Did you know … airline CEOs settled a dispute with an arm-wrestling match?

Time for that honored tradition, my annual letter to Santa Claus!

Dear Santa,

To tell you the truth, I don’t want anything special for Christmas this year.

I know, based my past history, that’s pretty amazing, but at my age … well, I already have everything I need and a great deal of what I want.

So if you had anything specific for me, please leave it under the tree of a deserving soul who could use it better than I.

If you stop by anyway, I’ll leave out the milk and cookies.

Love,

Jack

Now, on to the trivia!

Did you know …

… you may have practiced stultiloquence?  We all have, I’d guess.  Stultiloquence means silly or senseless talk, or babble.  (Sounds like the language of most politicians, if you ask me.)

… when a French queen got married, her husband wasn’t even there?  Marie Antoinette (1755-1793) was part of an arranged marriage to the man who would become King Louis XVI of France (1754-1793) as a way to seal the union between her native Austria and France.  The wedding took place on April 19, 1770, but Louis wasn’t there; rather, Marie’s brother Ferdinand (1754-1806) stood in for the groom in a proxy wedding in Vienna.  Louis and Marie held a ceremonial wedding on May 16 of that year at Versailles.  (But which day was their anniversary?)

… a President of the United States was an honored guest at a circus wedding?  On February 10, 1863, circus dwarf “General Tom Thumb” (born Charles Sherwood Stratton, 1838-1883) married another circus dwarf, Lavinia Warren (1842-1919) in a production staged for the “Greatest Show on Earth” by circus promoter Phineas T. Barnum (1810-1891).  More than 2,000 guests attended the wedding, including President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), his wife Mary (1818-1882), and Lincoln’s entire Cabinet.  The ceremony was dubbed “The Fairy Wedding” by the press.  (No word on what the couple called it.)

… two airline CEOs settled a dispute over an ad slogan with an arm wrestling match?  In 1992, both Southwest Airlines and Stevens Aviation were using the same advertising slogan:  “Just Plane Smart.”  Rather than having to resort to lawsuits or other messy means of settling the dispute, the chief executive officer of Stevens, Kurt Herwald (born 1954), playfully challenged the CEO of Southwest, Herb Kelleher (1931-2019), to an arm wrestling match.  The event took place in Dallas, and Herwald beat Kelleher in a two-out-of-three match.  However, Herwald gave the slogan to Kelleher anyway, in exchange for a $5000 donation to Herwald’s favorite charity and the dropping of any legal challenges.  (Beats pistols at ten paces any day of the week.)

… popcorn became a popular movie snack because of World War II?  During the war, sugar shortages made candy hard to come by and expensive, sometimes too expensive for theater owners.  So the owners turned to popcorn, which was cheaper, easier to prepare, and apparently sold like hotcakes – so much so that popcorn is now the best-selling movie snack.  (Now, with the price of butter …)

… Eve (of Adam and Eve) is depicted as having blonde hair for a reason?  During the Middle Ages, women with blonde hair were viewed with suspicion, and by the middle of the 14th Century that suspicion had even worked its way into paintings set in the Garden of Eden.  Eve was given flowing blonde locks that marked her as an evil temptress.  (They don’t print enough money to make me comment on this.)

… the kiss at the end of a wedding ceremony has a historical precedent?  People who study such things have said that the kiss comes from ancient Rome, where tradition had a kiss used to sign a contract.  (Hard to take that back.)

… some of the sets of a classic science fiction movie are now a tourist destination?  In the desert of Tunisia, in Africa, the sets of the planet Tatooine from Star Wars (1977) were built, used, and then abandoned after filming was complete.  But the desert preserved the sets, and now they are a popular tourist destination in that country.  You can even stay the night in Luke Skywalker’s home.  (The Force may, indeed, be with you.)

… the movie Jaws inspired a widespread fear and hunting of sharks?  The 1975 film, which (if you didn’t already know) was about a monster great white shark attacking swimmers at a New England beach resort, caused such a backlash against sharks that they have been intensely hunted ever since.  Several nations have, in fact, enacted steps to protect sharks.  Additional trivia note:  In a stunning twist of irony, the man who wrote the novel Jaws, Peter Benchley (1940-2006), was a strong supporter of shark conservation.

… a World War II UFO incident was kept from the public by orders at the highest levels?  It was not until 2010 that documents were released showing that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965) ordered a report of a UFO incident from the early 1940s involving an unidentified pilot of the Royal Air Force to be sealed.  Churchill said he was concerned the report would create a mass panic, and made the report secret after conferring with General Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969).  The report itself has still not been released.  (The Little Green Men were pleased.)

Now … you know!