On “Star Trek,” what was Captain James T. Kirk’s middle name?

British colonials from India brought pajamas to their home country about 1870, at which time they became popular. Women began wearing pajamas in the early years of the twentieth century, initially as garments for sleeping and later as lounge wear.

Julia Ward Howe, women’s suffrage leader and author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” made the first known suggestion for Mother’s Day in 1872. She saw it as a day dedicated to peace, to be celebrated on June 2. But it was Anna Jarvis of Grafton, West Virginia, who, in 1907, began campaigning for…

The Russian Bloody Sunday was January 9, 1905, when a workers’ march on the czar’s Winter Palace was cut down by cossacks. About a thousand people were killed or wounded; the event sparked the Revolution of 1905. The Irish Bloody Sunday took place on January 30, 1972, when British soldiers shot and killed 13 Catholics…

From ancient times, the color blue was considered a precaution against evil spirits, since blue was the color of the heavenly sky. Dressing a baby boy in blue protected him from the evil spirits who wanted to cause him harm. Since girls were considered inferior, it was assumed that evil spirits would not bother with…

Seven actors have played Raymond Chandler’s detective Philip Marlowe. They are: Dick Powell, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Montgomery, George Montgomery, James Garner, Elliott Gould, and Robert Mitchum. Only Mitchum has played him more than once, in Farewell My Lovely (1975) and The Big Sleep (1978).

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…