Author: Jennifer M Wood

Spoiler alert! Sometimes TV shows shock their audiences with mind-blowing twists and surprises, but TV writers are often clever enough to foreshadow these events with very subtle references. Here are 10 of them.

**Many spoilers ahead.**

1. THE WALKING DEAD

During season five of The Walking Dead, Glenn (Steven Yeun) picks up a baseball bat a few times in the Alexandria Safe-Zone. He was also almost killed by one at Terminus at the beginning of the season. Two seasons later, Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) brutally kills Glenn with his barbed-wire baseball bat (a.k.a. Lucille) during the season seven premiere.

2. BREAKING BAD

In Breaking Bad‘s second season finale, a Boeing 737 crashes over Albuquerque, New Mexico. While the event was hinted at throughout the season during the black-and-white teasers at the beginning of each episode, the titles of certain episodes predicted the crash altogether. The titles “Seven Thirty-Seven,” “Down,” “Over,” and “ABQ” spell out the phrase “737 Down Over ABQ,” which is the airport code for the Albuquerque International Sunport.

3. GAME OF THRONES

In “The Mountain and the Viper,” a season four episode of Game of Thrones, Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish (Aidan Gillen) tells his stepson, Robin Arryn (Lino Facioli), “People die at their dinner tables. They die in their beds. They die squatting over their chamber pots. Everybody dies sooner or later. And don’t worry about your death. Worry about your life. Take charge of your life for as long as it lasts.”

Throughout that same season, viewers see King Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson) die at a dinner table during his wedding and watch Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) strangle his former lover, Shae (Sibel Kekilli), in bed, before killing his father, Tywin (Charles Dance), while he’s sitting on a toilet.

4. ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

Throughout seasons one and two of Arrested Development, there are a number of references that foretell Buster Bluth (Tony Hale) losing his hand. In “Out on a Limb,” Buster is sitting on a bus stop bench with an ad for Army Officers, but the way he’s sitting hides most of the ad, so it reads “Arm Off” instead. Earlier in season two, Buster says “Wow, I never thought I’d miss a hand so much,” when he sees his long lost hand-shaped chair in his housekeeper’s home.

5. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

In season four of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow (Alyson Hannigan) comes out as gay and begins a relationship with Tara (Amber Benson). However, in the episode “Doppelgangland” in season three, a vampire version of Willow appears after a spell is accidentally cast. After Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Angel (David Boreanaz) capture the vampire Willow, the real Willow takes a look at her vampire-self and comments, “That’s me as a vampire? I’m so evil and skanky. And I think I’m kinda gay!”

6. FUTURAMA

In the very first episode of Futurama, “Space Pilot 3000,” Fry (Billy West) is accidentally frozen and wakes up 1000 years later. Just before he falls into the cryotube, in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, you can see a small shadowy figure under a desk in the Applied Cryogenics office. In the season four episode “The Why of Fry,” it was revealed that Nibbler (Frank Welker) was hiding in the shadows. He planned to freeze Fry in the past, so that he could save the universe in the future. According to co-creator Matt Groening, “What we tried to do is we tried to lay in a lot of little secrets in this episode that would pay off later.”

7. AMERICAN HORROR STORY: COVEN

American Horror Story: Coven follows a coven of witches in Salem, Massachusetts. When Fiona (Jessica Lange), the leader of the witches, is stricken with cancer, she believes a new witch who can wield the Seven Powers will come and take her place. Fiona then begins to kill every witch she believes will take her place until the new Supreme reveals herself.

During the opening credits of every episode in season three, Sarah Paulson’s title card appears with the Mexican female deity Santa Muerte (Holy Death), the Lady of the Seven Wonders. And as it turned out, Paulson’s character, Cordelia, became the new Supreme witch at the end of the season.

8. MAD MEN

At the end of Mad Men‘s fifth season, ad agency partner Lane Pryce (Jared Harris) committed suicide by hanging himself in his office. While it was a shock to the audience, the show’s writers hinted at his death throughout the entire season.

In the season five premiere, Lane jokes “I’ll be here for the rest of my life!” while he’s on the telephone in his office. Later, in episode five, Don Draper doodles a noose during a meeting, while Lane wears a scarf around his neck in a bar to support his soccer club. Early in episode 12, Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) mentions that the agency’s life insurance policy still pays out, even in the event of a suicide.

9. HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER

In How I Met Your Mother‘s season six episode, “Bad News,” Marshall (Jason Segel) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan) are waiting for test results that will tell them whether or not they can have children. While we’re led to believe the title of the episode reflects their test results, it actually refers to the news that Marshall’s father, Marvin Eriksen Sr. (Bill Fagerbakke), had passed away after suffering a heart attack.

Keen-eyed viewers knew this news already because the writers of How I Met Your Mother foreshadowed the death two seasons earlier in the episode “The Fight.” At the beginning of the episode, Marshall said that lightsaber technology is real and will be on the market in about three to five years from now. By the end of the episode, a flash forward reveals what Thanksgiving looks like at the Eriksen family’s home in Minnesota; Marshall’s father is not shown or referenced during the holiday meal.

10. TRUE DETECTIVE

During season one, Detectives Rust Cohle and Marty Hart are trying to solve a murder investigation, as they try to identify the mysterious “Yellow King.” The color yellow is used when the detectives are on the right track, but the detectives already met the killer in episode three, “The Locked Room.”

When the pair went to the Light of the Way Academy, posted on the school’s sign was a very clever hidden message that read “Notice King,” which pointed to the school’s groundskeeper as the killer.

“My word, I’m as old as the hills.”

Back in May, that was 116-year-old Emma Morano’s response to learning that the Guinness World Record for World’s Oldest Living Person had been passed on to her following the death of previous record-holder, Susannah Mushatt Jones. Today, Morano—the last living person who was born in the 19th century—is celebrating yet another milestone: her 117th birthday.

While other centenarians have attributed their longevity to everything from exercise to lack of exercise, Morano’s secret to a long life is pretty straightforward: two raw eggs a day. Morano, who was born in the village of Civiasco in northern Italy on November 29, 1899, has made a practice of eating raw eggs for nearly a century, ever since she was diagnosed with anemia at the age of 20. She also suggests eating a bit of minced meat regularly, and only has milk for dinner.

Of course, genetics can’t be overlooked: though Morano, the oldest of eight children, has outlived all of her siblings, several of her sisters lived to see their 100th birthdays (and her mother passed away at the age of 91).

Still, even Carlo Bava—Morano’s doctor of nearly 30 years—seems baffled. “Emma has always eaten very few vegetables, very little fruit,” he said. “When I met her, she ate three eggs per day, two raw in the morning and then an omelette at noon, and chicken at dinner.” Yet somehow, says Bava, she seems to be “eternal.”

Though Morano is only about three months older than Jamaica-born Violet Brown—the world’s second oldest living person, who will celebrate her 117th birthday on March 10—Morano remains “the world’s last living link to the 19th century.”

It’s silly, it’s catchy, and it’s everywhere. A fun little jig with simple moves that can be learned in under a minute, “The Chicken Dance” is a staple at school parties, bar mitzvahs, and Oktoberfest celebrations. The story of this avian shimmy began with its melody, which was penned over 60 years ago by a Swiss musician named Werner Thomas.

Back in the 1950s, Thomas earned his daily bread playing the accordion at Swiss holiday resorts. As he reveals in this German-language interview, the tune first popped into his head in 1955 or so. Thomas spent the next few years revising his melody—and coming up with a dance to go with it. The quirky routine he ultimately devised was inspired not by chickens but rather by skiers. Even a half-century ago, Switzerland was world-famous for its ski resorts, many of which Thomas frequented. While watching vacationers zip down the slopes with wild abandon, Thomas couldn’t help but note their resemblance to a certain water bird. Skiers, he said, use certain hand movements that—at least to him—evoke “the beak of a duck.” Other gestures utilized by the winter sports enthusiasts reminded Thomas of flapping wings and waddling feet. He then adapted these into a playful series of movements he called “Der Ententanz” or “The Duck Dance.”

The next major development in the song’s history came in the early 1970s, when Belgian music producer Louis Julien van Rijmenant heard Thomas playing it at a hotel in Davos, Switzerland. In 1973, Rijmenant collaborated with a band called Bobby Setter’s Cash & Carry to publish the song as a single. Titled “Tchip, Tchip,” this version of the tune was created via synthesizer—a fact that caught Thomas totally off-guard when he first heard their cover. “The synthesizer was a completely new instrument for me,” he recalled. Although Thomas initially didn’t approve of this electronic take on his song, he soon came around to liking it. And he wasn’t alone: Within a year, Rijmenant’s “Tchip, Tchip” record sold over a million copies in Europe.

Despite the tune’s popularity, Thomas’s accompanying dance wouldn’t become widely known until the Dutch band De Electronica released a new cover of “Tchip, Tchip” in 1980. Their version—which the group called “De Vogeltjesdans,” or “Dance Little Bird”—spent a respectable 29 weeks on the Dutch charts, where it peaked at number eight. At concerts and in TV appearances (one of which you can watch below), De Electronica reunited the melody with the original, duck-like movements that Thomas had devised more than two decades earlier.

By then, the melody had already crossed the Atlantic. Credit for bringing it stateside belongs to music producer Stanley Mills. His first exposure to Thomas’s masterpiece came at a 1972 convention in Cannes, France. Mills immediately liked the tune and purchased its American distribution rights. Like De Electronica, he called his version “Dance Little Bird.” Although the song is now an omnipresent force at dance parties across the country, it didn’t find its American audience right away. Mills attempted to make “Dance Little Bird” more marketable by commissioning original English lyrics, which have since faded into obscurity. (The chorus went as follows: “Hey you’re in the swing / You’re cluckin’ like a bird / You’re flapping your wings / Don’t you feel absurd?”) Although Mills convinced several polka bands to include “Dance Little Bird” on their albums, none of them managed to turn it into a hit.

Still, you can’t keep a good tune down. Mills says that in the 1980s, instrumental versions of “Dance Little Bird” slowly developed a following in Milwaukee, Cleveland, Austin, and other cities with large polka-loving communities. “People started dancing to it at weddings and bar mitzvahs and the local dance bands began to play it,” he said. “A few local polka groups recorded it and sold it out of the back of [their trucks].”

Unbeknownst to him at the time, the song acquired a new name at this point in its history. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when American audiences started calling it “The Chicken Dance,” but a festival in Tulsa, Oklahoma may well be responsible. At the city’s 1981 Oktoberfest, a German band decided to play “Dance Little Bird” and taught the crowd how to do Thomas’s Duck Dance. Since visual aids are always helpful, the event organizers scoured the greater Tulsa area in search of a duck costume before the party got started. None could be found, but a local TV station was able to loan them a chicken suit—and the rest is history.

One day in 1994, Mills got a call from a company that was looking to create a dance party compilation record. The caller asked if he could include a song called “The Chicken Dance.”

“I don’t own anything called ‘The Chicken Dance,’” Mills replied.

“Yes you do, I’ll play it over the phone,” said the stranger.

“When he did that,” Mills later recalled, “I realized it was my song. It got that name all by itself.” The resulting compilation record—titled Turn Up the Music—was a resounding success. Ever since, “The Chicken Dance” has been a real cash cow for Mills. As The Wall Street Journal reported in 2001, “His ‘Chicken Dance’ income from television commercials alone surged from a pittance at the start of the 1990s to approximately $7000 in 1995, and then to more than $50,000 [in 2000].”

“It’s doing very well,” Mills said at the time, “but I’m not a millionaire because of it.”

Since then, “The Chicken Dance” has pecked its way into the cultural mainstream, livening up everything from parties to sporting events. Although many artists come to hate their biggest hit, Thomas still appreciates the song’s success. As the accordionist notes in the aforementioned interview, whenever he sees “The Chicken Dance” on television, he can rest secure in the knowledge that his next beer has been paid for.

Longtime royal watchers and fans of the new Netflix series The Crown know that wherever Queen Elizabeth II goes, her adorable band of corgis isn’t too far behind. To celebrate the Queen’s 90th birthday earlier this year, fashion website Stylight hid an illustration of Her Majesty amongst more than 100 of her preferred canine companion. Can you spot the royal?

(If you give up, the Daily Mail has the answer.)

Image courtesy of Stylight/Facebook.

For 15 years, “The Far Side” added a dash of irreverence to the funny pages. Offbeat, macabre, and sometimes controversial, Gary Larson’s trailblazing cartoon was a gigantic success that ran in nearly 2000 newspapers at the height of its popularity. It also gave an entire generation of humorists a renewed appreciation for cow jokes.

Here are 11 things you should know about this highly-evolved comic strip.

1. IT EVOLVED FROM AN EARLIER STRIP CALLED NATURE’S WAY.

A native of Tacoma, Washington, Gary Larson was born on August 14, 1950. At a very young age, he developed the passion for wildlife that would give “The Far Side” its unique flavor. In his early years, Larson spent countless hours chasing amphibians and nurturing pet snakes. So when he enrolled at Washington State University, his decision to major in biology surprised no one. But halfway through college, Larson’s focus shifted. “I didn’t want to go to school for more than four years, and I didn’t know what you did with a bachelor’s degree in biology, so I switched over and got my degree in communications,” he told The New York Times. “It was one of the most idiotic things I ever did.” Had he pursued a scientific career, Larson says that he’d want to become an entomologist.

After graduating, he landed a job at a record store. Dissatisfied with the gig, Larson began to draw bizarre, single-panel cartoons in his spare time. One day in 1976, he presented six of these to the editor of the popular Seattle magazine Pacific Search. The half-dozen comics were swiftly bought up (for $3 apiece) and published under the title “Nature’s Way.” Following his print debut, Larson took a three-year hiatus from cartooning. Then, in 1979, The Seattle Times agreed to revive “Nature’s Way” as a weekly comic strip. Riding high on newfound success, Larson decided to see if any other publications might be interested in his work. The quest began—and ended—with a visit to the San Francisco Chronicle’s headquarters. Editor Stan Arnold took an immediate liking to Larson’s comic strip and successfully got it syndicated nationwide.

Early on in the process, Larson was asked if he’d mind changing the title from “Nature’s Way” to “The Far Side.” Mildly put, this wasn’t a problem; Larson once joked that for all he cared, “They could have called it ‘Revenge of the Zucchini People.’” “The Far Side” that we all know and love made its grand debut in newspapers across America in January, 1980.

2. FROM THE GET-GO, GARY LARSON DIDN’T WANT “THE FAR SIDE” TO INCLUDE RECURRING CHARACTERS.

Chronicle Features syndicated “The Far Side” and asked Larson to embrace at least one aspect of the standard comic strip formula before it was distributed nationally. “They… wanted me to develop characters like Charlie Brown or something [who] would always come back,” the cartoonist said in a 1998 NPR interview. At the time, he explains, it was widely believed that every strip needed a cast in order to be successful. Larson felt otherwise.

“I instinctively thought of that as very limiting,” Larson explained. “And I also just didn’t see humor as something that had to be confined to one particular character. To me, what was exciting was trying to do something that would crack someone up. And I didn’t see how characters or a particular character enhanced that. In fact, I think it would work against it in some cases. A certain face on a character would work in one instance but not in another. Although admittedly, as the years went by, all my stuff got boiled down to about six faces.”

3. AN ODD CHILDREN’S BOOK WAS ONE OF LARSON’S BIGGEST INSPIRATIONS.

You need a fairly warped imagination to come up with things like teenage dragons lighting their sneezes. “The Far Side” brand of comedy took some of its cues from Larson’s family and what he has described as their “morbid sense of humor.” Older brother Dan Larson left a particularly big impact on his developing mind: When the two weren’t out collecting tadpoles or salamanders together, Dan would pull all sorts of pranks on his younger sibling. “[He’d] scare the hell out of me,” the cartoonist said.

Another influence was the picture book Mr. Bear Squash-You-All-Flat by Morrell Gipson. True to its title, the story is about a large bear who goes around sitting on other animals’ houses. In 1986, the TV program 20/20 ran a feature on Larson. Halfway through the interview, he was visibly delighted when Lynn Sherr surprised him with a copy of the then-out-of-print book. “There was something so mesmerizing about the image of this big bear going through the forest and squashing the homes of these little animals,” Larson said. “I just thought that was the coolest thing in the world.”

4. ONE EARLY STRIP CONFUSED SO MANY READERS THAT LARSON HAD TO EXPLAIN ITS MEANING IN A PRESS RELEASE. 

With “The Far Side,” Larson turned bovine jokes into a real cash cow. From gags about vacationing cattle to the exploits of a bloodthirsty vampcow, the strip was loaded with heifer hilarity. “I’ve always thought the word cow was funny,” Larson said. “And cows are sort of tragic figures. Cows blur the line between tragedy and humor.”

Every so often, though, this affinity for the hoofed mammals got him into trouble. In 1982, Larson drew a cartoon that was supposed to satirize the outdated anthropological belief that, of all creatures, only Homo sapiens makes tools. The strip in question shows a cow presenting an assortment of low-tech gadgets she’s built. Larson’s caption reads, simply, “Cow Tools.” Some people didn’t get the joke. In fact, hardly anyone did. Chronicle Features was bombarded with letters and phone calls from confused readers begging for an explanation. Within 24 hours of the strip’s publication, Larson was asked to write a press release explaining its significance to the masses.

That October, his official statement appeared in newspapers throughout the U.S. “The cartoon was meant to be an exercise in silliness,” it claims. Larson goes on to say “I regret that my fondness for cows, combined with an overactive imagination, may have carried me beyond what is comprehensible to the average ‘Far Side’ reader.” Embarrassing as this incident was, Larson got the last laugh. On more than one occasion, he’s credited the “Cow Tools” debacle with boosting the popularity of “The Far Side.”

5. “THE FAR SIDE” GAVE BIRTH TO A WIDELY-USED PALEONTOLOGY TERM.

Stegosaurus is world-famous for its lime-sized brain and the quartet of nasty-looking spikes on its tail. A 1982 “Far Side” strip decided to have a little fun with the latter attribute. In that cartoon, we find an early human anachronistically lecturing his fellow cavemen about dinosaur-related hazards. Pointing at the rear end of a Stegosaurus diagram, he says “Now this end is called the thagomizer … after the late Thag Simmons.” Without meaning to, Larson’s strip plugged a gap in the scientific lexicon. Previously, nobody had ever given a name to the unique arrangement of tail spikes found on Stegosaurus and its relatives. But today, many paleontologists use the word “thagomizer” when describing this apparatus, even in scientific journals.

6. FANS OF THE STRIP HAVE NAMED THREE DIFFERENT INSECTS AFTER GARY LARSON.

In 1989, entomologist Dale Clayton discovered a brand new species of biting louse that exclusively targets owls. When the time came to name it, his first choice was Strigiphilus garylarsoni. Clayton wrote the cartoonist to ask for his blessing. This proposed insect name, he explained, was the scientist’s way of recognizing the “enormous contribution that my colleagues and I feel you have made to biology through your cartoons.” Larson happily gave Clayton the green light. “I considered this an extreme honor,” the “Far Side” creator said in retrospect. “Besides, I knew that nobody was going to write and ask to name a new species of swan after me.”

Indeed, scientific nomenclature has yet to give us a “Larson’s swan.” However, in addition to Strigiphilus garylarsoni, there’s now a beetle called Garylarsonus and a butterfly known as Serratoterga larsoni.

7. ONE COMIC TOOK SOME HEAT FROM THE JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE.  

“Well, well—another blonde hair … Conducting a little more ‘research’ with that Jane Goodall tramp?” A sassy chimpanzee makes this remark while grooming her mate in a 1987 “Far Side” comic. The one-liner started a controversy that erupted and then vanished in record time. Shortly after the cartoon ran, Larson’s syndicate received an angry letter from the Jane Goodall Institute’s executive director. Its author minced no words. “To refer to Dr. Goodall as a tramp is inexcusable—even by a self-described ‘loony’ such as Larson,” read the dispatch.

“I was horrified,” Larson wrote in The Prehistory of The Far Side: A 10^th Anniversary Collection. “Not so much from a fear of being sued … but because of my deep respect for Jane Goodall and her well-known contributions to primatology. The last thing in the world I would have intentionally done was offend Dr. Goodall in any way.”

But in a stunning turn of events, it turns out that Goodall herself loved the comic. “I thought it was very funny. And I think if you make a Gary Larson cartoon, boy you’ve made it,” she said. The chimpanzee expert claimed that she was away in Africa when the director lashed out at Larson’s syndicate without her knowledge. Later, the “offending” cartoon appeared on special T-shirts that generated cash for the Institute. Also, Larson got the chance to visit one of Goodall’s research facilities in 1988. Here, he met a chimp named Frodo—who apparently wasn’t a “Far Side” fan. Without warning, Frodo pounced on an unsuspecting Larson, leaving the artist with a patchwork of scrapes and bruises.  

8. AN OHIO NEWSPAPER SWITCHED THE CAPTIONS FROM “DENNIS THE MENACE” AND “THE FAR SIDE”—TWICE.

The Dayton Daily News committed an unforgettable funny page blunder in August, 1981. Back then, the paper would run “The Far Side” right next to the more traditional “Dennis the Menace.” On that fateful August day, their captions were switched. “The Far Side” strip now showed a young snake who kvetches at the family dinner table by saying “Lucky I learned to make peanut butter sandwiches or we woulda starved to death by now.” Elsewhere, Dennis Mitchell—who’s munching on a sandwich of his own—groans “Oh brother … Not hamsters again!”

“What’s most embarrassing about this is how immensely improved both cartoons turned out to be,” Larson opined in The Prehistory of The Far Side. Somebody at the Dayton Daily News made the same mistake two years later. This time, readers were confronted with a psychic cavewoman asking “If I get as big as Dad, won’t my skin be too TIGHT?” Dennis Mitchell, meanwhile, casually looked his mother in the eye and said “I see your little, petrified skull … labeled and resting on a shelf somewhere.”

9. TWO ANIMATED “FAR SIDE” SHORTS EXIST.

CBS aired a 20-minute program called Gary Larson’s Tales From the Far Side in 1994. Conceived as a Halloween special, the film was essentially an animated reinterpretation of several classic “Far Side” cartoons. Marv Newland—an animator whose best-known work is the Larson-esque short film Bambi Meets Godzilla (1969)—directed Tales, which won a Grand Prix award at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. The year 1997 brought with it a sequel, Gary Larson’s Tales From the Far Side II. By then, the comic strip which inspired both movies had been laid to rest, as Larson retired in 1995. He has said that the two animated projects presented an interesting challenge because he “didn’t want any dialogue” in the finished products.

10. A “FAR SIDE” MUSEUM EXHIBIT OPENED UP IN 1985.

Natural History Magazine once called Gary Larson “the unofficial cartoonist laureate of the scientific community.” For physicists, biologists, and naturalists around the world, his work is the subject of near-universal admiration. By the mid-1980s, numerous hallways in the San Francisco-based California Academy of Sciences had basically been wallpapered with “Far Side” cartoons. Inspired by this décor, the facility got the bright idea to set up a special exhibit in Larson’s honor. Dubbed “The Far Side of Science,” it featured some 600 individual cartoons. The display first opened at the CAS in December, 1985 then traveled through such cities as Los Angeles, Denver, and Orlando—often breaking attendance records along the way.

11. LARSON HAS LIKENED HIS OTHER BIG PASSION—MUSIC—TO CARTOONING.

A lifelong jazz fan, Larson would frequently listen to the work of genre maestros when he needed to generate ideas for “Far Side” comics. He ranks legendary guitarist Herb Ellis among his favorite musicians. In 1989, Ellis asked Larson if he’d design the cover of his next album, which was to be named “Doggin’ Around.” The humorist took the job—in exchange for a guitar lesson. Nowadays, with “The Far Side” (mostly) in his rear view mirror, Larson dedicates a portion of each day to honing his skills as a jazz guitarist.

This new pursuit, he says, isn’t all that different from drawing comics. “It has some parallels to cartooning because it’s improvisational—you never know exactly how something is going to turn out,” Larson told the Associated Press. “Taking a solo on a tune is always a little bit scary. Yet it has structure, there are certain rules to follow, and you try to create something with those rules.”

It’s that time of year again: You’re gathering with friends and family. Wrapping presents. And spiking the eggnog with your favorite yuletide libation. That leaves just one thing: the annual holiday movie marathon. Not sure where to start? How about with this list of fascinating facts about your favorite holiday films.

1. IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE WAS A BOX OFFICE BOMB.

Though it has become a quintessential American classic, It’s a Wonderful Life was not an immediate hit with audiences. In fact, it put director Frank Capra $525,000 in the hole, which left him scrambling to finance his production company’s next picture, State of the Union.

2. A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE A LAUGH TRACK.

In the 1960s, it was standard procedure to lay a laugh track over virtually any half-hour comedy, even if the performers were drawn in (The Flintstones was among the series that used a canned “studio audience” to help cue viewers for jokes). When executive producer Lee Mendelson told Charles Schulz he didn’t see the Peanuts special being any different, the artist got up and left the room for several minutes before coming in and continuing as if nothing had happened. Mendelson got the hint.

3. STANLEY KUBRICK IS PARTLY TO THANK FOR CHRISTMAS VACATION.

Christmas Vacation marked the directorial debut of Jeremiah Chechik, who began his career as a fashion photographer for Vogue then moved into commercial directing. “I had made these commercials that became quite iconic here in the U.S.,” Chechik recalled to Den of Geek! in 2011. “They were very dark and sexy and sort of a little bit ahead of their time in terms of style. And what happened was they gained the notice of [Stanley] Kubrick, who had mentioned them as his favorite American filmmaking, ironically, in a New York Times article.” It didn’t take long for Chechik’s phone to start ringing and for studios to start sending him scripts. “And the script that really piqued my interest was Christmas Vacation,” he said. “And the reason is I had never done any comedy—ever.”

4. NATALIE WOOD STILL BELIEVED IN SANTA WHEN SHE FILMED MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET.

Natalie Wood was eight years old while filming Miracle on 34th Street. “I still vaguely believed in Santa Claus,” said Wood, as recorded in her biography written by Suzanne Finstad. “I guess I had an inkling that maybe it wasn’t so, but I really did think that Edmund Gwenn was Santa. I had never seen him without his beard because he used to come in early in the morning and spend several hours putting on this wonderful beard and mustache. And at the end of the shoot, when we had a set party, I saw this strange man, without the beard, and I just couldn’t get it together.”

5. RALPHIE’S DAD IS NEVER GIVEN A NAME IN A CHRISTMAS STORY.

Over the years, a gaggle of sharp-eared A Christmas Story fans have pointed out that in Bob Clark’s scene, Ralphie’s dad is given a name: Hal. This is because they believed that in the brief exchange between the two neighbors, Swede asks of the leg lamp, “Damn Hal, you say you won it?” But a quick confer with the film’s original screenplay confirms that Swede’s actual query is, “Damn, hell, you say you won it?”

6. “FROSTY THE SNOWMAN” WAS A HIT SONG LONG BEFORE IT WAS A TV SPECIAL.

The song “Frosty the Snowman” was written by Jack Rollins and Steve Nelson in 1950 (with a melody that is strikingly similar to 1932’s “Let’s Have Another Cup of Coffee”) specifically as a means of capitalizing on the success of Gene Autry’s “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” The record wasn’t as huge as “Rudolph,” sales-wise, but Frosty’s story was nevertheless perpetuated via Little Golden Books and Dell Comics.

7. “SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN” WAS ALSO A SONG BEFORE IT WAS A HOLIDAY SPECIAL.

Yet again, the song came first. In this case, way first: J. Fred Coots and Henry Gillespie wrote it in 1932, at a time when sheet music outsold records. The song only received national exposure in the first place because Eddie Cantor, Coots’ employer at the time, reluctantly sang it (at the urging of his wife) on his radio show in late November 1934. Despite the music publishers’ dire warning that songs aimed at children were doomed to fail, Cantor’s performance sent the sheet music for the song flying off retailers’ shelves and inspired countless other popular artists to record it.

8. GREMLINS WAS INTENDED TO BE MUCH, MUCH DARKER.

Though some might contend that Gremlins is a pretty dark film, the original script, written by Chris Columbus, was much, much darker. Case in point: Earlier scenes included the Gremlins eating Billy’s dog then decapitating his mom and throwing her head down the stairs. Producer Steven Spielberg, director Joe Dante, and Warner Bros. were all in agreement that they should tone down the gore in order to make the movie more family-friendly.

9. BILL MURRAY IMPROVISED A LOT OF HIS LINES IN SCROOGED.

In a 1988 interview with Philadelphia Daily News, director Richard Donner discussed Bill Murray’s penchant for improvisation and described the experience of directing Murray as follows: “It’s like standing on 42nd Street and Broadway, and the lights are out, and you’re the traffic cop.”

10. BILL MURRAY WAS THE FIRST CHOICE FOR THE LEAD IN BAD SANTA.

According to The Guardian, Murray was actually in final negotiations to take the lead, until he dropped out to film Lost in Translation. Suffice it to say, it was a win-win for both Murray and Billy Bob Thornton. 

11. JIM CARREY WAS INITIALLY EYED TO STAR IN ELF.

When David Berenbaum’s spec script first emerged in 1993, Jim Carrey was pre-Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and attached to front the Christmas film. However, it took another 10 years to get the project in motion, at which time Saturday Night Live star Will Ferrell was signed to star.

12. HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS ALMOST NEVER HAPPENED.

Whereas today’s studios and production companies provide funding for projects of interest, television specials of the past, like A Charlie Brown Christmas and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, had to rely on company sponsorship in order to get made. While A Charlie Brown Christmas found its financier in the form of Coca-Cola, How the Grinch Stole Christmas struggled to find a benefactor.

With storyboards in hand, Chuck Jones pitched the story to more than two dozen potential sponsors—breakfast foods, candy companies, and the like—all without any luck. Down to the wire, Jones finally found his sponsor in an unlikely source: the Foundation for Commercial Banks. “I thought that was very odd, because one of the great lines in there is that the Grinch says, ‘Perhaps Christmas doesn’t come from a store,’” Jones said of the surprise endorsement. “I never thought of a banker endorsing that kind of a line. But they overlooked it, so we went ahead and made the picture.”

13. FOUR PLOT LINES WERE CUT FROM LOVE ACTUALLY.

Director Richard Curtis initially aimed to include 14 love stories in the film. Two were clipped in the scripting phase, but two were shot and cut in post. Those lost before production involved a girl with a wheelchair, and one about a boy who records a love song for a classmate who ultimately hooks up with his drummer. Shot but cut for time was a brief aside featuring an African couple supporting each other during a famine, and another storyline that followed home a school headmistress, revealing her long-time commitment to her lesbian partner.

14. A MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL WAS THE FIRST MUPPET MOVIE MADE WITHOUT JIM HENSON.

The man behind the Muppets passed away on May 16, 1990 at the age of 53. The Muppet Christmas Carol debuted on December 11, 1992 with Steve Whitmire taking over Kermit the Frog for Henson. The film is dedicated to Henson and his recently deceased collaborator Richard Hunt, who’d long performed Scooter, Beaker, Janice, Statler, and Sweetums.

15. A HELLISH TRIP FROM NEW YORK TO CHICAGO INSPIRED JOHN HUGHES TO WRITE PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES.

Before he became a screenwriter, Hughes used to work as a copywriter for the Leo Burnett advertising agency in Chicago. One day he had an 11 a.m. presentation scheduled in New York City on a Wednesday, and planned to return home on a 5 p.m. flight. Winter winds forced all flights to Chicago to be canceled that night, so he stayed in a hotel. A snowstorm in Chicago the next day continued the delays. The plane he eventually got on ended up being diverted to Denver. Then Phoenix. Hughes didn’t make it back until Monday. Experiencing such a hellish trip might explain how Hughes managed to write the first 60 pages of Planes, Trains and Automobiles in just six hours.

16. THE PLOT OF THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS WAS INSPIRED BY THE COLLISION OF HOLIDAY STORE DECORATIONS.

In the film’s DVD commentary, creator Tim Burton explains that his childhood in Burbank, California was not marked by seasonal changes, so holiday decorations were an especially important factor in the year’s progression. When it came to fall and winter, there was a melding of Halloween and Christmas in stores eager to make the most of both shopping seasons. This, he claimed, planted the seed for his tale of the king of Halloween intruding on Christmas.

17. THE PUPPETS FROM RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER WERE RECENTLY REDISCOVERED.

When they resurfaced, they did so on Antiques Roadshow in 2006. Well, not all of them—just Santa and Rudolph. A woman who worked for Rankin/Bass had stored them in her attic since at least the 1970s. Prior to that, she let her kids play with them. Rudolph lost his red nose, and let’s not even talk about how Santa lost his eyebrows. The puppets were fully restored after their trip to Antiques Roadshow and have since been displayed at the Center for Puppetry Arts. The new owner hopes the puppets can go on tour so more people can enjoy them.

18. ROBERT ZEMECKIS GAVE HIS CHILDHOOD HOME A SHOUT-OUT IN THE POLAR EXPRESS.

When the conductor says “11344 Edbrooke” near the beginning of the film, he’s referring to director Robert Zemeckis’ actual childhood home in Chicago.

19. THE FBI DIDN’T THINK IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE WAS SO WONDERFUL.

In 1947, the FBI issued a memo noting the film as a potential “Communist infiltration of the motion picture industry,” citing its “rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘Scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This, according to these sources, is a common trick used by Communists.”

20. A CHRISTMAS STORY GOT ITS SCIENCE RIGHT.

Mythbusters tested whether it was really possible to get your tongue stuck on a piece of cold metal. Guess what? It is. So don’t triple dog dare your best friend to try it.

21. WILL FERRELL REFUSES TO MAKE A SEQUEL TO ELF.

Though the comedian reprised the role of Ron Burgundy for Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, he flat out rejected the possibility of bringing back Buddy, even after being offered a reported $29 million. In December of 2013, he told USA TODAY, “I just think it would look slightly pathetic if I tried to squeeze back in the elf tights: Buddy the middle-aged elf.” 

22. A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS KILLED THE ALUMINUM TREE BUSINESS.

Aluminum Christmas trees were marketed beginning in 1958 and enjoyed fairly strong sales by eliminating pesky needles and tree sap. But the annual airings of A Charlie Brown Christmas swayed public thinking: In the special, Charlie Brown refuses to get a fake tree. Viewers began to do the same, and the product was virtually phased out by 1969. The leftovers are now collector’s items.

23. HUGH GRANT DID NOT WANT TO DANCE IN LOVE ACTUALLY.

Though Hugh Grant and Richard Curtis had worked together on Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’s Diary, and Four Weddings and a Funeral, they had a deep disagreement on how the Prime Minister should be played. Grant wanted it to be a grounded performance and resented Curtis’s push to make the part more whimsical. This came to a head when shooting the dance number, which Grant refused to rehearse. “He kept on putting it off, and he didn’t like the song—it was originally a Jackson 5 song, but we couldn’t get it—so he was hugely unhappy about it,” Curtis explained. “We didn’t shoot it until the final day and it went so well that when we edited it, it had gone too well, and he was singing along with the words!” It was a tricky thing to cut, but the final result with Girls Aloud’s cover of “Jump (For My Love)” speaks for itself.

24. RICHARD DONNER CONSIDERS SCROOGED THE MOVIE WHERE MURRAY BECAME “AN ACTOR.”

Though Scrooged is mainly a comedy, it concludes with Murray’s character being a changed man, who has to deliver a rather dramatic speech in order to make his character’s transformation clear. But director Richard Donner told Philadelphia Daily News that what they witnessed in that pivotal scene was something much greater: “On the last take I saw something happen to Billy. I saw Billy Murray become an actor.”

25. WHEN NEAL IS THINKING ABOUT DEL ON THE TRAIN IN PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES, STEVE MARTIN DIDN’T KNOW THE CAMERA WAS ROLLING.

In order to get the new ending he wanted, John Hughes and editor Paul Hirsch went back to look for footage they previously didn’t think would be used. Hughes had kept the cameras rolling in between takes on the Chicago train, without his lead’s knowledge, while Martin was thinking about his next lines. Hughes thought Martin had a “beautiful expression” on his face in that unguarded moment.

26. GIZMO AND STRIPE WERE THE SAME CREATURE AT ONE POINT IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF GREMLINS.

It was at the suggestion of producer Steven Spielberg that Gizmo’s role in the film grew. Originally, it’s the cute little Mogwai himself who transforms into Stripe the Gremlin. But Spielberg knew that audiences would want to see as much of Gizmo as possible, so he withdrew the idea so that they would appear as totally separate characters.

27. THE GRINCH’S GREEN COLOR WAS INSPIRED BY A RENTAL CAR.

In the original book, the Grinch is illustrated as black and white, with hints of pink and red. Rumor has it that Chuck Jones was inspired to give the Grinch his iconic coloring after he rented a car that was painted an ugly shade of green.

28. IN REAL LIFE, HARRY AND MARV MAY NOT HAVE SURVIVED KEVIN’S ATTACK IN HOME ALONE.

BB gun shots to the forehead and groin? A steaming hot iron and can of paint to the face? A flaming blowtorch to the scalp? The Wet Bandits endure an awful lot of violence at the hands of a single eight-year-old. So much so that neither one of them should have been walking—let alone conscious—by the end of the night. In 2012, Dr. Ryan St. Clair diagnosed the likely outcome of their injuries at The Week. While a read-through of the entire article is well worth your time, here are a few of the highlights: That iron should have caused a “blowout fracture,” leading to “serious disfigurement and debilitating double vision if not repaired properly.” And the blowtorch? According to Dr. St. Clair, “The skin and bone tissue on Harry’s skull will be so damaged and rotted that his skull bone is essentially dying and will likely require a transplant.” 

29. DOROTHY PARKER WORKED ON THE SCRIPT FOR IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE.

By the time It’s a Wonderful Life made it into theaters, more than a half-dozen people contributed to the screenplay, including some of the most acclaimed writers of the time, such as Dorothy Parker, Dalton Trumbo, Marc Connelly, and Clifford Odets among them.

30. IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC, BAD SANTA IS CALLED SANTA IS A PERVERT. 

Films are known to change names to fit foreign markets. That’s nothing new. However, sometimes its nuance gets a little lost in translation. Case in point: the Czech Republic’s extremely literal, albeit accurate, title. 

31. CHRISTMAS VACATION’S COUSIN EDDIE IS BASED ON A REAL GUY.

Randy Quaid borrowed many of Cousin Eddie’s mannerisms from a guy he knew growing up in Texas, most notably his tendency toward tongue-clicking. But Eddie’s sweater/dickie combo? That was an idea from Quaid’s wife.

32. IT WASN’T UNTIL AFTER FILMING THAT THE PRODUCERS OF MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET GOT PERMISSION TO USE MACY’S AND GIMBELS’ NAMES IN THE MOVIE.

Despite the fact that both Macy’s and Gimbels figure prominently in the story, the studio took a gamble by not getting the companies to sign off before using their names. According to TCM, the studio made the companies aware they were going into production, but refused to share footage until filming was completed. Luckily, both department stores were satisfied with the final product.

33. JEAN SHEPHERD MAKES AN ON-SCREEN APPEARANCE IN A CHRISTMAS STORY.

If the voice of the man who brusquely informs Ralphie and Randy that the line to sit on Santa’s lap begins about two miles further back than they had anticipated sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the voice of the narrator, a.k.a. Adult Ralphie, who also happens to be Jean Shepherd, the man upon whose short stories the film itself is based. The woman behind Shepherd is his wife, Leigh Brown.

34. RANKIN/BASS WEREN’T THE FIRST TEAM TO ANIMATE FROSTY THE SNOWMAN.

In 1954, United Productions of America (UPA) brought Frosty to life in a short cartoon that is little more than an animated music video for a jazzy version of the song. It introduced the characters mentioned in the lyrics visually, from Frosty himself to the traffic cop. The three-minute, black-and-white piece quickly became a holiday tradition in various markets, particularly in Chicago, where it’s been broadcast annually on WGN since 1955.

35. RUDOLPH HAS A SON NAMED ROBBIE.

At least, he does according to the BBC. They developed three cartoons based on Rudolph’s offspring, but the name of Robbie’s famous dad is never actually mentioned. The plotline tells us that the villain of the series, Blitzen, can’t stand to hear Rudolph’s name. In reality, it’s because the BBC couldn’t get permission to use it (or didn’t want to pay to use it).

In 1976, millions of people saw Network and laughed bitterly at its exaggerated, satirical story of a TV news department’s quest for ratings. In 2016, you watch the movie and realize it’s not a satire anymore. Every outrageous thing it predicts has happened. Was screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky a prophet? Did director Sidney Lumet have a crystal ball? Probably not. At any rate, never mind how mad you are, sit down and take these behind-the-scenes details about one of Hollywood’s most timeless satires, which was released 40 years ago today.

1. THE MOVIE GETS LIGHTER AS IT GETS DARKER (IN A MANNER OF SPEAKING).

On the DVD commentary, director Sidney Lumet points out a strategy that he and cinematographer Owen Roizman used to subtly underscore the movie’s themes. In the beginning, scenes that require anything more than natural light get only the bare minimum: dim lights in a barroom, for example. That’s to emphasize the news being independent, unconcerned about beauty, not “showy.” But as the characters become corrupted, we see more and more artificial lighting, as if the movie itself is becoming vain about its appearance. “Even the camera got corrupted as the movie went on,” Lumet said.

2. PETER FINCH GOT THE PART BY READING A NEWSPAPER.

Lumet was convinced he needed an American actor to play the unhinged TV news anchor. Peter Finch, though a fine actor, was inconveniently British. To prove to Lumet that he could get the accent right, he recorded himself reading an entire issue of The New York Times.

3. THEY USED A REAL TV STATION FOR THE NEWS SEQUENCES—IN CANADA.

The whole film was shot in real offices, apartments, etc., rather than on studio sets, mostly in New York. But for the scenes in the TV control room and Howard Beale’s news show, Lumet and company had to go to Toronto, as there were no TV stations closer that could rent themselves out for the two weeks Lumet needed. (There may have been opposition due to the nature of the film, too.)

4. SHOOTING ON LOCATION MEANT THEY HAD TO FAKE SOME RAIN.

The network offices in the film were real upper-floor offices in a Manhattan skyscraper. The un-fakeable view of a real city outside the windows gave the movie authenticity … but it also meant the weather in the movie was dictated by the weather in real life. That’s why there’s a scene where we see Howard Beale walking in the rain and entering the UBS building soaking wet: it had been raining days earlier when they filmed an office scene that took place right before this one, so they had to use rain machines to make it match.

5. IT RESULTED IN THE FIRST POSTHUMOUS OSCAR FOR A PERFORMER.

Peter Finch’s trophy for Best Actor was awarded 10 weeks after his death, and accepted by his widow, Eletha Finch. Several other posthumous Oscars had been won before, but Finch’s was the first in an acting category. (It remained the only one until Heath Ledger’s Best Supporting Actor win for The Dark Knight.)

6. IT ALSO GAVE US THE SHORTEST OSCAR-WINNING PERFORMANCE.

Beatrice Straight, who plays William Holden’s wife, won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress despite appearing onscreen for barely five minutes, almost all of which is in one (very good) scene. Shorter performances have been nominated, but she holds the record among winners.

7. THE WRITER’S IDEAL CAST INCLUDED WALTER MATTHAU, CANDICE BERGEN, AND CARY GRANT.

Paddy Chayefsky’s notes indicated his dream choices, with a few candidates for each major role. As Schumacher, eventually played by William Holden, Chayefsky envisioned Walter Matthau or Gene Hackman. In the Faye Dunaway role, he liked Candice Bergen, Ellen Burstyn, or Natalie Wood. And as the ranting TV newsman Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch), he wanted Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, or Paul Newman (to whom he wrote a letter telling him he was one of “a very small handful of actors” he thought were right for the part). 

8. THERE WERE PROMOTIONAL BUMPER STICKERS.

An R-rated adult satire of TV news doesn’t sound like the sort of movie that would have promotional bumper stickers, but Network did. They read “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore,” and MGM distributed 80,000 of them.

9. WALTER CRONKITE’S DAUGHTER IS IN IT.

Kathy Cronkite, whose father is mentioned by name in the film and could be considered one of its satirical targets, plays Mary Ann Gifford, the Patty Hearst-like revolutionary figure that Faye Dunaway wants to make a reality show about. Ms. Cronkite had done some acting, with small roles in a couple of films, but the added irony of casting her in Network undoubtedly helped Lumet make the decision.

10. THE DIRECTOR TOLD FAYE DUNAWAY TO VIOLATE A BASIC RULE OF ACTING.

Lumet hadn’t worked with Dunaway before, but he knew she was a dedicated perfectionist (to use one of the politer terms people have used to describe working with her). She’d want to dive deep into the character of Diana Christensen and really understand what makes her tick. Lumet headed her off at the pass. When they met to discuss it, he said, “I know the first thing you’re going to ask me. ‘Where’s her vulnerability?’ Don’t ask it. She has none. If you try to sneak it in, I’ll get rid of it in the editing room.” Dunaway understood what Lumet wanted: as a satirical figure, it was OK if Diana wasn’t quite realistically human.

11. DUNAWAY AND HOLDEN HAD WORKED TOGETHER BEFORE—AND DIDN’T LIKE THE EXPERIENCE.

Network’s romantic subplot, with the middle-aged and married Schumacher falling in love with the much younger Diana, would be tricky to pull off anyway. Making it riskier was the fact that Holden loathed Dunaway for her behavior on the set of The Towering Inferno, in which they had both appeared. How was it going to work now that they had to play lovers? As it turned out, everyone behaved professionally. Holden got along well enough with Dunaway, and she said of Holden, “I found him a very sane, lovely man.”

Additional Sources:
Mad as Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies, Dave Itzkoff
Turner Classic Movies

Shopping on Black Friday—or, really, any time during the holiday season—is a good news/bad news kind of endeavor. The good news? The deals are killer! The bad news? So are the lines. If you find yourself standing behind 200 other people who braved the crowds and sacrificed sleep in order to hit the stores early today, here’s one way to pass the time: check out these fascinating facts about shopping through the ages.

1. The oldest customer service complaint was written on a clay cuneiform tablet in Mesopotamia 4000 years ago. (In it, a customer named Nanni complains that he was sold inferior copper ingots.)

2. Before battles, some Roman gladiators read product endorsements. The makers of the film Gladiator planned to show this, but they nixed the idea out of fear that audiences wouldn’t believe it.

3. Like casinos, shopping malls are intentionally designed to make people lose track of time, removing clocks and windows to prevent views of the outside world. This kind of “scripted disorientation” has a name: It’s called the Gruen Transfer.

4. According to a study in Social Influence, people who shopped at or stood near luxury stores were less likely to help people in need.

5. A shopper who first purchases something on his or her shopping list is more likely to buy unrelated items later as a kind of reward.

6. On the Pacific island of Vanuatu, some villages still use pigs and seashells as currency. In fact, the indigenous bank there uses a unit of currency called the Livatu. Its value is equivalent to a boar’s tusk. 

7. Sears used to sell build-your-own homes in its mail order catalogs.

8. The first shopping catalog appeared way back in the 1400s, when an Italian publisher named Aldus Manutius compiled a handprinted catalog of the books that he produced for sale and passed it out at town fairs.

9. The first product ever sold by mail order? Welsh flannel.

10. The first shopping cart was a folding chair with a basket on the seat and wheels on the legs.

11. In the late 1800s in Corinne, Utah, you could buy legal divorce papers from a vending machine for $2.50.

12. Some of the oldest known writing in the world includes a 5000-year-old receipt inscribed on a clay tablet. (It was for clothing that was sent by boat from Ancient Mesopotamia to Dilmun, or current day Bahrain.)

13. Beginning in 112 CE, Emperor Trajan began construction on the largest of Rome’s imperial forums, which housed a variety of shops and services and two libraries. Today, Trajan’s Market is regarded as the oldest shopping mall in the world.

14. The Chinese invented paper money. For a time, there was a warning written right on the currency that all counterfeiters would be decapitated.

15. Halle Berry was named after Cleveland, Ohio’s Halle Building, which was home to the Halle Brothers department store.

16. At Boston University, students can sign up for a class on the history of shopping. (Technically, it’s called “The Modern American Consumer: the Commodification of Boys and Girls.”)

17. Barbra Streisand had a mini-mall installed in her basement. “Instead of just storing my things in the basement, I can make a street of shops and display them,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. (There are photos of it here.)

18. Shopping online is not necessarily greener. A recent study at the University of Delaware showed that “home shopping has a greater impact on the transportation sector than the public might suspect.”

19. Don’t want to waste too much money shopping? Go to the mall in high heels. A 2013 Brigham Young University study discovered that shoppers in high heels made more balanced buying decisions while balancing in pumps.

20. Cyber Monday is not the biggest day for online shopping. The title belongs to November 11, or Singles Day, a holiday in China that encourages singles to send themselves gifts. According to CNN, this year’s event broke all previous records with $17.8 billion in sales.

A heaping handful of these facts came from John Lloyd, John Mitchinson, and James Harkin’s delightful book, 1,234 Quite Interesting Facts to Leave You Speechless.

How do scientists measure the speed of light?

Jack Fraser:

We don’t.

No, seriously, we don’t measure the speed of light (which always refers to the speed in a vacuum). We know exactly what the speed of light is.

It is: c = ^{299,792,458 meters per second.}

And that is absolutely 100 percent accurate, with no measurement errors. The reason we know that that’s exactly the speed of light is that we defined it to be that number.

We then take our definition of a second (the length of time for a certain number of periods of the radiation emitted in hyperfine transitions in caesium-133), and from that we define a meter. So the thing we would be measuring is what a meter is.

We use the speed of light as a fixed velocity, from which all observers can define their own length scale.

To measure the speed of light would require an external definition of what a meter is—and since about the 1970s, we don’t have one.

And if you did want to measure the speed of light using this external distance reference, it’s easy to test: You just release a light pulse at t=0 toward a mirror and then time how long it takes to get back to you. This is the exact principle that radar and sonar work on (although again, they measure the distance knowing the speed—but it works either way round).

Some background:

The meter was originally defined after the French Revolution, in about 1799. It was defined as 1⁄10,000,000 the distance between the equator and the pole.

The “meter” was formally defined from 1889 as the length of a platinum rod, held in a vault in Paris.

From this definition of a meter (and an old definition of a second), we measured (using the mirror-timing method, or based on astronomical observations) the speed of light to be about 299792458, plus a non-integer bit, and error bars from the measurement errors.

Eventually, we realized that having a meter defined by something there was only one of was a bit annoying. So, we attempted to define it in a way that anyone could replicate—without having to refer to a “standard object.”

Therefore, we redefined the meter—using the speed of light.

The official definition of a meter today is: 1⁄299792458 of the distance traveled by light in a vacuum in one second, using the caesium definition of a second.

Therefore, this was exactly equivalent to defining the speed of light to be the number given above.

We chose that number (and not a more convenient number like 300,000,000), because that number changed the definition of a meter by only a fraction of a fraction of a percent—but made everything all nice and integer-y.

A consequence of using this definition is that any attempt to measure the speed of light is cyclical—you must use a “meter” to measure it at some point—which relies on the speed of light.

Therefore what you actually do now, when you “measure” the speed of light (in a vacuum), is actually “measure how accurate your measuring instruments are.”

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