The slogan was invented by columnist Walter Winchell (1897-1972) in 1940.
The term chauvinism originally referred to Nicolas Chauvin, a French soldier of the Napoleonic era whose devotion to Napoleon was considered excessive and unreasonable. He later appeared in a number of plays and literary works, including Baroness Orczy’s Scarlet Pimpernel (1905), always representing an exaggerated patriotism. The term has since taken on a more general…
Thomas Paine, the eighteenth-century American pamphleteer who wrote Common Sense, was called filthy little atheist. Paine was actually 5 feet, 10 inches tall, neat in appearance, and believed in God.
The doges of Venice were elected dukes who ruled the city-state of Venice and controlled much of the eastern Mediterranean coast. Their reigns tended to be short, often 1 to 10 years. Venice was an independent city-state from 697 until 1797, when Napoleon conquered it.
The Taj Mahal was built between 1632 and 1650 in Agra, India, by Shah Jahan as a tomb for his wife. The marble structure is considered a superb representation of the Mogul style.
The dog, memorialized in a bas-relief in New York’s Central Park and celebrated in dozens of Johnny Carson’s skits, actually existed and was a hero in his day. Balto led a dog-sled expedition through 600 miles of Arctic terrain to deliver an antitoxin needed to save the residents of Nome, Alaska, during a 1925 diphtheria…