[An updated version of a previous post. Thanks to the readers who emailed corrections to me.] On October 27, 1957, American Rockabilly and rock music pioneer Buddy Holly and his…
The day Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” made the earth move…HemingwayThe day Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” made the earth move…
On October 21, 1940, Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls was first published by Charles Scribner’s Sons. It’s a classic war story about an American, Robert Jordan, who…
“There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.”
It’s difficult to pigeonhole Teddy Roosevelt. He was a Republican for most of his political career, including his two terms as President of the United States from 1901 to 1909.…
“Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but…”
The Izaak Walton League is one of America’s oldest conservation groups. It was founded in 1922 by sport fishermen who wanted to preserve fish and wildlife habitat for future generations.…
“The physician can bury his mistakes…”
Many books of quotations include a famous humorous quote by the eminent American architect Frank Lloyd Wright: “The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only…
“The forgotten middle class…”
On October 3, 1991, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, held a press conference in Little Rock to announce that he was officially running as a candidate to be the Democratic nominee…
“Have Gun – Will Travel” lives on (as a linguistic “snowclone” and via modern digital media)
Today, the linguistic formula “Have X [some work tool] – Will Y [do something]” is firmly cemented into our language. Prior to 1957, it wasn’t. Then, on September 14, 1957,…
The Birth — and Death — of “the Hippies”
Credit for the origin of the term “hippies” is generally given to San Francisco journalist Michael Fallon. Fallon coined the term in an article published in the San Francisco Examiner…
“How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?”
The phrase “beautiful people” had been used prior to the 1960s. For example, in Oscar Wilde’s play An Ideal Husband, a social comedy first performed in 1895, one of the…