“Like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.”

The British stage actor Edmund Kean (1789-1833) was like the James Dean of his time. He gained celebrity and fame at a young age. His performances were fiery and highly…

“My man Friday.”

The book by Daniel Defoe that is usually referred to with the shortened name Robinson Crusoe became a bestseller soon after it was first published on April 25, 1719. The…

“The shot heard round the world”

The famous phrase “The shot heard round the world” was coined by American essayist, lecturer and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) in 1837. It’s the last line in the first…

“Houston, we have a problem” — and “failure is not an option”…

On June 30, 1995, the movie Apollo 13 was released to theaters in the US. This epic film about the near-disastrous Apollo 13 lunar mission in April 1970 was directed…

The story behind “Dixie,” the blackface minstrel song that may have been stolen from black musicians…

The American Civil War is bracketed by two songs with lyrics that are familiar to most people. The metaphorical end of that war has become associated with The Band’s 1969…

“Because it’s there.”

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

“Power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”

In the decades before World War II, Stanley Baldwin was one of the most powerful politicians in the United Kingdom. He was the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party from 1923…

March 4th: a good day for famous presidential quotes – until 1933…

The date for the United States presidential inauguration was not specified in the original U.S. Constitution. In 1788, the Continental Congress set Inauguration Day as March 4. Then, in 1933,…

“It ain’t a fit night out for man or beast!”

I have a nostalgic fondness for one the most famous movie quotations uttered by the great comic actor W.C. Fields: “It ain’t a fit night out for man or beast!”…

“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” by the American-born British poet T.S. Eliot (Thomas Stearns Eliot), is one of the most famous poems of the 20th Century. It was…