Novelty architecture

Novelty architecture is a type of architecture in which buildings and other structures are given unusual shapes as a novelty, such as advertising, notoriety as a landmark, or simple eccentricity of the owner or architect. Many examples of novelty architecture take the form of buildings that resemble the products sold inside to attract drive-by customers. Others are attractions all by themselves, such as giant animals, fruits, and vegetables, or replicas of famous buildings. And others are merely unusual shapes or made of unusual building materials.

Some hotel casinos on the Las Vegas Strip can be considered novelty architecture, including the pyramid-shaped Luxor Hotel and the New York-New York Hotel & Casino, a building designed to look like the New York City skyline.

Novelty architecture is also used extensively in amusement parks such as Disneyland to fit their playful and sometimes retro theme.

Dramatic Chipmunk

Dramatic Chipmunk, also known by the more accurate title Dramatic Prairie Dog, is a popular Internet comedy viral video. The video is a five-second clip of the "chipmunk" (actually a prairie dog) turning its head while the camera zooms in and dramatic music is played.

The video became widely known through uploads on YouTube and CollegeHumor on June 19, 2007. An earlier and identical version, titled as Dramatic Look, had been uploaded to YouTube on June 6, 2007.

The clip of the prairie dog is from the Japanese television show Hello! Morning featuring Mini Moni. The clip has a prairie dog inside a transparent box being shown to the hosts in the studio. CollegeHumor also released a longer clip under the title Undramatic Chipmunk, showing how the video looked in the original Japanese version.

The music used in Dramatic Chipmunk is taken from the score of the 1974 film Young Frankenstein, and was composed by John Morris. It uses three dramatic chords, and has a rumble of thunder in the background. The "chipmunk" turns its head and stares at the camera while the music is played.

Since its release, the video has received tens of millions of views. People Magazine named the Dramatic Chipmunk as one of The 10 Wildest YouTube Stars of 2007.

Carolina Chocolate Drops

The Carolina Chocolate Drops are an old-time string band from Durham, North Carolina, United States. Formed in November 2005 following the members' attendance at the Black Banjo Gathering in Boone, North Carolina, the group is one of the few remaining African American string bands. There are three members: Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemons, and Justin Robinson, who were all in their twenties when the group formed. All of the musicians sing and trade instruments including banjo, fiddle, guitar, harmonica, snare drum, bones, jug, and kazoo. The group learned much of their repertoire, which is based on the traditional music of the Piedmont region of North and South Carolina, from the eminent African American old-time fiddler Joe Thompson, although they also perform old-time versions of some modern songs such as Blu Cantrell's R&B hit "Hit 'em Up Style (Oops!)."

The Carolina Chocolate Drops have released at least three CDs (in 2006, 2008, and 2010) and have opened for Taj Mahal. They have performed on Mountain Stage and at the Mount Airy Fiddlers Convention. Additionally they have performed on Fresh Air and BBC Radio in early 2010 and at the 2010 Bonnaroo music festival in Manchester, Tennessee.

On February 7, 2011, the band announced that beatboxer Adam Matta and multi-instrumentalist Hubby Jenkins would be joining the band, while Justin Robinson would be departing.

Their 2010 album, Genuine Negro Jig, won a Grammy in the best traditional folk album category, and was number 9 in FRoots magazine's top 10 albums of 2010.

Sheb Wooley

Shelby F. "Sheb" Wooley (April 10, 1921 – September 16, 2003) was a character actor and singer, best known for his 1958 novelty song "The Purple People Eater". He played Ben Miller, brother of Frank Miller in the film High Noon, and also had a co-starring role in the television program Rawhide.
Wooley was born in Erick, Oklahoma, and was raised on a farm. He learned to ride horses at an early age, and was a working cowboy and rodeo rider. He also played in a country-western band. Wooley tried to enlist during World War II, but was turned down for military service because of his rodeo injuries. Instead, he worked in the oil industry and as a welder. In 1946, he moved to Fort Worth, Texas, and became a country and western musician.
Wooley appeared in dozens of western films from the 1950s through 1970s, most notably High Noon. In 1954, he played outlaw Jim Younger in the syndicated western series Stories of the Century. Wooley appeared five times as Carl in the syndicated western series The Adventures of Kit Carson (1951–1955). He appeared in The Cisco Kid in the role of Bill Bronson. Wooley guest starred as Harry Runyon in the episode "The Unmasking" of the CBS western My Friend Flicka.
Wooley co-starred as Pete Nolan in the CBS western Rawhide (1959–1966) with Eric Fleming, Clint Eastwood, and Paul Brinegar. He also acted in the films The Outlaw Josey Wales and Giant.
In the 1940s Wooley took an interest in his wife's young cousin, Roger Miller (who also grew up in Erick, Oklahoma), teaching him to play guitar chords, and purchasing him a fiddle.
In the late 1950s, Wooley embarked on a recording career, with the song that made him famous, the "Purple People Eater". He followed this with a series of lesser novelty hits. Wooley wrote the theme song for the long-running television show Hee Haw.
Wooley also had a string of country hits, his "That's My Pa" reaching No. 1 of Billboard magazine's Hot C&W Sides chart in March 1962. He was a regular on Hee Haw and The Muppet Show as the drunken country songwriter Ben Colder. He released music and performed as Ben Colder as well as under his own name. Wooley had intended to record the song "Don't Go Near The Indians", but he was delayed by an acting job. Meanwhile, Rex Allen recorded the song and it was a hit. Wooley said he did not mind - he would do the sequel. His version was "Don't Go Near the Eskimos", about a boy in Alaska named Ben Colder (had never "been colder"). His song was so successful he continued using the name for forty years, one of his last recordings being "Shaky Breaky Car" (which parodied the song "Achy Breaky Heart").
Wooley is credited as the voice actor for the Wilhelm scream, having appeared on a memo as a voice extra for Distant Drums and later confirmed by his widow. This particular scream recording has been used by sound effects teams in over 149 films.
Wooley continued occasional television and film appearances through the 1990s, including an appearance as Cletus Summers, principal of Hickory High School in the 1986 film Hoosiers.
In 1996 he was diagnosed with leukemia. He died at the Skyline Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee in 2003 and was buried in Hendersonville Memory Gardens in Hendersonville, Tennessee.

Sugar Bush

A sugar bush refers to a forest stand which is exploited for maple syrup. The tree canopy is dominated by sugar maple or black maple. Other tree species, if present, form only a small fraction of the total tree cover. In the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, and in some New England states, many sugar bushes have a sugar shack where maple syrup can be bought or sampled.

The maples are tapped for their maple sap in early spring, whenever the weather has warmed so that day-time temperatures are above freezing — 0 °C (32 °F) — while night-time temperatures remain below freezing. Typically there will be snow cover on the ground during the tapping period. The tapping period ends when the supply of maple sap ceases, as when night-time temperatures begin to be above freezing. After the tapping period, some maple sugar bushes experience a profusion of spring wildflowers which take advantage of unobstructed sunlight before the maple leaves emerge. In summer, a healthy maple sugar bush is luxuriant and shady. Autumn leaves are colorful, especially on the sugar maples.

Match

A match is a combustible tool for lighting a fire in controlled circumstances. They are commonly sold by tobacconists and many other kinds of shops. Matches are usually sold in quantity, packaged in match boxes or matchbooks. A match is typically a wooden stick (typical in the case of match boxes) or stiff paper stick (in the case of matchbooks) coated at one end with a material which will ignite from the heat of friction if struck against a suitable surface.^[1] The lighting end of a match is known as the match "head" and, depending on type, either contains phosphorus or phosphorus sesquisulfide as the active ingredient and gelatin as a binder. There are two main types of matches: safety matches, which can be struck only against a specially prepared surface; and strike-anywhere matches, for which any suitably frictional surface can be used.

Sulfur matches were apparently mentioned by Martial in ancient Rome (sulphurata).

A predecessor of the match, small sticks of pinewood impregnated with sulfur were invented in China in AD 577. Besieged by military forces of Northern Zhou and Chen, Northern Qi court ladies were out of tinder and desperate for a means to start fires for cooking and heating. During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (AD 907–960), a book called the Records of the Unworldly and the Strange written by Chinese author Tao Gu in about 950 stated:

If there occurs an emergency at night it may take some time to make a light to light a lamp. But an ingenious man devised the system of impregnating little sticks of pinewood with sulphur and storing them ready for use. At the slightest touch of fire they burst into flame. One gets a little flame like an ear of corn. This marvellous thing was formerly called a "light-bringing slave", but afterwards when it became an article of commerce its name was changed to 'fire inch-stick'.

Matches also appeared in Europe by about 1530. But the first modern, self-igniting match was invented in 1805 by K. Chancel, assistant to Professor Louis Jacques Thénard of Paris. The head of the match consisted of a mixture of potassium chlorate, sulfur, sugar, and rubber. The match was ignited by dipping its tip in a small asbestos bottle filled with sulfuric acid. This kind of match was quite expensive and its usage was dangerous, so Chancel's matches never gained much popularity.

The first "friction match" was invented by English chemist John Walker in 1826. Early work had been done by Robert Boyle and his assistant, Godfrey Haukweicz in the 1680s with phosphorus and sulfur, but their efforts had not produced useful results. Walker discovered a mixture of antimony(III) sulfide or stibnite, potassium chlorate, gum, and starch could be ignited by striking against any rough surface. Walker called the matches congreves, but the process was patented by Samuel Jones and the matches were sold as lucifer matches.

The safety match was invented in 1844 by the Swede Gustaf Erik Pasch (1788-1862) and was improved by Johan Edvard Lundström (1815-1888). Johan Edvard and his younger brother Carl Frans Lundström (1823-1917) started a large scale match industry in Jönköping around 1847, but the improved safety match was not introduced until around 1850-55. In 1858 their company produced around 12 million match boxes.

The Swedes long held a virtual worldwide monopoly on safety matches, with the industry mainly situated in Jönköping, The British match manufacturer Bryant and May visited Jönköping in 1858 to try to obtain a supply of safety matches, but it was unsuccessful. In 1862 it established its own factory and bought the rights for the British safety match patent from the Lundström brothers.

The development of a specialized "matchbook" with both matches and a striking surface did not occur until the 1890s with the American Joshua Pusey, who later sold his patent to the Diamond Match Company. The Diamond Match Company was later bought by Bryant and May.

The hobby of collecting match-related items, such as matchcovers and matchbox labels, is known as phillumeny.

50 Metre Rifle Prone

50 metre rifle prone is an International Shooting Sport Federation event, based on the traditional English Match. The match consists of 60 shots from the prone position with a .22 Long Rifle (5.6 mm) caliber rifle. The time limit is 75 minutes for the entire match including sighting shots, or 90 minutes if there is a need to compensate for slow scoring systems.

Only the men's event is included on the Olympic program and thus includes a final for the top eight competitors, where the score zones are divided into tenths, giving up to 10.9 points for each shot. The final consists of ten shots, with a time limit of 45 seconds per shot. The competition is won by the shooter who reaches the highest aggregate score (qualification + final, maximum 709.0).

The women's event is not Olympic but included in both the ISSF and the CISM World Championships. As there is no final, shooters with the same score are separated by a number of tie-breaking criteria, the first being the number of inner tens. Women's rifles may weigh up to 6.5 kilograms (14 lb), as opposed to 8 kilograms (18 lb) for men, but after the switch from standard rifles to sport rifles this is now the only difference in equipment.

Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time

Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time (also referred to as An Allegory of Venus and Cupid and A Triumph of Venus) is an allegorical painting by the Florentine artist Agnolo Bronzino now in the National Gallery, London.

Around 1546, Bronzino was commissioned to create a painting which has come to be known as Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time. It displays the ambivalence, eroticism and obscure imagery which is characteristic of the Mannerist period, and of Bronzino's master Pontormo.

The painting may have been commissioned by Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany or by Francesco Salviati, to be presented by him as a gift to Francis I of France. Vasari wrote that it was sent to King Francis, though he does not specify by whom. The erotic imagery would have appealed to the tastes prevalent in both the Medici and French courts at this time. The attention to texture and wealth is also consistent with Bronzino's aristocratic patronage. The figure of Venus can be likened to a precious object (such as a marble statue) in a luxurious setting, desirable because of her unavailability.

Crowded into the claustrophobic foreground of the painting are several figures whose identities have been the subject of extensive scholarly debate. The themes of the painting appear to be lust, deceit, and jealousy. At times it has also been called A Triumph of Venus. Its meaning, however, remains elusive. Cupid, along with his mother Venus and the nude putto to the right, are all posed in a typical Mannerist figura serpentinata form.

Frank Leslie's Weekly

Frank Leslie's Weekly, later often known in short as Leslie's Weekly, was an American illustrated literary and news magazine founded in 1852 and continuing publication well into the 20th century. As implied by its name, it was published weekly, on Tuesdays. Its first editor was John Y. Foster. In 1897, its circulation was estimated at 65,000, compared to only 30 copies printed of the first edition.

It was one of several magazines started by publisher and illustrator Frank Leslie and was continued after his death in 1880 by his widow, the women's suffrage campaigner Miriam Florence Leslie. The name, by then a well-established trademark, remained also after 1902, when it no longer had a connection with the Leslie family. It continued until 1922.

Throughout its decades of existence, the weekly provided illustrations and reports - first with woodcuts and Daguerreotypes, later with more advanced forms of photography - of wars from John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry and the Civil War until the Spanish-American War and the First World War.

It often took a strongly patriotic stance and frequently featured cover pictures of soldiers and heroic battle stories. It also gave extensive coverage to less martial events such as the Klondike gold rush of 1897, covered by San Francisco journalist John Bonner.

Among the writers publishing their stories in the weekly were H. Irving Hancock, Helen R. Martin, and Ellis Parker Butler. Several notable illustrators worked for the publication, including Albert Berghaus and Norman Rockwell, who created covers for the magazine in its latter years.

Surviving copies of the magazine at present fetch handsome prices as collectors' items and are considered to give a vivid picture of American life during the decades of its publication.

Schloss

Schloss (pl. Schlösser) is a German word for a building similar to a Château, castle, palace, or manor house; what in the British Isles would be known as a stately home. Most Schlösser were built after the Middle Ages as residences or for organizational headquarters and not as fortresses.

Like castles, a Schloss is often surrounded by moats and is called a Wasserschloss (water castle). Other types include the Jagdschloss (hunting lodge) and the Lustschloss (pleasure castle).

Note in another context Schloss is also German for a lock.