Gargoyles, the grotesque statues that decorate medieval cathedrals, and the medieval-influenced architecture of some universities, are not merely decorative.
A gargoyle is technically a waterspout that projects from a roof gutter to throw rainwater clear of a building.
The term is applied more loosely to any grotesquely carved figure.
The modern ballroom tango appeared about 1880 in Argentina. It combined the old tango of Spain, a light-spirited variety of flamenco, with the milonga, a fast, hot Argentine dance. At first considered low-class, the new tango was all the rage in fashionable circles by 1915.
The official languages of Belgium are Flemish Dutch and French. The country is bounded by the North Sea, the Netherlands, West Germany, Luxembourg, and France.
The name for the artistic movement Dada was founded in Zurich in 1915 as a revolt against complacent art. It is drawn not from an artist or a technique but from the child’s word for a parent, dada, which in French, curiously, also means “hobbyhorse.” Whatever its origin, the name Dada is intended to be…
Arabian philosopher and physician Avicenna introduced coffee as a beverage about A.D. 1000. He called the drink bunc; he believed it to be useful as a medicinal tonic. Not until about the sixteenth century did coffee become accepted as a social beverage in Arabia and Persia.
It took Leonardo da Vinci four years (1503-1507) to paint the Mona Lisa. This was long enough for his patron, Francesco del Giocondo, to get impatient. Giocondo had commissioned the portrait of his third wife, Lisa, but enough was enough. Giocondo refused to pay for the unfinished portrait, and Leonardo sold it to the king…
Sean Connery, George Lazenby, David Niven, Roger Moore, and Timothy Dalton have played the character James Bond.