HOME





Lydia The Tattooed Lady
"Lydia, the Tattooed Lady" is a 1939 song written by Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen. It first appeared in the Marx Brothers film ''At the Circus'' (1939) and became one of Groucho Marx's signature tunes. It subsequently appeared in the movie '' The Philadelphia Story'' (1940), sung by Virginia Weidler as Dinah Lord. The complex lyrics by Harburg – with clever rhymes such as "Lydia/encyclopedia" and "Amazon/pajamas on" – were inspired by W. S. Gilbert. Harburg made many contemporary references to topical personalities such as Grover Whalen, who opened the 1939 New York World's Fair. Among the items, persons, and scenes tattooed on Lydia's body are the Battle of Waterloo (on her back), ''The Wreck of the Hesperus'' (beside it), the red, white and blue (above them); the cities of Kankakee and " Paree", '' Washington Crossing the Delaware'', President Andrew Jackson, Niagara, Alcatraz, Buffalo Bill, Captain Spaulding (Groucho's character in ''Animal Crackers'') exploring ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Yip Harburg
Edgar Yipsel Harburg (born Isidore Hochberg; April 8, 1896 – March 5, 1981) was an American popular song lyricist and librettist who worked with many well-known composers. He wrote the lyrics to the standards " Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" (with Jay Gorney), " April in Paris", and "It's Only a Paper Moon", as well as all of the songs for the film '' The Wizard of Oz'', including " Over the Rainbow". He was known for the social commentary of his lyrics, as well as his leftist leanings. He championed racial, sexual and gender equality and union politics. He also was an ardent critic of high society and religion. Early life and career Harburg, the youngest of four surviving children (out of ten), was born Isidore Hochberg on the Lower East Side of New York City on April 8, 1896.Yip Harburg: Biography from Answers.com
...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Alcatraz
Alcatraz Island () is a small island about 1.25 miles offshore from San Francisco in San Francisco Bay, California, near the Golden Gate Strait. The island was developed in the mid-19th century with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, and a military prison. In 1934, the island was converted into a federal prison, Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. The strong tidal currents around the island and ice-cold water temperatures made escape nearly impossible, giving the prison one of the most notorious reputations of its kind in American history. The prison closed on March 21, 1963, leaving the island a major tourist attraction today. Beginning in November 1969, the island was occupied for more than 19 months by a group of Native Americans, initially primarily from San Francisco, who were later joined by the American Indian Movement and other urban Native Americans from other parts of the country, who were part of a wave of Native American activists organizing pu ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Capitol Steps
The Capitol Steps was an American political-satire group that performed from 1981 to 2020. Most of the Capitol Steps' material parodied well-known contemporary songs. The songs were interspersed with other routines, including a spoonerism routine ("Lirty Dies") near the end of each performance with innuendoes about recent scandals. They released over 40 albums, primarily song parodies. Originally consisting of congressional staffers who performed around Washington, D.C., the troupe was later primarily made up of professional actors and singers. The Capitol Steps have performed on PBS, public radio and in small- and medium-size venues around the United States. On January 13, 2021, the Capitol Steps announced via Twitter that they were shutting down after 39 years of performing. Reagan years In 1981, three Republican congressional staffers ( Bill Strauss, Elaina Newport, and Jim Aidala) used their spare time at the Subcommittee on Energy, Nuclear Proliferation, and Government Proc ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

YouTube
YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in San Bruno, California, it is the second-most-visited website in the world, after Google Search. In January 2024, YouTube had more than 2.7billion monthly active users, who collectively watched more than one billion hours of videos every day. , videos were being uploaded to the platform at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute, and , there were approximately 14.8billion videos in total. On November 13, 2006, YouTube was purchased by Google for $1.65 billion (equivalent to $ billion in ). Google expanded YouTube's business model of generating revenue from advertisements alone, to offering paid content such as movies and exclusive content produced by and for YouTube. It also offers YouTube Premium, a paid subs ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming Chancellor of Germany#Nazi Germany (1933–1945), the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of in 1934. His invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 marked the start of the Second World War. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust: the genocide of Holocaust victims, about six million Jews and millions of other victims. Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn in Austria-Hungary and moved to German Empire, Germany in 1913. He was decorated during his service in the German Army in the First World War, receiving the Iron Cross. In 1919 he joined the German Workers' Party (DAP), the precursor of the Nazi Party, and in 1921 was app ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


University Of Michigan Press
The University of Michigan Press is a university press that is a part of Michigan Publishing at the University of Michigan Library. It publishes 170 new titles each year in the humanities and social sciences. Titles from the press have earned numerous awards, including Lambda Literary Awards, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Joe A. Callaway Award, and the Nautilus Book Award. The press has published works by authors who have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the National Humanities Medal and the Nobel Prize in Economics. History From 1858 to 1930, the University of Michigan had no organized entity for its scholarly publications, which were generally conference proceedings or department-specific research. The University Press was established in 1930 under the university's Graduate School, and in 1935, Frank E. Robbins, assistant to university president Alexander G. Ruthven, was appointed as the managing editor of the University Press. He would hold this position until 195 ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Social Security (United States)
In the United States, Social Security is the commonly used term for the federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program and is administered by the Social Security Administration (SSA). The Social Security Act was passed in 1935,Social Security Act of 1935 and the existing version of the Act, as amended, 2 USC 7 encompasses several social welfare and social insurance programs. The average monthly Social Security benefit for May 2025 was $1,903. This was raised from $1,783 in 2024. The total cost of the Social Security program for 2022 was $1.244 trillion or about 5.2 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). In 2025 there have been proposed budget cuts to social security. Social Security is funded primarily through payroll taxes called the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) or Self Employed Contributions Act (SECA). Wage and salary earnings from covered employment, up to an amount determined by law (see tax rate table), are subject to th ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Vaslav Nijinsky
Vaslav or Vatslav Nijinsky (12 March 1889/18908 April 1950) was a Russian ballet dancer and choreographer of Polish ancestry. He is regarded as the greatest male dancer of the early 20th century. Nijinsky was celebrated for his virtuosity and for the depth and intensity of his characterizations. He could dance ''en pointe'', a rare skill among male dancers at the time, and was admired for his seemingly gravity-defying leaps. He was introduced to dance by his parents, who were senior dancers with the travelling Setov opera company, and his early childhood was spent touring with the company. His elder brother, Stanislav, and younger sister, Bronislava Nijinska, known to intimates as Bronia, also became dancers; Bronia also became a choreographer, working closely with him for much of his career. At age nine, Nijinsky was accepted at the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg, the pre-eminent ballet school in the world. In 1907, he graduated and became a member of the Imperial ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Treasure Island (California)
Treasure Island is a man-made island in San Francisco Bay, and a neighborhood in the City and County of San Francisco. Built in 1936–37 for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, the island was named by Clyde Milner Vandeburg, part of the Fair's public relations team. Its World's Fair site is a California Historical Landmark. Buildings there have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the historical Naval Station Treasure Island, an auxiliary air facility (for airships, blimps, dirigibles, planes and seaplanes), are designated in the Geographic Names Information System. Treasure Island is connected to Yerba Buena Island, another (natural) auxiliary island of San Francisco, by a causeway, creating access to Interstate 80 in California, Interstate 80. Geography The San Francisco census tract that includes Treasure Island extends up and down San Francisco Bay and includes a small uninhabited tip of western Alameda (island), Alameda Island. Yerba B ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Trylon And Perisphere
The Trylon and Perisphere were two monumental modernistic structures designed by architects Wallace Harrison and J. Andre Fouilhoux that were together known as the Theme Center of the 1939 New York World's Fair at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York City, United States. The Perisphere was a tremendous sphere, in diameter, connected to the spire-shaped Trylon by what was at the time the world's longest escalator. The Perisphere housed a diorama by Henry Dreyfuss called ''Democracity'' which, in keeping with the fair's theme "The World of Tomorrow", depicted a utopian city-of-the-future. The interior display was viewed from above on a moving sidewalk, while a multi-image slide presentation was projected on the dome of the sphere. After exiting the Perisphere, visitors descended to ground level on the third element of the Theme Center, the Helicline, a spiral ramp that partially encircled the Perisphere. The name "Perisphere" was coined using the Greek prefix ''per ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Lady Godiva
Lady Godiva (; died between 1066 and 1086), in Old English , was a late Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who is relatively well documented as the wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and a patron of various churches and monasteries. She is mainly remembered for a legend dating back to at least the 13th century, in which she rode naked – covered only by her long hair – through the streets of Coventry to gain a remission of the oppressive taxation that her husband, Leofric, imposed on his tenants. The name "Peeping Tom" for a voyeur originates from later versions of this legend, in which a man named Thomas watched her ride and was struck blind or dead. Historical figure Godiva was the wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia. They had nine children; one son was Ælfgar.Montague-Smith Patrick W. Letters: Godiva's family tree. ''The Times'', 25 January 1983 Godiva's name occurs in charters and the Domesday survey, though the spelling varies. The Old English name or meant "gift of God"; 'Godi ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]