I normally do not go to the trouble of place cards at our Thanksgiving meal. There is usually only 4 of us and we all know each other…lol. But I did see this idea for a place card that I thought would just be an interesting “pumpkin” craft.
The supplies list is simple: Styrofoam balls, yarns, sticks, craft paint and a glue gun.
Wrap yarn around the ball until covered, then glue the yarn end to the bottom.
Cut a leaf out of paper; add a name and glue to the top. Enjoy!!
Happy Election Day! Elections do not always run smoothly, not here, not anywhere I’m guessing. Livescience.com had an interesting article on 6 of the strangest presidential elections in our history.
From livescience.com:
Political news would have you thinking the 2016 presidential election was the nastiest, most contentious and most important our nation ever faced. However, in the annals of American elections, that one barely registers at least for sheer strangeness.
In fact, electoral politics have always been a down-and-dirty business, starting at least as early as 1800, when our founding fathers proved themselves adept at bitter battles. Other elections have featured nasty accusations, bizarre happenstance and even the death of one of the candidates.
Read on for six of the strangest presidential elections in U.S. history.
An unexpected upset: 2016
The full history of the 2016 presidential election has yet to be written, but it seems pretty certain to be one for the history books.
First, there was the raucous primary season, in which 17 Republican candidates vied on a crowded stage for the nomination, the largest presidential primary field in U.S. history. Former reality-TV star and real estate mogul Donald Trump dominated headlines from the beginning, often with Tweets and statements that seemed outright bizarre. He insinuated that fellow Republican Ted Cruz’s father might have had something to do with the assassination of John F. Kennedy and at one point defended the size of his penis in a debate. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton faced an unexpected challenge from Vermont senator Bernie Sanders.
Things did not get less weird after Trump and Clinton clinched their nominations. Clinton struggled against questions about her use of a private email server during her time as Secretary of State. The issue seemed settled in July when the Federal Bureau of Investigation recommended against criminal charges, but reared its head again less than two weeks before the election when the FBI announced that it was reviewing potentially new evidence found on the computer of Anthony Weiner, the husband of Clinton’s close aide Huma Abedin, during an investigation into whether Weiner had been sexting an underage girl. Yes, it almost makes that Andrew Jackson-John Quincy Adams contest look like a walk in the park, huh? Just two days before the election, the FBI cleared Clinton again.
Meanwhile, Trump refused to release his tax returns during the campaign, something that every candidate since Gerald Ford has done as a matter of course. He was widely criticized for racist remarks, such as questioning whether the “Mexican” judge in charge of his fraud case (oh, there’s a fraud case — a presidential first) could be impartial. (The judge was an American citizen of Mexican heritage.)
The wildest bombshell of all came in early October, when a tape surfaced of Trump having a vulgar discussion about grabbing women by their private parts and trying to seduce a married woman. Leading up to the election, the polls were variable, but most pundits expected a clean Clinton victory. Instead, as election night ticked on, the electoral votes piled up for Trump. He ended up taking 290 electoral votes to Clinton’s 232, winning the presidency. But in a final twist, the popular vote tally went to Clinton, only the fifth time in U.S. history the electoral and popular votes haven’t matched.
The very first one: 1788-1789
But let’s go back now to the first presidential election in our nation’s history, which was one-of-a-kind in that it was literally no contest. Organized political parties had yet to form, and George Washington ran unopposed. His victory is the only one in the nation’s history to feature 100 percent of the Electoral College vote.
The real question in 1788 was who would become vice president. At the time, this office was awarded to the runner-up in the electoral vote (each elector cast two votes to ensure there would be a runner-up.) Eleven candidates made a play for the vice-presidency, but John Adams came out on top.
It’s a tie: 1800
Electoral politics got serious in 1800. Forget the hand-holding peace of George Washington’s first run — political parties were in full swing by this time, and they battled over high-stakes issues (taxes, states’ rights and foreign policy alignments). Thomas Jefferson ran as the Democratic-Republican candidate and John Adams as the Federalist.
At the time, states got to pick their own election days, so voting ran from April to October (and you thought waiting for the West Coast polls to close was frustrating). Because of the complicated “pick two” voting structure in the Electoral College, the election ended up a tie between Jefferson and his vice-presidential pick, Aaron Burr. One South Carolina delegate was supposed to give one of his votes on another candidate, so as to arrange for Jefferson to win and Burr to come in second. The plan somehow went wrong, and both men ended up with 73 electoral votes.
That sent the tie-breaking vote to the House of Representatives, not all of whom were on board with a Jefferson presidency and Burr vice-presidency. Seven tense days of voting followed, but Jefferson finally pulled ahead of Burr. The drama triggered the passage of the 12th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which stipulates that the Electoral College pick the president and vice-president separately, doing away with the runner-up complications.
Things get nasty: 1828
Anything involving dueling war veteran Andrew Jackson was liable to get dirty, but the 1828 electoral battle between Jackson and John Quincy Adams took the cake for mudslinging. Jackson had lost out to Adams in 1824 after Speaker of the House Henry Clay cast a tie-breaking vote. When Adams chose Clay as his Secretary of State, Jackson was furious and accused the two of a “corrupt bargain.”
And that was before the 1828 election even got started, when Adams was accused of pimping out an American girl to a Russian Czar. Jackson’s wife, Rachel, was called a “convicted adulteress,” because she had, years earlier, married Jackson before finalizing her divorce to her previous husband. Rachel died after Jackson won the election, but before his inauguration; at her funeral, Jackson blamed his opponents’ bigamy accusations. “May God Almighty forgiver her murderers, as I know she forgave them,” Jackson said. “I never can.”
To round out a rough election, Jackson’s inauguration party (open to the public) turned into a mob scene, with thousands of well-wishers crowding into the White House. “Ladies fainted, men were seen with bloody noses, and such a scene of confusion took place as is impossible to describe,” wrote Margaret Smith, a Washington socialite who attended the party.
Running against a corpse: 1872
In 1872, incumbent Ulysses S. Grant had an easy run for a second term — because his opponent died before the final votes were cast.
Grant had the election in the bag even before his opponent, Horace Greeley, died, however. The incumbent won 286 electoral votes compared with Greeley’s 66 after election day. But on Nov. 29, 1872, before the Electoral College votes were in, Greeley died and his electoral votes were split among other candidates. Greeley remains the only presidential candidate to die before the election was finalized.
The hanging chads: 2000
Democrat Al Gore beat Republican George W. Bush in the popular vote in the 2000 election, but the electoral vote was a close, and controversial, call. As election night drew to a close, New Mexico, Oregon and Florida remained too close to call.
It would be Florida that determined the winner, but not until the Supreme Court weighed in. For a month, the outcome of the election remained in recount limbo, as Gore’s campaign contested the vote count in several close counties and the Florida and U.S. Supreme Courts engaged in a tug-of-war over whether to halt the recounts or extend their deadlines. Among the challenges faced by the hand counts: determining whether semi-attached scraps of paper, or “hanging chads,” on punch-card ballots should count as votes.
Ultimately, on Dec. 12, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that a statewide recount was unconstitutional, alongside a further decision that the smaller recounts could not go forward. The decision meant the original vote counts stood, giving the election to Bush.
SOURCE: LIVESCIENCE.COM
Today is the anniversary of the discovery of King Tut’s tomb and history.com had a wonderful article detailing just some of the amazing artifacts found in the tomb.
From history.com:
It was one hundred years ago on November 4, 1922, that British archaeologist Howard Carter and an Egyptian team discovered an ancient stairway hidden for more than 3,000 years beneath the sands of Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. Twenty-two days later, Carter descended those stairs, lit a candle, poked it through a hole in a blocked doorway and waited as his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light.
“[D]etails of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold, everywhere the glint of gold,” wrote Carter. “I was struck dumb with amazement.” When Carter’s patron, Lord Carnarvon, anxiously asked if Carter could see anything, the stunned archeologist replied, “Yes, wonderful things.”
Carter and the Egyptian team had found the lost tomb of Tutankhamun, the boy king of Egypt, who was buried in a small and overlooked tomb in 1323 B.C. King Tut may not have been a mighty ruler like Ramesses the Great, whose tomb complex covers more than 8,000 square feet of underground chambers, but unlike Ramesses and other pharaohs, King Tut’s treasures hadn’t been looted or damaged by floods. They were nearly intact.
A century later, the discovery of King Tut’s tomb, which contained more than 5,000 priceless artifacts, remains the greatest archeological find of all time.
“I don’t think there’s anything that can hold a candle to it in terms of outright richness, and in terms of the cultural and archeological information that it contains,” says Tom Mueller, a journalist who wrote a National Geographic article about Carter’s historic discovery and the opening of Cairo’s Grand Egyptian Museum, the new home for King Tut’s treasures.
Most people would recognize the iconic objects from the collection, like King Tut’s solid gold coffin and funerary mask, but even the smallest items—alabaster unguent bowls, King Tut’s walking stick or his sandals—are “works of supreme artistry,” says Mueller, who spent days with museum staff as they restored King Tut’s artifacts for display. “It’s no wonder that these treasures have branded themselves in the international consciousness since 1922.”
Here are nine fascinating artifacts recovered from King Tut’s tomb, from the biggest finds to some hidden treasures.
1 An Iron Dagger
On the surface, this iron-bladed dagger doesn’t look like a spectacular find, but King Tut died several centuries before the start of the Iron Age, when advances in technology allowed for the forging of iron and steel from mineral deposits.
During King Tut’s time, the few iron objects on record were made from metals that literally fell from the heavens in the form of meteorites. “There were theories that the iron dagger was a gift from a foreign king who would have presented it as a ‘gift from the gods,’” says Mueller, “as an omen of something powerful. That really got my attention.” A solid-gold dagger with an ornately decorated sheath was also found in the folds of King Tut’s mummy placed ceremoniously on his right thigh.
2 A Scarf with a Surprise
Inside a small wooden chest made from ebony and cedar, Carter and his team found a gold-plated leopard head, and a gorgeous pair of ceremonial objects known as the pharaoh’s crook and flail, always depicted as held across his chest. But alongside these priceless items was something conspicuously commonplace—a knotted up linen scarf.
When the archeologists untangled the scarf, they found several gold rings inside. But how did they get in there? From other clues, it became clear to Carter that King Tut’s tomb hadn’t remained completely untouched. Thieves must have broken in soon after the tomb was sealed and made off with the smallest and most valuable items they could carry, like gold jewelry. Unlike other pharaonic tombs, which had been fully ransacked over the centuries, King Tut’s tomb “had only been lightly looted,” says Mueller. The scarf packed with gold rings was evidence that the thieves may have even been caught in the act or scared off by guards and left their loot behind. It was hastily packed into a box when the tomb was resealed, not to be opened for another 3,200 years.
3 A Game of Chance and Fate
A senet gaming board from Tutankhamun’s tomb, 14th century BC. Made from wood veneered with ebony and inlaid with ivory. From the collection of the Egyptian National Museum, Cairo, Egypt. Egyptians played board games and one of King Tut’s favorites (judging from the fact that there were four sets in his tomb) was a game called senet. Historians don’t agree on the exact rules of the checkers-like game, but it involved moving your game piece through a series of 30 squares by throwing knucklebones or casting sticks. The Egyptian Book of the Dead, which details the journey of the soul through the afterlife, says that playing senet is a popular pastime for the deceased. Eternal life may even have been at stake. “There’s evidence that it was a game played against the god of death,” says Mueller, “so it’s also a game of fate.”
4 King Tut’s Lost Daughters
One of the reasons why King Tut fell through the cracks of Egyptian history was that his reign was so short (around a decade) and he didn’t leave behind any heirs or offspring. But thanks to Carter’s discovery, we know that King Tut’s wife Ankhesenamun—whom he married at age 12—bore two stillborn daughters who were buried in their father’s tomb.
Inside an unmarked box, Carter’s team found two tiny wooden coffins, each bearing a gilded inner coffin that contained the mummified remains of King Tut’s daughters. The fetuses appeared to be 25 and 37 weeks old and died from unknown causes.
Mueller says that there’s a tendency to paint King Tut’s tomb as macabre, given the fascination with things like King Tut’s curse. “Yes, this is a tomb with several dead people in it,” says Mueller, “but in a way, the Egyptian view of the afterlife—their obsession with it—softens all of that. It becomes death as a work of art. King Tut’s preparation for the afterlife becomes a museum.” Archeologists also found a lock of King Tut’s grandmother’s hair in the tomb, which may have been a family keepsake.
5 Gold Sandals
In one of the crowded antechambers, Carter found a painted wooden chest that he described as “one of the greatest artistic treasures of the tomb… we found it hard to tear ourselves away from it.” Inside were sequin-lined linens, an alabaster headrest and a very special pair of sandals. These were King Tut’s golden court sandals, ornately decorated footwear that he’s seen wearing in some of the statuettes found in the tomb. Made from wood and overlaid with bark, leather and gold, the eye-catching parts are the soles of the sandals, which depict the nine traditional enemies of Egypt. That wasn’t an accident. “He’d be symbolically walking on their faces all day,” says Mueller.
6 A Small Army of Servants
Thousands of years before King Tut, at the dawn of Egyptian civilization, powerful rulers were buried with their royal servants, who sacrificed their lives to serve their master in the eternities. By the late Middle Kingdom, human servants were replaced by small figurines called ushabti, who were inscribed with a magical spell to forever do the deceased’s bidding in the afterlife. For the average Egyptian burial, one or two ushabti were placed in the deceased’s tomb. In King Tut’s tomb, there were 413 ushabti, a small army of foot-tall figurines made from various materials including faience, a glass-like pottery with striking colors. Some of King Tut’s ushabti held copper tools like yokes, hoes and picks to do manual labor for the pharaoh in the afterlife.
7 King Tut’s Undergarments
Not every treasure in King Tut’s tomb was made of gold. The young pharaoh, who died at 19 after just nine or 10 years on the throne, was also buried with some of his clothing. Among the ancient textiles found in the tomb were 100 sandals, 12 tunics, 28 gloves, 25 head coverings, four socks (with a separate pocket for the big toe, so they could be worn with sandals) and 145 loincloths, triangular-shaped pieces of woven linen that both men and women wore as underwear. “I really like his underwear,” says Mueller. “King Tut was kitted out for the afterlife, right down to the undergarments. They’re quite spectacular, little loincloth-like things. They’re incredible.” King Tut’s undergarments were a step above non-royal underwear. According to textile historians, the weave of an ordinary Egyptian linen loincloth had 37 to 60 threads per inch, but King Tut’s underwear had 200 threads per inch, giving the cloth a silk-like softness.
8 A Dazzling Resting Place for the King’s Organs
The gilded shrine of canopic jars or canopic chest from King Tut’s tomb. This detail shows the goddess Selket. During the mummification process, Egyptian embalmers carefully removed the lungs, liver, intestines and stomach from the body, embalmed the organs, and placed them in vessels called Canopic jars. The final resting place for King Tut’s organs was one of the most exquisite objects in the entire tomb. Carter found Tut’s Canopic jars stored inside an alabaster chest, itself housed within a magnificent wooden funerary shrine covered in gold leaf. “Facing the doorway stood the most beautiful monument that I have ever seen,” wrote Carter, “so lovely that it made one gasp with wonder and admiration.”
What really struck Mueller when he saw the golden shrine in person were the four Egyptian goddesses of death guarding the young pharaoh’s embalmed organs on all sides. The goddesses Isis, Nephthys, Neith and Selket are depicted in naturalistic poses with form-fitting dresses that inspired flapper fashion in the 1920s. “Here are these gorgeous goddesses looking over his innards for all eternity,” says Mueller.
9 The Iconic Golden Mask
For Carter, the greatest prize among the 5,000 objects in the tomb was the mummy of King Tut himself. But to get to the mummy, Carter and his team had to slowly and painstakingly work through a series of nesting shrines and coffins that were never meant to be opened by human hands.
First there were four box-like golden shrines, each slightly smaller than the last. Inside the last shrine was the heavy stone sarcophagus. Once the stone lid was removed, it revealed the first of three coffins. The first coffin, as well the second one nested inside of it, were wooden coffins overlaid with gold foil and designed to look like the god Osiris lying in repose. The third and final coffin was a jaw-dropper: a solid gold casket weighing 296 pounds also depicting Osiris with the ceremonial crook and flail across his chest.
With trembling hands, Carter opened the golden coffin and found himself face to face with the iconic funerary mask of Tutankhamun. The 22-pound, solid-gold mask rested directly on the head and shoulders of King Tut’s mummy, and portrayed the handsome young king as Osiris, complete with the pharaonic false beard. “The golden mask of King Tut is probably the best-known and most widely recognized archeological treasure ever,” says Mueller. King Tut’s mummy, when carefully removed and unwrapped, contained 143 different amulets, bracelets, necklaces and other priceless artifacts among its ancient bandages.
SOURCE: HISTORY.COM
I know, I know Thanksgiving isn’t for weeks yet, but hear me out. You’ve got family and friends coming over for dinner, you’re busy in the kitchen making a magnificent feast, and everyone keeps wandering into the kitchen to “see what smells so good”. They’re family, they’re friends, they’re in the way! So, plan ahead to make these cute and simple appetizers to keep them in another room while you perform your magic!
Let’s start with the basic Turkey appetizer. There are dozens of varieties and all are easy to make. The most difficult part is the arranging.
If you have some time, you can attempt a pizza dough cornucopia to fill with veggies, fruits, breadsticks.
(Short version instructions: create a foil cone; wrap slices of pizza crust dough around the cone overwrapping edges; brush with an egg wash and bake.)
For a lighter fare, you could make acorns!
These adorable acorns are just 3 ingredients: use some melted chocolate chips (or peanut butter, your choice) to attach a mini nutterbutter cookie to the flat end of a Hershey kiss. Let them set a few minutes, then use more melted chocolate to attach a mini chocolate chip (or peanut butter chip) to the other end. Done!
Another easy appetizer is a pilgrim hat!
Any type of chocolate cookie will work—a plain chocolate wafer or fudge striped cookie will do. With a bit of frosting attach the chocolate side to a mini peanut butter cup, add some frosting details, and you’re done!
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Today is David Schwimmer’s birthday—Ross from Friends. People had an interesting article about things we may not know about the hit series.
From People:
No one really liked the theme song and opening sequence
The iconic theme song, “I’ll Be There for You,” accompanied by the six friends splashing around in a fountain and settling together on the burnt orange couch, has become synonymous with Friends. However, in a 2016 interview with BBC, Aniston shared that the cast of the show didn’t necessarily feel as fondly toward it. “No one was really a big fan of that theme song,” she said. She added that she found it “a little odd” that they were all dancing in the fountain.
Schwimmer originally didn’t want to play Ross
Though the role of Ross was created with Schwimmer in mind, he didn’t originally feel passionate about the part, according to former PEOPLE writer Kelsey Miller’s 2018 book I’ll Be There For You: The One About Friends. Co-creator David Crane said Schwimmer had had a negative experience working on a TV project and had resigned to a career in theater. Crane recalled during the 2021 reunion special having to “beg” and “beseech” Schwimmer to join the cast. “[We] tried to get David, [but] David had quit television,” he said. “He had a miserable experience doing another show. He moved back to Chicago to just do theater.”Perry also almost didn’t play Chandler, as he had another pilot booked.
The creators originally wanted Cox to play Rachel
During Friends: The Reunion, Crane revealed they had a “hard time” finding the actress to play Monica, originally wanting Cox to play Rachel. “We met with Courteney Cox and she explained to us why she didn’t think she was a Rachel and that she, herself, was more of a Monica — and she was right,” co-creator Marta Kauffman added. “Courteney brought this incredible joy to the character.” “Everything Courteney brought to it made Monica so much richer than what we had originally intended,” said Crane.
The cast went to a casino before the first live taping to celebrate their last night of “anonymity”
Having a feeling that the show would blow up, director James Burrows took the young cast out to dinner in Las Vegas the night before the pilot premiered. “This is your last shot at anonymity,” he told them, according to Miller’s book. He added that they wanted to “do whatever it was that hot young television actors were supposed to do when they flew into Vegas on private jets,” sharing that they wrote Burrows checks so they could have money to gamble with.
‘Friends’ takes the credit for making the term “friend zone” popular
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Now well-known in pop culture, the term “friend zone” refers to when a person does not reciprocate someone’s feelings but, rather, sees them only as a friend. While the phrase didn’t take off until the 2010s, it was originally coined by Joey in the season 1 episode “The One with the Blackout.” He tells Ross that he has waited too long to confess his feelings for Rachel and is now certifiably in the “friend zone.”
Monica was supposed to end up with Joey, not Chandler
While Monica was originally supposed to end up with Joey, the actors’ chemistry changed the outcome of the show. After Monica slept with Chandler in the season 4 finale of the show, the creators knew that relationship was there to stay. “When Monica and Chandler went to bed together the first time in London, the original plan wasn’t that they were going to then become a couple for the rest of the series,” Crane told Entertainment Weekly in September 2019. He added, “It was one of those things where originally the thought was, ‘Oh it was just a big, quick, funny mistake and how are they going to get out of that?’ Then the more we explored it, the more stories it provided and it really reinvigorated the show.” The audience also reacted so strongly, screaming loudly, that the creators knew they hit gold.
Set decorator Greg Gande found the iconic orange couch in a basement
Gande searched far and wide for a couch that would be the central meeting spot for the friends at their favorite café, Central Perk. He eventually found the perfect fit — a burnt orange, slightly torn couch — in the basement storage area at the Warner Bros. studio in Burbank, California. “Literally in the back corner, shoved under another piece, was this sofa with beautiful carved wood,” he told USA Today in September 2019. He recalled that he had to spruce it up before it could go on air. “I remember explicitly, there were network and studio notes because there was a rip in the back of the sofa and it was a little tattered on the arms,” Gande said. “I had to redo some of the fringe.”
Perry’s favorite episode was one where he spoke the least
Though Chandler was known for his signature sarcastic humor, Perry’s favorite episode was ironically one in which he had little dialogue. In season 1’s “The One with the Blackout,” Chandler is stuck in a vestibule with Victoria’s Secret model Jill Goodacre during a city-wide power outage. “The interesting thing about that episode was I didn’t speak much; it was mostly in voiceover,” Perry told Entertainment Weekly in 2004. “We prerecorded what I said, and I had to react.” He added in the interview that the fact that he was acting opposite Goodacre didn’t hurt.” Let’s face it: Jill Goodacre is hot, so it wasn’t that difficult,” he said, adding, “I [remember] spitting my gum out, and it stuck to the wall. It was my choice to just stay frozen in fear and embarrassment.”
The episode in which Ross and Rachel consummate their relationship has a unique title
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Ross and Rachel consummate their relationship for the first time in season 2, with the episode aptly titled, “The One Where Ross and Rachel…You Know.” It is the only episode to include two characters’ name in the title. Ross and Rachel’s on-and-off relationship was a staple throughout the show, leaving off with the two of them finally getting together after a decade in which they welcomed a child and dated multiple times.
Perry had a crush on Aniston before the show started
When Perry first met Aniston, two years before the show started, he immediately had a crush on her, he told PEOPLE in October 2022. “There was such severe indifference from her that I ended it,” he said jokingly. “I think everybody probably figured it out. I never said anything. And I hid it. But then she married Brad Pitt, and I was like, ‘I don’t think I have a chance here.’ “
Aniston and Schwimmer had crushes on each other
During the reunion special, Schwimmer revealed that he and Aniston both had feelings for one another at different points of the show, but nothing ever came of it. “I mean, the first season, I had a major crush on Jen. At some point, we were crushing hard on each other,” Schwimmer said. “But it was like two ships passing, because one of us was always in a relationship and we never crossed that boundary. We respected that.” Aniston added, “Honestly, I remember saying one time to David, ‘It’s going to be such a bummer if the first time you and I actually kiss is going to be on national television.’ Sure enough, first time we kissed was in that coffee shop. So we just channeled all of adoration and love for each other into Ross and Rachel.”
The cast hated working with Marcel, the monkey
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A staple in the show, Marcel was Ross’ pet for points in the first two seasons. However, the cast revealed during the reunion that they hated working with the monkey — especially Schwimmer. “I love animals. I love primates. I have nothing against animals, I’m an animal lover. However, here was my problem,” he said. He continued, “The monkey — obviously, it was trained and it had to hit its mark and do its thing right at the perfect time— but what inevitably began to happen was we would all have choreographed bits kind of timed out, and it would get messed up because the monkey didn’t do its job right. So, we’d have to reset, we’d have to go again because the monkey didn’t get it right.”
Bruce Willis starred on ‘Friends’ after losing a bet to Perry
Friends had a number of famous guest stars, including Bruce Willis, who worked alongside Perry in the 2000 comedy The Whole Nine Yards. “Bruce hadn’t been sure the film would work at all, and I’d bet him it would — if he lost, he had to do a guest spot on ‘Friends,’ ” Perry wrote in his 2022 memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. The movie went on to become the no. 1 movie in the U.S. for three straight weeks, leading Willis to appear in Friends for three episodes in season 6 as Paul Stevens, the father of a college girl that Ross dated. He also had a brief relationship with Rachel. Willis’ performance even earned him an Emmy for outstanding guest actor in a comedy series.
Gunther’s bleached hair was an accident
James Michael Tyler, who died in October 2021, originally was only on the show to play an unnamed barista to make the café look more realistic. However, over time, he built out his character, Gunther, to have a personality and undying love for Rachel, no matter how bad of a coworker she was. He became known especially for his eccentric, dramatically bleached blonde hair — which turned out to be a result of an accident. “I had a friend who wanted to be a hairdresser and wanted to practice bleaching someone’s hair, so I offered what hair I had left at the time,” Tyler told BuzzFeed in 2014. “It came out white and that was the night before I was called in for the first day of shooting the first season.” “I bleached my hair every week for 10 years,” Tyler said. “I did it myself after a while. It was just easier instead of coming in early to do it. I would just do it the night before.”
The turkey in “The One With All the Thanksgivings” was not real
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In one of the most beloved Friends episodes, the six friends each shared their worst Thanksgiving memory. For Joey, it was when he got his head stuck in the turkey Monica was preparing as a meal — that Monica later got stuck in herself. Luckily for the cast, the turkey was a prop. “That is absolutely not a real turkey,” Crane told Entertainment Weekly in November 2016. “I think there are so many health issues about actually putting a turkey on someone’s head.” “We wanted — I especially wanted — a real turkey. Just because I wanted Matt to have to put his head into a turkey,” writer Greg Malins added. “The prop department did their due diligence, but it didn’t exist.” He continued, “The biggest turkey ever for sale is not big enough to fit a human head. I remember them coming to us and saying, ‘We have to build it.’ So we made it out of foam.”
Kudrow’s pregnancy was written into the show
When Kudrow discovered she was pregnant near the end of season 3, she told creators Kauffman and Crane right away. Crane explained he hadn’t wanted to do the classic TV stint of hiding her behind objects for the duration of her pregnancy, so decided to go against the grain and write the pregnancy into the show. The two came up with the idea of Phoebe going through IVF to become pregnant with her brother’s children and serve as a surrogate for him and his wife. However, when they first presented the idea to Kudrow, she was hesitant. “It’s really early on. I understand that this serves the story really well, but if, God forbid, something happens to my pregnancy, I’m still stuck playing a pregnant woman,” the creators recalled her saying, per Vulture. Kauffman and Crane assured her they could easily switch the storyline should anything go wrong, and they went forth.
The show was filmed in front of a live audience that would sometimes have to be swapped out if filming went on too long
In an effort to always stay true to their audience, Friends filmed in front of a live crowd, adapting and changing the lines to fit what led to the best reactions. The creators didn’t shy away from continuing to make tweaks as often as necessary, sometimes leading shoots to go on as late as 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. When they went for so long, they would switch out the audiences to keep them as fresh as possible, per Vulture. “They would sometimes laugh at setups to jokes, ’cause they knew the characters so well. They were ahead of us, more than not,” Kauffman said.
Kudrow asked Perry’s permission to do a scene the way Chandler would
Kudrow recounted in a 2020 Actors on Actors Variety special with Aniston that one of her favorite scenes to shoot was when her character discovered Monica and Chandler were hooking up while she was at Ross’. Phoebe saw them start undressing across the street (the apartments faced each other) and had a drastic reaction — which she said she asked Perry’s permission for as it was inspired by his sarcastic humor. “[I’m like], ‘My eyes! My eyes!’ That’s how Matthew Perry said things. I actually asked his permission before we shot it,” she said. Kudrow continued, “I was like, ‘I don’t know if you’ve seen the rehearsals, but I’m saying ‘My eyes! My eyes!’ the way you do. So I just need to know that that’s OK with you. If not, I’ll say it a different way.’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, go for it.’ “
Kudrow did not enjoy playing Ursula
Throughout the show, viewers got to know Phoebe’s estranged identical twin sister, Ursula. However, as Kudrow didn’t actually have a twin, she played both roles, with her real life sister stepping in as a body double. Director Kevin Bright told Entertainment Weekly in September 2019 that Kudrow actually disliked shooting the scenes, especially having her sister in the role. “Lisa really did not have a good time doing them,” he said. “She did not like acting with a double, and in a way she might have made it more difficult for herself because her double was her actual sister, [Helena].”
There were a lot of people interested in playing Ugly Naked Guy
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Perhaps one of the most iconic — yet nameless! — Friends characters, Ugly Naked Guy made a number of off-screen appearances in the show as the unattractive nude man in the apartment across from Monica and Rachel’s. The friends would often see him across the street going about his day, in the nude. Though he was mainly not shown, in the few instances he appeared on camera without even his face visible, the crew admitted they had no issue finding someone to play him. “Surprisingly, there are people who want to play ‘Ugly Naked Guy.’ They do,” Kauffman told EW. “It’s just [shot] from the back, they don’t have any lines, it wasn’t an audition — it was just about, physically, what do we imagine?”
SOURCE: PEOPLE.COM
I love a good mystery, don’t you? I found this article on Mental Floss and wanted to share!
From Mentalfloss.com:
1 Where is Cleopatra’s tomb?
Finding the burial place of Cleopatra VII, who is usually considered the last monarch of the Ptolemaic dynasty that ruled Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great—and therefore the last pharaoh of Egypt—would undoubtedly be one of the crowning archaeological achievements in modern history. The problem is, no one knows where to look. Conventional wisdom places Cleopatra’s tomb beside her palace in an area of ancient Alexandria that is now submerged beneath the Mediterranean Sea. If this is the case, the tomb is likely lost forever.
But a few researchers have set their sights on Taposiris Magna, the location of a temple dedicated to Osiris, the Egyptian ruler of the realm of the dead, near Alexandria’s western outskirts. Since Cleopatra wanted to associate herself and her Roman lover, Mark Antony, with Osiris and his sister-wife, Isis, some believe it stands to reason that the two could be interred there. Excavations at Taposiris Magna were still underway in 2023, and have so far yielded 16 burial chambers, mummies with golden tongues, funeral masks, coins engraved with the legendary queen’s face, and a tunnel more than 4000 feet long—but no signs of Cleopatra.
If you’re especially captivated by the legend of Cleopatra’s tomb, you’re welcome to help look for it: The Taposiris Magna excavation has been turned into a hands-on tourist experience that starts at about $21,000 per person.
2 What happened on the Mary Celeste?
If you’ve heard of the Mary Celeste, you can thank Arthur Conan Doyle. The unexplained abandonment of the ship in 1872—and the still-unknown fate of the 10 people aboard—might have been forgotten if not for Conan Doyle publishing a sensational short story about the fictional Marie Celeste in 1884 that captured the popular imagination and turned the American merchant ship into one of the most enduring maritime mysteries of all time.
In terms of solving the mystery of the Mary Celeste and the fate of its captain, his wife and 2-year-old daughter, and its seven-man crew, Doyle’s highly fictionalized account, involving a missing African artifact and a murderous mutiny led by a man who had been born into enslavement in America, was unhelpful. But the official inquiry conducted years earlier had also failed to come up with any reason for the crew to have abandoned a seaworthy vessel. There was three and half feet of water in the hold and a pump had been dismantled, and the ship’s lifeboat was gone. But the ship was safe and operable when it was found drifting near the Azores islands, and the crew who found it had no trouble sailing it 800 miles to Gibraltar to file a salvage claim.
In 2006, a chemistry professor at University College London proposed a solution: A “pressure-wave type of explosion” caused by the ship’s cargo—around 1700 barrels of industrial alcohol—and some unknown spark had caused little damage but frightened the crew into abandoning the vessel. But other researchers have discounted the theory. While the mystery around the Mary Celeste remains unsolved, it continues to serve as inspiration for storytellers: Season 4 of True Detective was partially inspired by the abandoned ship as well as the Dyatlov Pass incident, another historical head scratcher.
3 What caused the Great Unconformity?
In 1869, American geologist and explorer John Wesley Powell was working in the Grand Canyon when he noticed something strange: What should have been thousands of feet of rock were just hundreds, and as tools and techniques improved, it became clear that in parts of the Grand Canyon over a billion years’ worth of rock was missing. Since the missing time immediately precedes the Cambrian explosion—the period when evolution seems to have kicked into high gear and life on Earth suddenly and rapidly diversified—scientists would very much like to know more about it.
Rock strata are full of gaps, or “unconformities,” but a billion years is a big one, even in terms of geologic time. As geologist Kalin McDannell explained to science mag Eos, it’s the difference between a book that’s missing a few pages and one that’s had entire chapters torn out. Whatever happened, it wasn’t a local phenomenon—since Powell noticed the anomaly in the Grand Canyon, it’s been spotted in other parts of the world as well. The gap is twice as large in some places, representing more than 40 percent of the planet’s history that just isn’t there.
So where did it go? Two main theories have emerged in recent years. The first maintains that the missing rock was scoured away by glaciers a few hundred million years ago, during what’s known as the Snowball Earth period. The other theory is a little more dramatic: The culprit might be Rodinia, a supercontinent that predates Pangaea and potentially sliced away huge swathes of what would become our geologic record as pieces of the enormous land mass broke away, slid around the planet, and smashed back together. It’s also possible that the Great Unconformity isn’t one gap, but many smaller ones caused by a series of distinct geologic events.
Whatever the cause, the Great Unconformity is a case of one mystery that might hold the key to another. Some researchers believe that when the missing rock was deposited into Earth’s oceans, it altered the chemistry of the water and seeded it with vast amounts of minerals and nutrients. This could have given early lifeforms the resources they needed to evolve helpful things like shells and skeletons, setting the stage for the Cambrian explosion.
4 What’s up with the Salish Sea feet?
If you type the phrase Salish Sea into Google’s search field, the autocomplete feature assumes you’re going to ask it about all those feet. The phenomenon seems to have started in 2007, when a 12-year-old girl found a running shoe containing a human foot on a British Columbia beach. Since then, more than 20 disembodied feet, most of them secured in sneakers, have washed ashore on the Salish Sea’s U.S. and Canadian coastlines. The embarrassment of extremities has prompted sinister theories ranging from the somewhat plausible (a serial killer is clearly at work) to the fantastic (it’s obviously aliens). Science, however, has requested that we all calm down a little and consider the facts.
For starters, authorities have ruled out foul play, determining that several of the feet belonged to people who died accidentally or by suicide. Roughly 8.7 million people live along these shores, and there’s a grim correlation between seaside population density and the number of corpses that end up in the water. But if it’s a natural phenomenon, why is it just feet? Why did it start happening so recently? And why just the shores around the Salish Sea?
Science can help us here, too. The bodies of drowning victims—a category that would include most of the people who die in the waters of the Salish Sea—tend to sink, where their soft tissue is consumed by bottom-dwelling animals such as crabs and lobsters. Since soft tissue is much of what’s holding our feet on, they can easily become detached. If they’re tucked inside running shoes or hiking boots that are made of lightweight, buoyant materials—technology that began to develop rapidly around the time the feet started washing ashore—they’re likely to bob up to the surface, where the Salish Sea’s distinctive combination of geography, wind conditions, and currents conspire to deposit them on beaches rather than carry them out to the open ocean. For all intents and purposes, we can probably mark this one “solved.”
5 How—and why—were the Olmec Heads made?
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Long before the Maya (at least the Classical Period of Maya) and Aztecs built sophisticated civilizations in what is now Central America and Mexico, the area was home to the Olmecs, a society that flourished around 3200 to 2400 years ago. As the first great civilization of Mesoamerica, the Olmecs are sometimes considered a “mother culture” that influenced many of the peoples who would come in their wake. They cultivated an extensive trade network and possessed impressive engineering skills, but we know them best for the spectacular art they left behind, including approximately 17 colossal stone heads that have been discovered to date.
The mystery of the heads is two-fold. First, their size—some are nearly 10 feet tall, and they weigh about 8 tons on average—would have presented enormous logistical challenges. Each head is carved from a single volcanic basalt boulder, and each of those boulders had to be moved more than 50 miles from where it was sourced. How did they do it? And second, why did they go to all that trouble?
Given the resources and labor required to transport and create them and the fact that they appear to depict distinct individuals, most archaeologists think the heads are portraits of powerful Olmec rulers (though some have suggested they could represent ballgame players who were maybe not that good). As for how they were moved such long distances, several theories have been suggested, ranging from wooden rollers to enormous rafts to temporary causeways built specifically for their transport. Answering these questions would fill in some important blanks in our knowledge of human history, but so far researchers can only make educated guesses.
SOURCE: MENTAL FLOSS
From All That’s Interesting:
9 The White House
Perhaps the most haunted house in America is also its most famous. The White House in Washington, D.C., is allegedly home to several ghosts. Completed in 1800, the White House has been home to every president since John Adams. And his successors have admitted to feeling a ghostly presence in the executive mansion.
“The damned place is haunted sure as shootin’,” President Harry S Truman wrote to his wife in 1946, after hearing knocking on doors and footsteps in empty rooms. “Secret Service said not even a watchman was up here at that hour.”
To date, several former White House inhabitants have made their presence known. The ghost of a little boy so frightened members of President William Howard Taft’s administration that the president forbade anyone of speaking of it — or they’d get fired.
Some have claimed to see Abigail Adams, John Adams’s wife, in the East Room, where she once hung out clothes to dry. Contemporary staff report smelling lavender and wet laundry.
And others have reported seeing presidents lingering around the White House long after their administration (and lives) had ended. Mary Todd Lincoln claimed to hear Andrew Jackson stomping around. Others say they’ve seen Thomas Jefferson playing the violin and William Henry Harrison — the first president to die while in office — in the attic.
One of the most commonly seen ghosts in the White House is Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated in 1865. First, Lady Grace Coolidge claimed she saw him staring out a window in his former office, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill says he saw Lincoln sitting by the fire.
“They say Lincoln always comes back whenever he feels the country is in need or in peril,” said Jared Broach, who once offered White House ghost tours.
Broach claims he is sure that the White House is haunted. “If I said [otherwise], I’d be calling about eight different presidents liars,” he explained.
Certainly, the White House has some of the most alleged hauntings in the United States. But is it the most haunted house in America? More haunted than Myrtle Plantation? Or the Villisca Axe Murder House?
There’s only one way to find out. Gather your wits and visit some real haunted houses across the United States. Maybe some of the country’s most active ghosts will make themselves known.
SOURCE: ALLTHATSINTERESTING.COM
Bye bye
From History.com:
As the clock struck 8 p.m. in New York City on the night of October 30, 1938, Orson Welles stood on a podium inside a Madison Avenue radio studio. The baby-faced, 23-year-old theatrical star, who had graced the cover of Time magazine months earlier, prepared to direct 10 actors and a 27-piece orchestra for the Columbia Broadcasting System’s weekly “Mercury Theatre on the Air” program.
Millions of Americans, as they were every night, huddled around their radios, but relatively few of them were listening to CBS when it was announced that Welles and his fellow cast members were presenting an original dramatization of the 1898 H.G. Wells science-fiction novel “The War of the Worlds.” Instead, most of the country was tuned in to NBC’s popular “Chase and Sanborn Hour,” which featured ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy, Charlie McCarthy.
Channel surfing, however, was not a modern-day invention, and disoriented listeners who stumbled onto the “Mercury Theatre on the Air” without having heard the disclaimer at the top of the radio play were thrust into the middle of an hour-long drama that left some believing that the country was under attack.
The CBS program, penned by “Casablanca” screenwriter Howard Koch, opened serenely with the dulcet dance music of “Ramon Raquello and his orchestra.” Then, an actor portraying an announcer broke in with a fake news report that several explosions of incandescent gas had occurred on Mars. In quick succession came a series of increasingly alarming, suspense-building newsflashes that culminated with Martian spacecrafts crashing into a farm in Grovers Mill, New Jersey.
For the rest of the hour, terror crackled over the airwaves. Breathless reporters detailed an extraterrestrial army of squid-like figures that killed thousands of earthlings with heat rays and black clouds of poison gas as they steamrolled into New York City. Welles and the rest of the cast impersonated astronomers, state militia officials and even the Secretary of the Interior, who cannily sounded like President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Human germs, rather than human armies, ultimately did in the mythical Martian invaders, and at the end of the hour the director wrapped up the radio drama by telling his audience, “This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character to assure you that ‘The War of the Worlds’ has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be. The Mercury Theatre’s own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying ‘boo!’”
The National Panic That Followed The War of the Worlds
The fright that Welles put into America, however, was much greater than he thought. Although the program included a reminder at intermission that it was a dramatization, thousands of anxious and confused listeners believed it to be real. They besieged police departments, newspapers and CBS with phone calls. In New Jersey, ground zero for the fictitious invasion, national guardsmen wanted to know where they should report for duty, and the Trenton police department fielded 2,000 calls in under two hours. In Providence, Rhode Island, hysterical callers begged the electric company to cut power to the city to keep it safe from the extraterrestrial invaders.
Fear and anxiety had become a way of life in the 1930s, and it took little to rattle jittery Americans. The Depression had emptied their wallets, the gathering crisis in Europe threatened to ignite into war and just weeks earlier the Hurricane of 1938 had roared ashore. Plus, the Hindenburg disaster, which had been broadcast over the airwaves just the year before, was still fresh in the country’s collective psyche.
This Day in History: 10/30/1938 – Welles Scares Nation
The newspaper industry also felt unease from the increasing popularity of radio as an informational and advertising medium, and seeing a chance to strike back at its growing rival, it gleefully collected the sporadic reports of individual confusion generated by “The War of the Worlds” and weaved them into a narrative of “mass hysteria.” Newspapers reported suicide attempts, heart attacks and exoduses from major metropolitan areas.
The New York Daily News printed the feverish headline “Fake Radio ‘War’ Stirs Terror Through U.S.” along with the photograph of a “war victim,” a woman in a sling who had heard the reports of black gas clouds in Times Square and ran out from her midtown apartment into the street where she fell and broke her arm. Similar stories of woe were printed from coast to coast and unleashed a media frenzy.
Orson Welles’ Response
With threats of lawsuits swirling in the press, CBS went into damage control. At a hastily called press conference, a doe-eyed Welles displayed his theatrical acumen and expressed his remorse and shock at the public reaction. “I can’t imagine an invasion from Mars would find ready acceptance,” he said when asked if he pranked the country. Decades later, however, Welles admitted, “The kind of response was merrily anticipated by us all. The size of it, of course, was flabbergasting.”
The Federal Communications Commission did not sanction CBS or Welles, and the radio dramatist quickly spun his Halloween trick into a treat. Thanks to what became known as the “panic broadcast,” the radio program signed Campbell’s Soup as a sponsor, and soon after, Welles inked a deal to direct “Citizen Kane,” named by the American Film Institute as the greatest movie of all time.
SOURCE: HISTORY.COM
Today is (not) Pat Sajak’s birthday! He was born October 26, 1946 and was the host of Wheel of Fortune for over 40 years. I thought I’d take a look at some of the funnier wrong answers to Wheel of Fortune puzzles.
12 You say “flamenco,” he says…
In 2018, a contestant named Jonny lost out on a $7,100 prize after pronouncing “flamenco” like “flamingo.” Ashley, whose turn it was next, almost looked sheepish as she offered the correct answer.
11 Tennessee Williams is rolling in his grave
After thinking that the play A Streetcar Named Desire was titled A Streetcar Naked Desire in a 2017 episode, Kevin Haas said in a statement that he was glad to give viewers a laugh. “That, my friends, is the naked truth,” he added, per TIME.
10 A “fregh” response
A contestant named Khushi might never go to a grocery store without a twinge of humiliation, having offered a “G” instead of a “S” as the final letter in “FRE_H TROPICAL FRUIT” in a 2023 Wheel of Fortune episode.
9 A child-ish flub
In 2002, a contestant named Linda actually thought that the answer to a Wheel of Fortune puzzle would be “an ugly child” instead of “an only child.” (“What can I say? I’m a schoolteacher,” she said by way of… explanation?)
8 No Live fans here
None of the contestants of a 2010 episode could nail the names of former Live cohosts Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa at first, saying “Philburn,” “Philmin,” and — even once the answer was revealed — “Ree-pa” instead of Ripa.
7 A prescription for failure
In an infamous 1999 episode of Wheel, one contestant guessed “a group of pill-pushers” instead of “a group of well-wishers.” Sajak jokingly announced the end of that episode’s taping.
6 Wand-ering around the answer
If you can deduce the answer from the puzzle “MAG_C _AND,” you’re better off than a contestant named Zach, who in a 2012 episode guessed 10 wrong consonants for that second blank before realizing — just after the buzzer — that the answer is “magic wand.”
5 Pronunciation is his Achilles heel
Julian Batts staked his place in game show infamy in 2014 when he lost $1 million by pronouncing Achilles like “A-chillus.” (“It’s the Wheel of Fortune,” Batts said in a follow-up interview with IndyStar. “Crazy stuff happens all the time. It’s a crazy game.”)
4 Tuber on the tube
Lolita McAuley also had an embarrassing turn on the show, guessing “self-potato” — whatever that is — instead of “self-portrait” in a 2009 episode. McAuley told The New York Times she wanted to “go and hide” right after the word salad fell out of her mouth.
3 What kind of shower?
Melanie inadvertently — seemingly inadvertently, at least — name-dropped a NSFW sex act on Wheel of Fortune in 2018, saying “gold shower” instead of “cold shower.”
2 The lovely Parisian city of Venice
After winning a trip to Venice on the show in 2016, a contestant named David flunked Sajak’s impromptu geography quiz, venturing that Venice is a city in the country of Paris. (“Do we still get [the prize]?” asked David’s embarrassed wife.)
1 Right where?!
Tavaris Williams made a wild guess in a toss-up round in 2024, thinking “____ I_ T_E B__T” might be “right in the butt.” (The correct answer was “this is the best.”) “I have never used those words in sequential order a day in my life,” Williams later said on Jimmy Kimmel Live!)
Thanks for the laughs!
SOURCE: TVINSIDER.COM
Today is Carey Elwes’s birthday. He’s an actor that co-starred in Princess Bride—a star studded movie about young love…and an evil prince who comes between the young lovers. It’s a very funny movie in my opinion that has spawned numerous memes.
