The Pedant's Revolt Why Most Things You Think Are Right Are Wrong Hardback - 2006

Excerpt

Chapter One

Art, Literature, and Entertainment


Harpo Marx was mute

Adolph Arthur Marx, known as Harpo Marx, was perfectly able to speak. He was also a talented and self-taught harpist, which is how he got his nickname.

In November 2000, BBC Radio Two's The Birth of Screen Comedy featured Harpo's son Bill Marx explaining why his father suddenly stopped speaking onstage. It came about as a result of a bad review, which said that "his pantomime was wonderful, but when he opened his mouth to speak he ruined the image." According to Bill Marx: "Dad took it to heart and he just stopped talking."

You can hear Harpo Marx explaining how he fell off a stool while playing the harp in a brothel at the following website:

www.marx-brothers.org/living/harposp.htm



Toulouse-Lautrec was a dwarf

The French artist Toulouse-Lautrec may have been born with a congenital disorder, but it wasn't achondroplasia (dwarfism) as is commonly believed. Arnold Matthias, author of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, has discovered that it was much more likely to have been "a hereditary bone disease (pyknodysostosis)."

The Encyclopaedia Britannica reveals that at the age of thirteen, Toulouse-Lautrec broke his left thighbone, and just over a year later he fractured his right thighbone in a second mishap. The resulting damage caused to his bones left his legs atrophied and made it very difficult for him to walk. According to the findings of geneticist Philip R. Reilly, in his book Abraham Lincoln's DNA and Other Adventures in Genetics, as an adult Toulouse-Lautrec "stood just shy of 4 feet 11 inches tall."

A further misconception surrounding the artist concerns the name "Toulouse." Often regarded as his rst name, Toulouse actually formed part of his surname. The Encyclopaedia Britannica cites his full name as "Henri-Marie-Raymonde de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa."



Errol Flynn was Irish or English or American

Dashing Hollywood actor Errol Flynn earned acclaim as a great swashbuckler in
lms such as The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and The Sea Hawk (1940). Biographer Jeffrey Meyers reveals in his 2002 book Inherited Risk that in an effort to perpetuate Flynn's romantic screen image, Hollywood publicity departments portrayed Flynn as a "mad Irishman," an "elegant Englishman," and a "bold American."

However, Meyers reliably informs us that Flynn was the son of Australian scientist Professor Theodore Leslie Thomson Flynn, and he was born "on the cold, strange island of Tasmania" in 1909. Therefore Flynn was neither Irish, English, nor American, but Australian by birth.



Humpty Dumpty was an egg

Humpty Dumpty came to be regarded as an egg after he was drawn as one in Lewis Carroll's 1872 children's book, Through the Looking-Glass. Before that, no one knows for sure exactly what Humpty Dumpty was.

In The Great Plague, writer and historian A. Lloyd Moote suggests that Humpty Dumpty was "the royal cannon . . . that fell from a church wall [St. Mary at the Walls, Colchester, Essex] during a Civil War siege" in the late 1640s. Legend has it that a Parliamentary cannonball hit the tower wall below where the royal cannon was positioned, which caused it to fall off. All the king's horses (the horsemen) and all the king's men (the foot soldiers) tried to raise Humpty Dumpty on to another part of the wall, but failed.

Though many believe this story to be true, there's no proven connection between the cannon and the nursery rhyme.



Walt Disney is cryonically frozen

Film producer, director, and animator Walt Disney is, of course, the most famous cryonically preserved celebrity. At least, he would be if he had really been frozen. Disney hated funerals and before he died he made it clear that he did not wish to have one. Consequently his funeral service in December 1966 was small and private. Less than a month later, local psychologist Dr. James Bedford became the first person to be preserved at the Cryonics Institute in Michigan. The fact that the birth of cryonics and Disney's low-key funeral occurred at much the same time seems to have been the main reason why questions were raised about the final resting place of Disney's body.

The printed version of the rumor is said to have first appeared in the French magazine Ici Paris in 1969. It was then mentioned in a number of unauthorized biographies, one of which, Marc Eliot's Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince, also claimed that Disney had an interest in cryonics. So was Walt Disney frozen? Not according to the Cryonics Institute who have stated: "We don't think so."

Biographers Katherine and Richard Greene, who had full access to the Disney family and archives, have said in their 1998 book The Man Behind the Magic: The Story of Walt Disney: "Contrary to rumor, Walt was cremated--not frozen." Indeed, his death certificate states that his remains were subject to a "cremation" on "12/17/66" at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, Los Angeles, California, after which, according to Frommer's Los Angeles 2004 author Matthew Richard Poole, they were buried "in a little garden to the left of the Freedom Mausoleum."



Victorian actress Sarah Bernhardt performed wearing a wooden leg

The nineteenth-century French actress Henriette-Rosine Bernard (aka Sarah Bernhardt) certainly lost a leg during the course of her long career. During a South American tour in 1905, she sustained an injury to her right knee while appearing in a production of the play La Tosca, when she landed badly after jumping off the parapet in the last scene of the play. Ten years later the leg had become gangrenous and had to be amputated. Bernhardt was seventy-one years old.

Though Bernhardt did try using a prosthetic leg, she didn't take to it. However, she was determined not to let this setback damage her successful acting career, and when she was able, she embarked on another European tour in 1920, in which she played roles that she could act while remaining seated.

The theater critic Howard Greer describes one of Bernhardt's valiant performances in an article published in the Theatre Magazine in 1920: "Throughout the action of the play the star [Bernhardt] makes but two appearances and remains seated upon her golden palanquin. She is carried upon the stage by four richly armored slaves and reclines voluptuously on her cushions."



"Puff, the Magic Dragon" is a veiled reference to smoking marijuana

Legend has it that this delightful children's hit song by the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary is all about smoking marijuana: i.e., "Puff" refers to drug-related smoking; "little Jackie Paper's" surname implies cigarette-rolling papers; "autumn mist" is marijuana smoke; and the land of "Honalee" refers to the Hawaiian village of Hanalei, famed for its highly potent marijuana plants. However, this suggestion has been strongly denied by all those associated with the song's origins.

Leonard Lipton, author of the original 1959 poem that formed the basis of the song, has claimed that it was inspired by Ogden Nash's poem "The Tale of Custard the Dragon," and was about the transition from childhood to adulthood. The song's cowriter, Peter Yarrow, has added: "When 'Puff' was written, I was too innocent to know about drugs . . . What kind of a mean-spirited SOB would write a children's song with a covert drug message?"

What kind indeed? Anyone want to cast aspersions on Peter, Paul and Mary's second hit "Blowin' in the Wind"?


W. C. Fields has "I'd rather be in Philadelphia" on his tombstone

It is often claimed that actor and screenwriter W. C. Fields--who starred in
lms such as My Little Chickadee (1940) and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941)--has the above legend engraved on his tombstone. In fact, the brass plaque in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, Los Angeles, California, which marks his final resting place reads simply: "W. C. Fields 1880-1946."

Biographer James Curtis explains that the famous epitaph--"Here lies W. C. Fields. I would rather be living in Philadelphia"--which is often misquoted, first appeared in Vanity Fair in October 1924. Fields made the quip in response to the journalistic question: How would you like your epitaph to read? The quote is often paraphrased as: "On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia" or "All things considered, I'd rather be in Philadelphia."


Frankenstein was a monster

Mary Shelley's Gothic horror story Frankenstein is named after the main character Victor Frankenstein, who creates a monstrous living being out of human body parts. English professor Ellen Moers's commentary, Female Gothic, explains that "the scientist runs away and abandons the newborn Monster, who is and remains nameless." Therefore, the creature should be properly referred to as "Frankenstein's monster."

Incidentally, Frankenstein wasn't a German doctor, but a Swiss student of natural science.



Baseball originated in nineteenth-century America

In 1905, U.S. baseball league presidents set up the Mills Commission, which declared that Abner Doubleday "devised" baseball in 1839 in Cooperstown, New York. However, in The Timeline History of Baseball, author Don Jensen quotes a "Pittsfield Massachusetts town council" prohibiting "the playing of baseball" in 1791.

Despite its popularity in the U.S., evidence exists which reveals that baseball had been established in England as early as 1700, when the Reverend Thomas Wilson of Maidstone, Kent, was said to be scandalized on witnessing "Morris-dancing, cudgel-playing, baseball and cricketts . . . on the Lord's Day." In Northanger Abbey, written in 1798, Jane Austen describes her character Catherine preferring "cricket, baseball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books."



chapter 2



Things That Are "Bad" for You



Chewing pencils causes lead poisoning

In a recent column in a national broadsheet newspaper, I was interested to read about a "homeopathic dowser healer" who claimed that princess Diana had once suffered from lead poisoning, which had affected her posture. The Princess was quoted as recounting an incident when, as a schoolgirl, the point of a lead pencil had "broken off into her face." The healer was able to "extract the poison," which apparently led to an improvement in the princess's posture.

The only problem with this miraculous cure is that, as historian Christian Warren points out in his book Brush with Death, pencil lead "is not lead at all, but graphite." The misnomer dates back to the Middle Ages, when the newly discovered mineral "graphite" was nicknamed "German lead." Pencils don't contain, and never have contained, actual lead.

As for being poisoned by pencils, Poisons Quarterly states categorically that there is "no risk of developing lead toxicity from chewing pencils."



Children of first cousins will be physically or mentally impaired

There has long been a Western taboo about the act of marriage between first cousins: in an estimated thirty U.S. states the practice is illegal. More precisely, though, it's generally the prospect of the resulting offspring that fills people with dread.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the existence of hemophilia in the European royal families was often cited as an example of why cousins marrying was a bad idea. However, genetic counselor Robin L. Bennett points out in an article in the Journal of Genetic Counselling that "the inheritance of this X-linked recessive condition [hemophilia] would have occurred regardless of the consanguineous unions [cousins' intermarriage] in the royal families."

It appears that the fear surrounding the taboo dates back to nineteenth-century research which exaggerated the risk of children of cousins being born with birth defects. In Forbidden Relatives, anthropology professor Martin Ottenheimer points out that in a study of the children of blood-related couples in rural Sri Lanka, scientists found "no significant decrease in offspring viability." Provided small, isolated communities are taken out of the equation, Ottenheimer suggests that "modern research does not confirm the common notion that first-cousin marriage represents a significant physical threat to the offspring."

Medical anthropologist Dr. Alison Shaw agrees that "birth incidence data suggest the risk of having a child affected by a genetic condition is about two percent . . . in first-cousin couples the risk doubles to about four percent."

That leaves ninety-six out of a hundred cousin-couples with healthy children. Though Ottenheimer points out that a risk to the offspring of close consanguineal relatives still exists, it would appear to be considerably smaller than many people think.


Close work, reading in dim light, watching TV up close or without a light on damages eyesight

It's a common belief that "overusing" one's eyes will somehow wear them out. Oddly, no similar claims are made for "too much listening," "too much tasting," or "too much touching" causing damage to the relevant organ or limb.

Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Dr. Nicola Kim, tells us that, as a rule, your eyes can't be damaged by normal, everyday use: "There are a few specific exceptions, like looking directly into sunlight and laser light, but other than this, reading in dim or bright light will not change the health or function of your eyes . . . It may feel more difficult to focus if the lighting is suboptimal [less than ideal], but this has no permanent effect on the structure of your eyes. Likewise, sitting too close or too far from the TV will also have no permanent effect on your vision."

Child-care expert Dr. Spock has also stated that children's eyes are not harmed either by being near to the TV, "reading an excessive amount, reading in poor light, or holding the book close."

Equally, as Dr. Robert Mendelsohn writes in How to Raise a Healthy Child, "there is no scienti
c evidence that . . . reading in a moving vehicle . . . exposure to flashbulbs and strong artificial light . . . wearing another person's glasses . . . or going without your glasses will damage your eyes." In fact, in his book Bad Medicine science writer Christopher Wanjek has expressed the belief that in the modern world there are only a few everyday activities that will lead to vision loss.

It seems that many adults believe they are somehow to blame for being nearsighted and fear the same fate for their offspring. Perhaps this fallacy has grown from people's propensity to blame themselves for some of their physical shortcomings rather than accept the fact that they started out that way. Besides, if sitting too close to a TV screen or computer monitor really could damage eyes, most IT workers would be finding their way round with white sticks by now.

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