You may not be aware, but the acclaimed author of Ulysses was also an unashamed underwear fetishist. He was aroused by just looking at his wife Norah`s knickers and insisted she left them around the house. Not content with keeping his peccadilloes private, he was also in the habit of …
It appears that the ubiquitous bottle of ketchup is not quite so modern as we thought. The word ketchup comes from the Chinese dialect Hokkien, Ke-tsiap, the name of a sauce derived from fermented fish. Now popularly known as “ketchup” or “catsup”. The sauce was appealing to the traders …
Let us look at cleavage first. The word itself is a worry – it can mean rending things into separate parts, and also exactly the opposite when referring to things which cling together. In terms of low-cut necklines it somehow covers both possibilities: garments cut to show objects that are actually separate but …
Known as František Kočvara in his native Prague, this rather odd fellow was a skilled double bass player and composer. He seems to have traveled considerably, finally finding a home in London where his works were published from the 1770s. He left little of note except one popular composition, …
The Anglo-Saxons delighted in the following riddle: I am a wonderful creature, bringing joy to women, and useful to those who dwell near me. I harm no citizen except only my destroyer. My site is lofty; I stand in a bed; beneath, somewhere, I am shaggy. Sometimes the very …
Johan Schobert’s exact birth year seems uncertain and has been listed as anywhere between 1720 and 1740, with a cautious consensus of 1735. Beginning in 1760 he was a harpsichordist in the service of the Prince de Conti in Paris. He had interactions with the Mozart family, specifically the …
Lets hear it for Jean-Baptiste Krumpholtz (1742–1790) who was a minor composer not particularly well known these days, maybe because his last name sounds a bit like a German skin complaint. He was revered in his time as a skilled harpist, indeed one of the greatest of the later …
