Heroin

"Heroin" is a song by The Velvet Underground, released on their 1967 debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico. Written by Lou Reed in 1964, the song is one of the band's most celebrated compositions, overtly depicting heroin use and abuse. Critic Mark Deming writes, "While 'Heroin' hardly endorses drug use, it doesn't clearly condemn it, either, which made it all the more troubling in the eyes of many listeners".

It was among a three-song set to be re-recorded at T.T.G. Studios, Hollywood before being included on the final release of The Velvet Underground & Nico (along with "I'm Waiting for the Man" and "Venus in Furs"). This recording of the song would be the album's second longest at 7 minutes and 12 seconds, being eclipsed only by "European Son" by about thirty seconds.

"Heroin" begins slowly with Lou Reed's quiet, melodic guitar and hypnotic drum patterns by Maureen Tucker, soon joined by John Cale's droning electric viola and Sterling Morrison's steady rhythm guitar. The tempo increases gradually, mimicking the high the narrator receives from the drug, until a frantic crescendo is reached, punctuated by Cale's shrieking viola and the more punctuated guitar strumming of Reed and Morrison. Tucker's drumming becomes hurried and louder. The song then slows to the original tempo, and repeats the same pattern before ending.

Maureen Tucker actually got lost during the recording and stopped drumming for several moments at the five minutes seventeen seconds mark, before picking up the beat again. This coincidental pause came at a dramatic shift in the song, however, and her "mistake" remains an essential element of the song.

Helen Kane

Helen Kane was an American popular singer; her signature song was "I Wanna Be Loved By You". Fleischer Studios animator Grim Natwick used Kane as the model for his studio's most famous creation, Betty Boop.

Born as Helen Clare Schroeder, Kane attended St. Anselm’s Parochial School in the Bronx. She was the youngest of three children. Her father, Louis Schroeder, the son of a German immigrant, was employed intermittently; her Irish immigrant mother, Ellen (Dixon) Schroeder, worked in a laundry. Kane's mother reluctantly paid $3 for her daughter's costume as a queen in Kane's first theatrical role at school. By the time she was 15 years, Kane was onstage professionally, touring the Orpheum Circuit with the Marx Brothers in On the Balcony.

She spent the early 1920s trouping in vaudeville as a singer and kickline dancer with a theater engagement called the 'All Jazz Revue', and played the New York Palace for the first time in 1921.

Kane's first performance at the Paramount Theater in Times Square proved to be her career's launching point. She was singing "That's My Weakness Now", when she interpolated the scat lyrics “boop-boop-a-doop.” This resonated with the flapper culture, and four days later, Helen Kane’s name went up in lights.

Oscar Hammerstein’s 1928 show Good Boy, was where she first introduced the hit "I Wanna Be Loved by You" . Then it was back to the Palace, as a headliner for $5,000 a week.

As she took on the status of a singing sensation, there were Helen Kane dolls and Helen Kane look-alike contests, appearances on radio and in nightclubs. This cult following reached its peak in late 1928 and stayed there until early 1929. With the hardships of the Great Depression biting, the flamboyant world of the flapper was over, and Kane's style began to date rapidly.

She died on September 26, 1966 at age 62, in her apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens (New York City). Her husband of 27 years was at her bedside. Her remains were buried in the Long Island National Cemetery.

Quaalude

Quaalude is a brand name of Methaqualone, a sedative-hypnotic drug that is similar in effect to barbiturates, a general central nervous system depressant. Its use peaked in the 1960s and 1970s as a hypnotic, for the treatment of insomnia, and as a sedative and muscle relaxant.

Methaqualone was first synthesized in India in 1951 by Indra Kishore Kacker and Syed Hussain Zaheer, and was soon introduced to Japanese and European consumers as a safe barbiturate substitute. By 1965, it was the most commonly prescribed sedative in Britain, where it has been sold legally under the names Malsed, Malsedin, and Renoval.

At about the same time, it was becoming a popular recreational drug . In 1972, it was the sixth-bestselling sedative in the USA, where it was legal under the brand name Quaalude; at that time "luding out" was a popular college pastime.

Quaaludes became increasingly popular as a recreational drug in the 1970s. The drug was often used by people who went dancing at glam rock clubs in the early 1970s and at discos in the late 1970s. One slang term for Quaaludes was disco biscuits. In the mid 1970s, there were special bars in Manhattan called juice bars that only served non-alcoholic drinks that catered to people who liked to dance on methaqualone.

The drug was more tightly regulated in Britain under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and in the U.S. from 1973. It was withdrawn from many developed markets in the early 1980s (in 1982 in the United States), being made a Schedule I drug in the U.S. in 1984.

Clandestinely produced methaqualone is still seized by government agencies and police forces around the world.

White Nose Syndrome

White nose syndrome is a poorly understood malady associated with the deaths of more than a million bats. The condition, named for a distinctive fungal growth around the muzzles and on the wings of many affected animals, was first identified in a cave in Schoharie County, New York, USA, in February 2006, and started showing up in the news after January 2007. It spread to other New York caves and into Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut in 2008. In early 2009 it was confirmed in New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and in March 2010 in Ontario, Canada, and northern Tennessee. As of spring 2010, the condition had been found in over 115 caves and mines ranging throughout the Northeastern US as far south as Tennessee and as far west as Oklahoma and into Quebec and Ontario Provinces in Canada .

The US Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) has called for a moratorium on caving activities in the affected areas, and strongly recommends that any clothing or equipment used in such areas be decontaminated after each use.

The National Speleological Society (NSS) maintains an up-to-date page to keep cavers apprised of current events and advisories.

Christmas Truce

The Christmas truce was a series of widespread unofficial ceasefires that took place along the Western Front around Christmas of 1914, during the First World War. Through the week leading up to Christmas, parties of German and British soldiers began to exchange seasonal greetings and songs between their trenches; on occasion, the tension was reduced to the point that individuals would walk across to talk to their opposite numbers bearing gifts. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, many soldiers from both sides – as well as, to a lesser degree, from French units – independently ventured into no man's land, where they mingled, exchanging food and souvenirs. As well as joint burial ceremonies, several meetings ended in carol-singing, or – famously – games of football.

Though there was no official truce, about 100,000 British and German troops were involved in unofficial cessations of fighting along the length of the Western Front. The first truce started on Christmas Eve, 24 December 1914, when German troops began decorating the area around their trenches in the region of Ypres, Belgium.

The Germans began by placing candles on their trenches and on Christmas trees, then continued the celebration by singing Christmas carols. The British responded by singing carols of their own. The two sides continued by shouting Christmas greetings to each other. Soon thereafter, there were excursions across the 'No Man's Land', where small gifts were exchanged, such as food, tobacco and alcohol, and souvenirs such as buttons and hats. The artillery in the region fell silent that night. The truce also allowed a breathing spell where recently-fallen soldiers could be brought back behind their lines by burial parties. Joint services were held. The fraternisation was not, however, without its risks; some soldiers were shot by opposing forces. In many sectors, the truce lasted through Christmas night, but it continued until New Year's Day in others.

Bruce Bairnsfather, who served throughout the war, wrote: "I wouldn't have missed that unique and weird Christmas Day for anything. ... I spotted a German officer, some sort of lieutenant I should think, and being a bit of a collector, I intimated to him that I had taken a fancy to some of his buttons. ... I brought out my wire clippers and, with a few deft snips, removed a couple of his buttons and put them in my pocket. I then gave him two of mine in exchange.

General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, commander of the British II Corps, was irate when he heard what was happening, and issued strict orders forbidding friendly communication with the opposing German troops.

Tourtière

A tourtière is a meat pie originating from Quebec, usually made with minced pork and/or veal, or beef. It is a traditional part of the Christmas and/or Christmas Eve réveillon and New Year's Eve meal in Quebec, but is also enjoyed and sold in grocery stores all year long. This kind of pie is known as pâté à la viande (literally, meat pie) in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region.

Tourtière is not exclusive to Quebec. Tourtière is a traditional French-Canadian dish served by generations of French-Canadian families throughout Canada and the bordering areas of the United States. In the U.S., namely in the states of Michigan, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Minnesota, and New York, citizens of Quebec ancestry have introduced the recipe. Every family has its own "original" recipe, passed down through the generations. Like the recipe, there is no one correct filling, as the pie meat depends on what is available in regions. In coastal areas, fish such as salmon is commonly used, whereas pork, beef, rabbit, and game are used inland.

The name supposedly comes from a pie-making utensil but by 1611 tourtière more or less referred to the meat pie as we know it today. Historically, the tourtiere was the pie-pan named for the key ingredient: the cooked meat of the once abundant and now extinct passenger pigeon, the "Tourte".

The tourtières of the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean area and Eastern Quebec are slow-cooked deep-dish meat pies made with potatoes and various meats (often including wild game) cut into small cubes. Elsewhere in Quebec and the rest of Canada, this variety of tourtière is sometimes referred to, in French and in English, as tourtière du Lac-Saint-Jean or tourtière saguenéenne to distinguish it from the varieties of tourtière with ground meat.

The Singing Dogs

The Singing Dogs was a musical recording project under whose name two 45rpm singles were released in the 1950s.

The idea for the Singing Dogs came from Don Charles, a producer working in Copenhagen, Denmark. He made recordings of four dogs barking (their names were Dolly, Pearl, Caesar, and King), spliced them on reel-to-reel tape, and arranged the pitches to the tune of the Stephen Foster song "Oh! Susanna". This was eventually released by RCA Victor as the A-side on a 7" single, with the B-side a medley of "Pat-a-Cake", "Three Blind Mice", and "Jingle Bells". The novelty record became a hit, reaching #22 on the U.S. Billboard Pop Singles chart. The disc eventually sold over half a million copies. In 1956, the troupe of dogs were again recorded, yielding the single "Hot Dog Rock 'n Roll" b/w "Hot Dog Boogie".

Le déjeuner sur l'herbe

Le déjeuner sur l'herbe is a large oil on canvas painting by Édouard Manet. Created in 1862 and 1863, its juxtaposition of a female nude with fully dressed men sparked controversy when the work was first exhibited at the Salon des Refusés. The piece is now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. A smaller, earlier version can be seen at the Courtauld Gallery, London.

Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe is not a realist painting in the social or political sense of Daumier, but it is a statement in favor of the artist's individual freedom. The shock value of a nude woman casually lunching with two fully dressed men, which was an affront to the propriety of the time, was accentuated by the familiarity of the figures.

Manet's wife, Suzanne Leenhoff, and his favorite model, Victorine Meurent, both posed for the nude woman, which has Meurent's face, but Leenhoff's body. Her body is starkly lit and she stares directly at the viewer. The two men are Manet's brother Eugene Manet and his future brother in law, Ferdinand Leenhoff. They are dressed like dandies. The men seem to be engaged in conversation, ignoring the woman. In front of them, the woman's clothes, a basket of fruit, and a round loaf of bread are displayed, as in a still life. In the background a lightly clad woman bathes in a stream. Too large in comparison with the figures in the foreground, she seems to float above them. The roughly painted background lacks depth — giving the viewer the impression that the scene is not taking place outdoors, but in a studio. This impression is reinforced by the use of broad "photographic" light, which casts almost no shadows: in fact, the lighting of the scene is inconsistent and unnatural. The man on the right wears a flat hat with a tassel, of a kind normally worn indoors.

Despite the mundane subject, Manet deliberately chose a large canvas size, normally reserved for grander subjects. The style of the painting breaks with the academic traditions of the time. He did not try to hide the brush strokes: indeed, the painting looks unfinished in some parts of the scene. The nude is a far cry from the smooth, flawless figures of Cabanel or Ingres.

The Veldt

"The Veldt" is a short story written by Ray Bradbury that was published originally as "The World the Children Made" in the September 23, 1950 issue of The Saturday Evening Post, later republished in the anthology The Illustrated Man in 1951. The anthology is a collection of short stories that were mostly published individually in magazines beforehand.

George and Lydia install the latest technology in their house. The house does everything for the family from clothing them to feeding them to rocking them to sleep at night. They call this new technology the “Happylife Home” and it cost the family $30,000 to install. The nursery becomes a virtual reality room, able to reproduce any setting.

George and Lydia soon realize that there is something wrong with the nursery and even their way of living. Lydia longs for a vacation, George takes up smoking and drinking. The children become spoiled and end up ruling the roost. Besides the African setting, George and Lydia find personal recreations of their belongings in the nursery. Strange screams have been heard.

They discover a problem with the nursery when it appears to be stuck in an African setting. This includes the hot sun and even lions feeding in the distance. George and Lydia do not understand why their children would be concerned with Africa or with death. They decide to call a psychologist. David McClean suggests they turn off the room and the house, and leave. The children talk their way into one last nursery visit before their parents shut the room down. The children trick their parents and lock them in and the virtual reality that manifests deadly lions. The parents are slain.

David McClean comes to the house, and the children offer him tea. They go on living as if nothing has happened. The African setting continues.

Sweyn Forkbeard

Sweyn Forkbeard was king of Denmark and England, as well as parts of Norway. He was a Viking leader and the father of Cnut the Great. On his father Harald Bluetooth's death in late 986 or early 987, he became King of Denmark; in 1000, with allegiance of the Trondejarl, Erik of Lade, he was ruler over most of Norway. After a long effort at conquest, and shortly before his death, in 1013 he is said to have founded Swansea (which is often said to come from "Sweyn's Ey"). He then became King of England. In the last months of his life, he was the Danish sovereign of a North Sea empire, which only his son Cnut was to rival in northern Europe.

Many details about Sweyn's life are contested. Scholars disagree about the various, too often contradictory, accounts of his life given in sources from his era of history. Some historians, such as Lauritz Weibull, have argued that Sweyn's wife described in the sagas – Swedish dowager queen Sigrid the Haughty – is purely fictional, whereas others have accepted her existence on the evidence of the Norse sagas.

Sweyn Forkbeard's nickname, which was probably used during his lifetime, unlike many royal nicknames, refers to a pitchfork-style moustache which was fashionable at the time, particularly in England, where Sweyn may have picked up the idea. Similar type moustaches can be seen depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry.