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Thread: Anecdote of the day |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Mitford & Evans
Dame Edith Evans was once informed that the noted writer Nancy Mitford was staying at a friend's villa to finish a book. "Oh, really?" Evans snorted. "What exactly is she reading?" |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Samuel Butler's notebooks reveals that he was not the most comforting of deathbed companions.
"Promise me solemnly," I said to her as she lay on what I believed to be her death bed, "if you find in the world beyond the grave that you can communicate with me—that there is some way in which you can make me aware of your continued existence—promise me solemnly that you will never, never avail yourself of it." She recovered and never, never forgave me. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Soon after the death of a well-known composer, someone who did not keep up with the news asked W S Gilbert what the maestro in question was doing. "He is doing nothing," replied Gilbert.
"Surely he is composing," said the questioner. "On the contrary," said Gilbert, "He is decomposing." |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
The Italian tradition of landscape painting and the beauties of the Italian landscape were the factors that caused Richard Wilson's change of allegiance from portraits to landscapes in mid-career. On a visit to the famous waterfall at Terni, he is said to have exclaimed, "Well-done water—by God!"
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Relativity Explained!
Albert Einstein was often asked to explain the general theory of relativity. "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour," he once declared. "Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity!" ["Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity," Einstein once remarked, "I do not understand it myself anymore."] Einstein, Albert (1879-1955) German-born American physicist, Nobel Prize recipient (Physics, 1921) [noted for his revolutionary special (1905) and general (1915) theories of relativity which revolutionized modern thought on the nature of space and time and formed the theoretical basis for the production of atomic energy] [Sources: New Chronicle, March 14, 1949] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
In the early part of his career, Benny Goodman shared a flat with fellow-musician Jimmy Dorsey. Both played clarinet and saxophone, so there was fierce competition when any job came up. Rather than share the work fairly, they operated on the basic rule that whoever answered the telephone first got the job. Goodman recalls an occasion when there was a tie: "Jimmy got the mouthpiece of the phone and accepted the date. But I had the receiver and knew where the job was."
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
 Albert Einstein: Scientific Revolution Albert Einstein was visited one day by one of his students. "The questions on this year's exam are the same as last year's!" the young man exclaimed. "Yes," Einstein replied, "but this year all the answers are different." [While Isaac Newton's theoretical framework provides excellent results for everyday calculations, at relativistic speeds (those approaching the speed of light) classical equations indeed yield very inaccurate results.] [Trivia: Incredibly, Einstein did not win a Nobel Prize for his work on relativity. He won for his work on the photo-electric effect.] |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Sir Alec Guinness was seldom recognized in public. In one of the stories he told about himself, Guinness checked his hat and coat at a restaurant and asked for a claim ticket. "It will not be necessary," the attendant said. Guinness later retrieved his garments, put his hand in the coat pocket and found a slip of paper on which was written, "Bald with glasses."
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Constipation
Shortly after George Gershwin began undergoing psychoanalysis, he was asked by a skeptical Oscar Levant whether it was helping his constipation. "No," Gershwin replied, "but now I understand why I have it!" |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
In the early days of his career,Erle Stanley Gardner churned out stories for pulp magazines at the rate of 200,000 words a month. As he was paid by the word, the length of the story was more important to him than its quality, and he tended to draw the maximum potential from every incident. His villains, for example, were always killed by the last bullet in the gun. Gardner's editor once asked him why his heroes were always so careless with their first five shots. "At three cents a word," replied Gardner, "every time I say bang in the story I get three cents. If you think I'm going to finish the gun battle while my hero has got fifteen cents' worth of unexploded ammunition in his gun, you're nuts."
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