kept secret.
When the letter was made public, it sorely distressed “Fiona’s” fans and damaged the reputation of all of Sharp’s books and poems for a while.
But, starting in the 1920s, poems and novels by “Fiona Macleod” steadily became popular again in the UK. Awareness of them also spread to other countries, where they were read by literature buffs like Carson McCullers.
Today, thanks to McCullers’ use of a line by “Fiona” as a book title, most Americans have heard at least one line of his/her poetry.
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I’ve been a writer, in one form or another, for more than 30 years. I’ve worked as a writer for magazines, ad agencies, government agencies, educational organizations and political campaigns. Now, I also blog about things that interest me, like quotations and vintage men's pulp adventure magazines. I recently edited an anthology of classic stories from those magazines, which you can preview at www.WeaselsRipped.com. I'm currently working on two new book projects for the New Texture publishing company (www.NewTexture.com).
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, author Larry Tye concludes that the rules were based on things Paige said to Donovan during hours of interviews, but the exact wording was probably Donovan’s.
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