Pedant's Revolt Know What Know-It-Alls Know

Chapter 1 Art, Literature, and Entertainment Harpo Marx was mute Adolph Arthur Marx, known as Harpo Marx, was perfectly able to speak. He was also a talented and self-taught harpist, which is how he got his nickname. In November 2000, BBC Radio Two'sThe Birth of Screen Comedyfeatured Harpo's son Bill Marx explaining why his father suddenly stopped speaking onstage. It came about as a result of a bad review, which said that "his pantomime was wonderful, but when he opened his mouth to speak he ruined the image." According to Bill Marx: "Dad took it to heart and he just stopped talking." You can hear Harpo Marx explaining how he fell off a stool while playing the harp in a brothel at the following website: www.marx-brothers.org/living/harposp.htm Toulouse-Lautrec was a dwarf The French artist Toulouse-Lautrec may have been born with a congenital disorder, but it wasn't achondroplasia (dwarfism) as is commonly believed. Arnold Matthias, author ofHenri de Toulouse-Lautrec,has discovered that it was much more likely to have been "a hereditary bone disease (pyknodysostosis)." The Encyclopaedia Britannicareveals that at the age of thirteen, Toulouse-Lautrec broke his left thighbone, and just over a year later he fractured his right thighbone in a second mishap. The resulting damage caused to his bones left his legs atrophied and made it very difficult for him to walk. According to the findings of geneticist Philip R. Reilly, in his bookAbraham Lincoln's DNA and Other Adventures in Genetics, as an adult Toulouse-Lautrec "stood just shy of 4 feet 11 inches tall." A further misconception surrounding the artist concerns the name "Toulouse." Often regarded as his rst name, Toulouse actually formed part of his surname.The Encyclopaedia Britannicacites his full name as "Henri-Marie-Raymonde de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa." Errol Flynn was Irish or English or American Dashing Hollywood actor Errol Flynn earned acclaim as a great swashbuckler in lms such asThe Adventures of Robin Hood(1938) andThe Sea Hawk(1940). Biographer Jeffrey Meyers reveals in his 2002 bookInherited Riskthat in an effort to perpetuate Flynn's romantic screen image, Hollywood publicity departments portrayed Flynn as a "mad Irishman," an "elegant Englishman," and a "bold American." However, Meyers reliably informs us that Flynn was the son of Australian scientist Professor Theodore Leslie Thomson Flynn, and he was born "on the cold, strange island of Tasmania" in 1909. Therefore Flynn was neither Irish, English, nor American, but Australian by birth. Humpty Dumpty was an egg Humpty Dumpty came to be regarded as an egg after he was drawn as one in Lewis Carroll's 1872 children's book,Through the Looking-Glass. Before that, no one knows for sure exactly what Humpty Dumpty was. InThe Great Plague, writer and historian A. Lloyd Moote suggests that Humpty Dumpty was "the royal cannon . . . that fell from a church wall [St. Mary at the Walls, Colchester, Essex] during a Civil War siege" in the late 1640s. Legend has it that a Parliamentary cannonball hit the tower wall below where the royal cannon was positioned, which caused it to fall off. All the king's horses (the horsemen) and all the king's men (the foot soldiers) tried to raise Humpty Dumpty on to another part of the wall, but failed. Though many believe this story to be true, there's no proven connection between the cannon and the nursery rhyme. Walt Disney is cryonically frozen Film producer, director, and animator Walt DisneyBarham, Andrea is the author of 'Pedant's Revolt Know What Know-It-Alls Know', published 2006 under ISBN 9780385340168 and ISBN 0385340168.