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Ronnie Dante, the man who sang lead on "Sugar Sugar" and many other bubblegum hits lived next door to George Plimpton for a time and briefly becam publisher of The Paris Review.
The first two American celebrities invited by Vaclav Havel to visit the Czech Republic were Shirley Temple (she was ambassador) and Frank Zappa (because Havel was a huge fan). That must have been one interesting plane ride.
The guy who playe dthe SWAT team commander on Homicide:Life On The Street is Gary D'Addario, the real life inspiration for Yaphet Kotto's Lt. Giardello character.
The group playing on the one-hit wonder "Moulty" by the Barbarians (an autobio song by their one-handed drummer) is actually The Band minus Levon Helm.
I went to the same college as Suzanne Vega (she graduated a year before I arrived), and even performed a couple of times on the same coffeehouse stage where she used to perform during college. I also ate at Tom's Diner (which was really called Tom's Restaurant) quite frequently.
You probably knew that bees communicate through a language formed by dance, but did you know that they have dialects? An Italian bee cannot communicate with an American bee, even if they're the same species!
Actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil are jointly responsible for inventing the technique of frequency agility, used in encrypting radio communications.
I was walking down to the station this morning to catch a train to London and bumped into an old school friend I hadn't seen in ages who now works for the department for work and pensions. We got on the same train, sat together and chatted. A couple of stations later, another person who neither of us had seen for many years got on and grabbed the only spare seat in the carriage, which happened to be next to us. If that wasn't strange enough, it turns out that that guy works for a company that publishes magazines for both my company and the government department that the first guy works for.
Suzanne Vega was not the only one that contributed to the mp3 format.
It was on a particularly sweltering day in August of 1948 that a young archaeologist (whose name I won’t reveal but instead will call Peter) literally stumbled upon the find of a lifetime in a remote part of the vast jungles that surround the Amazon basin. Up until that point the day, and really his career as a whole, had been going quite badly. He had already been all but laughed out of his field after accidentally setting fire to his tent and destroying priceless scrolls on a dig in Egypt. I know much of his exploits, I have read his journals and I even watched him at times on his digs before he was ran out of Egypt and later during his exploration of the rainforests, though he never knew of it.
He was only able to continue pursuing his work because his father had donated heavily to the local university before the family lost most of their money in the war and the institution did not yet know of his disastrous exploits in the desert, so they were more than happy to welcome him and the wondrous finds that he promised. Peter had collected quite a bit of information about the vast expanse of the Amazonian rainforests and believed that he had a general idea of where great undiscovered temples might be found. What he lacked in other respects, the man more than made up for in his ability to sell an idea. His tales of long-lost civilizations with vast treasuries wowed all who heard them and quickly he found himself well-funded and on his way to the jungle.
But that was over three years prior and as usual, things had not gone as planned. He knew that if this trip did not result in his finding something truly spectacular it would be his last. The University had made it quite clear that it was not going to fund any more of his little jaunts into the wilds of South America as his promises went unfulfilled and he had never brought home any artifacts of great interest. At best he had uncovered a bit of pottery here and there, maybe he would return with an occasional arrowhead or a crude tool along with photographs of long-looted ruins that had been photographed by ten men before him. Each time he came across a ruined temple or a crumbling stair he believed that he was the first to find the site, each time he was proven wrong.
And it did not look like this trip would be any different. Peter was quite lost; his guide had seemingly snapped earlier that afternoon, becoming increasingly agitated and screaming and babbling about things that made no sense before running off into the jungle leaving Peter to find his way alone. He sat on a boulder for a while as he looked over his crude map of the region, and wondered which way he should go. He needed to find the river so that he might follow it back to the guide’s village. He still hoped to find the ruins that his guide had promised to lead him to but knew that he would need to get another villager first or he would never find anything but snakes and mosquitoes.
Trying something that he had seen his guide often do, he licked his finger and tested the breeze, such little as there was. One might wonder why he bothered as he had no idea which way the wind would be coming from in the first place so the exercise hardly helped him get his bearings. But he convinced himself that the wind had to be from the west and because he believed he should go north, he set off in what he believed to be the correct direction. Unfortunately the man had no natural sense of direction whatsoever and after walking for most of the afternoon in what he believed was a straight line, he found himself passing the same boulder that he had sat on hours before.
Frustrated and thirsty because he foolishly drank all of his water in the first hour of his hike, he stomped off again in the same general direction. This time he was careful to never look down or to either side as he believed that was the best way to make certain that he would be going straight in one direction. Of course this resulted in his tripping over vines and stones every few feet and his stumbling around had gradually shifted him until he was going in an entirely different direction than the one he had intended. This turned out to be a blessing as he had actually been going west, deeper into the jungle.
Before long he thought he heard water splashing and tried to follow the sound. He came upon a small stream with several birds bathing in the shallows. Tired and dehydrated, he rushed towards the stream, startling the birds and sending them flying off into the canopy above. He grimaced at the water, which had a greenish tint and looked rather unappealing but he knew he had little choice. Apparently it tasted better than he expected and after drinking deeply and splashing the cool water across his face, he filled his canteen and set off again.
In what was one of the few wise decisions the man ever made in his life, he chose to follow the stream rather than cross over it, so he was actually going towards the river for the first time all day. He walked beside the stream in what appeared to be animal-worn trails when he could, but much of the time he walked in the water as the vegetation was often too thick and wild alongside it for him to make much progress.
However it was during one of those infrequent breaks from walking in the murky stream that he came across the most important find of his life. He had been walking quickly in a fairly clear path when his toe caught on a rock jutting out of the soil and sent him sprawling face first into the mud. Picking himself up, he looked back and saw that what had brought him down was a very smooth, rounded stone. His weight had pulled the stone partially out of the ground as he fell forward or he might not have paid any attention to it.
The top of the stone was covered with a thick layer of moss and thus it had been effectively camouflaged as just another bit of debris on the jungle floor. He almost left it be, however he thought it seemed rather unnaturally shaped, as though it had been carved. He tugged at the stone and with a wet smack it came loose from the muddy soil and again he fell, this time backwards into the stream.
One might say that none of this happened by coincidence, that something willed the stone out of the muck to trip him up so it would be found. But despite the incredible events that were to follow his discovery, perhaps it was merely chance that he found it, such a small thing in such a vast and wild place.
After picking himself up again, he spent quite some time nervously checking himself for leeches or any other manner of nasty creatures that he was just certain swam in those warm jungle waters (his journals explicitly mentioned his fear of the dark waters, although I suspect some of this fear was brought on by an outside influence). The water here was slower moving and much murkier than where he had drank earlier and he had been careful to stay close to the edge when he was forced to walk in it. Suddenly he remembered the rock that had caused all of his distress in the first place. Through his fidgeting and fussing he had somehow held onto the thing and for the first time he saw what it actually was.
The water had washed a fair amount of grime from the surface of the rock and now he saw that it was a flat stone tablet, etched with writing and symbols and embedded within the tablet were small gems of red and gold. He dipped it back into the water and rubbed his hands over it, washing away more filth and then looked at it more closely.
The writing looked familiar somehow, as though it were a language he had known but forgotten. And yet he was certain that it was not a dialect of the local languages and it was not closely similar to any language he had encountered in his studies. He knew this was an important find and even the mere possibility that it could be a lost language that he was the first to re-discover sent chills of excitement through him. Surely the University would continue funding his trips after this, even if he did not find the ruins he had set out for in the first place.
He sat beside the stream for over an hour just looking at the tablet and running his hands over the smooth surface. With most of the dirt gone, the surface was almost as slick as polished marble. It seemed impossible that it had been in the ground for long, seemingly un-weathered as it was. Yet he felt that it had to be very, very old. He set off again, the tablet in his pack, and it was not long before he found himself at the river. Now he actually had some idea of where to go and so the journey was much less frustrating.
He walked until it was nearly dark and then decided he could go no further. He propped himself up against a large tree and tried to examine the tablet a bit more in the waning light. It seemed to him that he might know what some of the characters represented, that they were similar to the writing on other artifacts or drawings that he had studied, but he could not be certain. The light was nearly gone now anyway so he gave up for the time being and drifted off to sleep.
His sleep was restless, filled with strange dreams of shadowy creatures chanting and conversing in a language he had never heard and glimmering eyes peering out at him from the darkness. He awoke with a start and saw that it was morning, the sun was high in the sky already and the sounds of insects and birds filled his ears. His pack was beside him on the ground and there was no sign that it had been disturbed. Still he had the strangest feeling that someone had crept around him in the night. He shuddered and the feeling passed, leaving only the heat of the late morning and a strong desire to get to the village before night returned.
He had slept longer than he had intended and yet he felt as though he had barely slept at all. Weary but with a newfound purpose he forced himself to his feet and set off again. He was mostly useless on his own but he did know of some edible vegetation and the murky waters were drinkable, so he was able to find the energy to march on until evening came again. He didn’t look at the tablet all day; he was anxious to find the village and knew he would have plenty of time to study it later. Dark was fast approaching and he was resigned to another night sleeping uncomfortably in the jungle when he happened upon some men he recognized from the village, they were returning from a hunt and he happily traveled the rest of the way by their side.
He asked them about his guide and he learned that the man had not yet returned but the other villagers seemed unconcerned and offered to send someone else with him the next day. That night he sat by a fire eating a charred animal that he couldn’t identify and probably would not have wanted identified anyway and studied the tablet. It still seemed familiar and yet totally strange as well and he had a hard time putting it away so he could sleep. Finally he gave up for the night and this time he slept soundly although he was awoken too early. At first light his guide insisted they leave, so Peter staggered to his feet and they marched back into the jungle.
The following days went much better, they found the ruins and for once they had not been looted and thoroughly explored long before he came upon them. He found many etchings in the walls and several intact artifacts to examine and he stuffed several of the smallest items into his pack to take back with him. There were four small temple-like structures in the area and he knew there was enough in just one of them to justify coming back with others to assist him, so he was anxious to return home with the good news. However he did want to at least visit each of the structures before he left.
The guide had taken him to the last site but he refused to get very close to the ancient temple, despite having entered the others without concern. He had already decided that the natives had some peculiar beliefs so he did not question the man, he certainly did not want another guide to run off and leave him stranded. He agreed to go alone and the guide would wait for him to return.
It was at this last site, the stone appearing much more crumbled and worn than the others, that he found more of the strange writing. It was in a small chamber in the back of the temple, separated by a doorway with debris littering the ground that made him wonder if it had once been blocked off. Two walls were all but covered in writing that appeared to be of the same language of that which was on the tablet. The walls also had similar looking gemstones embedded into them. He pried several gems free but many could not be removed easily and he did not want to damage the writing so he quit trying.
He ended up staying in the area for several days going back and forth between the ruins and each night the strange dreams returned and each time he awoke feeling as though he could better understand the writing. It was on the last day before he left that complete understanding suddenly came to him. He was sitting on the floor in the fourth temple, studying the writing, when he found himself easily reading the words on the tablet and repeating much of what he had heard in his nightmares although he did not yet know what the words meant.
It should have seemed strange to him that he suddenly found himself able to read a long-dead language that he had only been studying for a few days and of which he had very little to base his studies upon. But if so, he never spoke of it or mentioned it in the many books he subsequently wrote on the subject. He read the words aloud and when he was finished he felt relieved, as though he had completed what had to be done and that he was now ready to return with news of his finds. He abruptly packed up and left that night, traveling after dark against the wishes of his guide.
He returned less than one year later and stayed for well over two years. Over the course of the long months spent exploring the temples he translated more of the writing and discovered many fascinating things about a culture older than any previously known to have existed. But nothing was as important as that small tablet, all but forgotten later as more ruins were uncovered, more artifacts unearthed.
Because it was on that evening sitting on the cool stone floor of a temple that was older than anyone could have guessed, speaking words that were ageless, that he had unwittingly, unknowingly, unimaginably set in motion a process which was planned tens of thousands of years ago and which would take one hundred years more to come to fruition.
It was a glorious one hundred years full of exploration, new discoveries and seemingly limitless hope for the future. It was the last one hundred years we would record as a civilization on this world, though some would survive and find new homes far from here and build new civilizations. And in time we began to advance once more, our numbers replenished and our hearts warmed by the passing of time. Yet we knew little of what had driven us from our home and as technology became so advanced that our ancestors would have been unable to distinguish it from sorcery, we found ourselves able to return to the past to see the truth behind our fate.
Peter lived a rich long life but died many years before the process completed and so he never saw the horrors that were to come and it was not until the very end that it would be known from where the darkness had came, what had released nightmares and blurred the lines separating reality from unreality, made day indistinguishable from night. And even then we did not know why.
As we learned what had transpired to bring about the dark days, we thought of changing the past, righting the wrong. “But altering the past could have unintended consequences!” the Councilors said, that it could make matters worse, perhaps even doom us entirely. But some of us disagreed and we planned and schemed for years until one day we stepped out of the shadows and destroyed the technology, killed those who knew its secrets. Only one device remained and he who used it was never to return, but to live out his days in the past after doing all that he could to prevent the endless night.
So here I sit, able to tell you these things though I should not, and perhaps I am in err, though I suspect few will believe me to begin with. Peter never found the tablet, I made certain of that, although I was unable to destroy it or even damage it. I was able to relocate it, and I have taken great pains to see that both it and the two walls from the fourth temple will never be found. I took the precaution of burning the location from my mind so that even I could not find the tablet now. I know of it, I know what it does. But I do not know where it is.
I steered the foolhardy archeologist in the right direction and he found other less terrifying mysteries to unravel and became moderately successful in his field. One of Peter's writings was read by a young woman named Suzanne Vega and though she did not realize it, the writing caused dreams which fueled her creativity and helped lead to the writing of several songs. And thus it was Peter who is in some ways responsible for the mp3 format.
Unfortunately that was not all that he contributed to the future, a future which I now hope is the past and perhaps only for me.
Christopher Wren was best known as the architect of St. Paul's in London. But he also gave the first intravenous injection in history, and he described the anatomy of the arterial circulation of the brain (although the eponym was taken from his student, Thomas Willis.)
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
