What offensive thing did Tommy Hilfiger allegedly say on Oprah?

Search: tommy hilfiger oprah



Why: On reddit, Abercrombie asks 'Jersey Shore' cast not to wear their brand, and in the comments:

oswyn, Yesterday 09:01 PM

Poor A&F is worried about the brand image because the wrong people are wearing it. Some may find this funny because the Jersey shore group seems easy to ridicule. But if A&F said the same thing to another group for example African Americans I think we'd be rightfully appalled. Can anyone remember the backlash against Tommy Hillfiger because of what he allegedly said on Oprah? It should be the same here.

I can not remember that.



Answer: Nothing! Here was a forward that yourmomsilliteratefriend@aol.com sent you in 1996:

Tommy Hilfiger on Oprah



Hello, please read.... and pass on if you haven't already! Everyone needs to see this.



God for Oprah!!!! I'm sure many of you watched the recent taping of The Oprah Winfrey Show where her guest was Tommy Hilfiger. On the show, she asked him if the statements about race he was accused of saying were true. Statements, like"...if I had known African-Americans, Hispanics, Jewish and Asians would buy my clothes, I would not have made them so nice. I wish these people would *NOT* buy my clothes, as they are made for upper class white people."



His answer to Oprah was a simple "YES". Where after she immediately asked him to leave her show. My suggestion? Don't buy your next shirt or Perfume from Tommy Hilfiger. Let's give him what he asked for. Let's not buy His clothes, let's put him in a financial state where he himself will NOT be able to afford the ridiculous prices he puts on his clothes.



BOYCOTT PLEASE...., & SEND THIS MESSAGE TO ANYONE YOU KNOW



Nothing empowers people quite like their own survival!

The rumor stemmed from a fake interview in a Filipino tabloid. Also, Oprah never even met Tommy Hilfiger until 11 years after the alleged kicking-off incident, in May 2007.

She kind of looked like an alien.



Source: Snopes



The More You Know: Anyhoo, CNN says that Abercrombie stock has fallen 9% since they dissed "Jersey Shore," which I guess means they had a lot more orange fistpumping investors than they thought. But I'm not surprised.

Where is the Aral Sea?

Search: aral sea



Why: On reddit, TIL That the disappearing of the Aral Sea has left behind a desert filled with shipwrecks:

Muynak is a city in northern Karakalpakstan in western Uzbekistan. Home to only a few thousand residents at most, Muynak's population has been declining precipitously since the 1980s due to the recession of the Aral Sea.

But I am American and t.f. haven't looked at a world map since AP History in 12th grade.



Answer: Over here!

Source: Google Maps



The More You Know: From that page:

The Aral Sea was once the world's fourth-largest saline body of water, it has been steadily shrinking since the 1960s, after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet Union irrigation projects. By 2004, the sea had shrunk to 25% of its original surface area, and a nearly fivefold increase in salinity had killed most of its natural flora and fauna. By 2007 it had declined to 10% of its original size, splitting into three separate lakes, two of which are too salty to support fish. The once prosperous fishing industry has been virtually destroyed, and former fishing towns along the original shores have become ship graveyards. With this collapse has come unemployment and economic hardship.

Did Elizabeth and Philip marry before or after she became Queen?

Search: queen elizabeth



Why: I just saw this darling thing on reddit, After all these years, they still look at each other the same way:

Answer: They were married first! In sequence:

• 1921 (June 10th) - Philip is born in Corfu, Greece (he is 90)
• 1926 (April 21) - Elizabeth is born (she is 85)
• 1934 - They meet for the first time
• 1937 - They meet for the second time
• 1939 (July) - They meet for the third time and begin to exchange letters (she is 13)
• 1947 (Nov. 20) - They marry

• 1952 (Feb. 6) - Elizabeth's father George VI dies; Elizabeth (25) is proclaimed queen regnant throughout her realms
• 1953 (June 2) - Elizabeth is crowned Queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ceylon, and Pakistan, and Head of the Commonwealth.

Elizabeth wore a gown commissioned from Norman Hartnell, which was embroidered with floral emblems for countries of the Commonwealth: English Tudor rose, Scots thistle, Welsh leek, Irish shamrock, Australian wattle, Canadian maple leaf, New Zealand silver fern, South African protea, lotus flowers for India and Ceylon, and Pakistan's wheat, cotton, and jute.

Source: Wikipedia



The More You Know: Here is what Wikipedia says about the day George VI died:

In early 1952, Elizabeth and Philip set out for a tour of Australia and New Zealand by way of Kenya. On 6 February 1952, they had just returned to their Kenyan home, Sagana Lodge, after a night spent at Treetops Hotel, when word arrived of the death of Elizabeth's father.

The thing is that I'm 99% sure I stayed in that hotel at some point in 2000. There was a watering hole right outside where elephants came, and they put hot water bottles in the beds at night. There is a picture somewhere in the universe of a monkey reaching in through our window (it was kind of slatted) and taking a Tic Tac out of my hand. I will hunt it down when I go home in a few weeks. Stay tuned.

Anyway, also, this is interesting, I think:

With Elizabeth's accession, it seemed likely that the royal house would bear her husband's name. Lord Mountbatten thought it would be the House of Mountbatten, as Elizabeth would typically have taken Philip's last name on marriage; however, Queen Mary and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill favoured the retention of the House of Windsor, and so Windsor it remained. The Duke complained, "I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his own children." In 1960, after the death of Queen Mary and the resignation of Churchill, the surname Mountbatten-Windsor was adopted for Philip and Elizabeth's male-line descendants who do not carry royal titles.

Who was Belle (the Disney Princess) modeled after?

Search: disney character modeled

Why: I am reading "6 Beloved Characters That Had Undiagnosed Mental Illnesses" on Cracked. Nevermind that I have never seen Beauty and the Beast (but, in fact, recorded it this past weekend and sat down to watch it for the first time ever just last night [but did not make it past the opening credits because Chandler wouldn't shut up about Angela Lansbury]), but I just noticed that she sort of looks like a Kardashian.

Answer: Oho, jackpot! There's a whole list of Disney Characters and Who They Were Modeled After. Get ready to learn, everyone (even though many of these are just bodies, not face). First of all:

Belle (Beauty & the Beast) - Audrey Hepburn and Vivien Leigh

(also pictured: what those 2 would look like if they mated)

but also!

Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) - Audrey Hepburn

Esmerelda (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) - Demi Moore (who also voiced her)

Ariel (The Little Mermaid) - Alyssa Milano

Ursula (The Little Mermaid) - Divine

Tinkerbell (Peter Pan) - dancer and mime Margaret Kerry

The Evil Queen (Snow White) - Helen Gahagan in the film She (1935)

Snow White (Snow White and the Seven Dwarves) - dancer Marge Champion (also the model for the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio and the Dancing Hippo in Fantasia)

and some boring ones:

Alice (Alice In Wonderland) - Kathryn Beaumont (her voice, and also Wendy in Peter Pan)
Captain Hook (Peter Pan) - Hans Conried (who also voiced him) & a Spanish King
Pocahontas (Pocahontas) – Irene Bedard (who also voiced her)
Jasmine (Aladdin) - Beth Henn, animator Mark Henn sister

Source: Screen Team Show

The More You Know: And also:

Peter Pan (Peter Pan) - Bobby Driscoll

who also played the little dandy kid in Song of the South!!

and is therefore tied up in 2 of my favorite things at Disneyland, Splash Mountain and this sign.

Who sings the song in that Payless commercial?

Search: i am a paleontologist payless

Why: I know a Future Paleontologist of America who might just need that to be her official theme song.

Answer: They Might Be Giants!!! YEEESSSS!!! (and it says "w/ Danny Weinkauf," who is always in the band anyway... so I don't know).

This is one of the only bands anyone at my camp ever listened to in 1995-7. (The other one was REM.)

Oh my god, do you guys remember Dial-a-Song?

Lyrics go like:

I love diggin' in the dirt
With just a pick and brush
Finding fossils is my aim
So I'm never in a rush
'Cause the treasures that I seek
Are rare and ancient things
Like Velociraptor's jaw
Or Archaeopteryx's wings

Now all the kids
Who wanna see 'em
Are lining up
At our museum

I am a paleontologist
That's who I am

Could it be an herbivore
Crushing plants with rounded teeth
Or ferocious carnivore
Who moves so quickly on its feet
It's like pieces of a puzzle
That I love to try and solve
It's so fun to think about
How a species has evolved

Is it a T-rex? (I keep digging, digging, digging, digging)
Maybe a Triceratops? (digging)
Or a Carnotaur? (digging)
Pachycephalosaurus?

Source: YouTube

The More You Know: Speaking of sequins, sometimes I think about how there were actual flying dinosaurs, like dinosaurs who could fucking FLY, and they were huge and wanted to - and could - gobble you up in a single snap o' the jaw. Can you imagine that today? Look out your window right now and imagine a dinosaur flying around.

(Oatmeal)

BUT it turns out that the fearsome pterodactyl was not a dinosaur at all, just a regular ol' "prehistoric winged lizard." Boring!

Pterosaurs are sometimes referred to in the popular media as dinosaurs, but this is incorrect. The term "dinosaur" is properly restricted to a certain group of reptiles with a unique upright stance (superorder Dinosauria, which includes birds), and therefore excludes the pterosaurs, as well as the various groups of extinct marine reptiles, such as ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and mosasaurs.

Oh, it's also not called a pterodactyl - it's a pterosaur. At least 60 genera of pterosaurs have been found to date, ranging from the size of a small bird to wingspans in excess of 10 meters (33 ft).

Who was Chuck Taylor?

Search: chuck taylor

Why: It kind of bugs me when people my age or older call Converse All Stars "Chucks." I had never heard the term "Chucks" before about 2005, but now, it seems like no one remembers the days of just plain ol' Converse. Erin, if you would:

Anyway, I am wearing navy ones today because I have a blister on the back of my heel.

Answer: He was a basketball player! He was born Charles Hollis Taylor in Brown County, IN, in 1901. He played his first professional game in March 1919 while still a high school student.

In the early-1920s, Taylor played for the Akron Firestone Non-Skids "industrial league" team. This team were charter members of the National Basketball League in 1937. They folded during WWII, but in 1949, the NBL merged with the Basketball Association of America to form the NBA.

Meanwhile, the Converse Rubber Shoe Company was founded by Marquis Mills Converse in 1908 to manufacture winterized rubber-soled footwear for men, women, and children. By 1910, Converse was producing 4,000 shoes daily, but it was not until 1915 that the company began making athletic shoes for tennis. The company's main turning point came in 1917 when the Converse All-Star basketball shoe was introduced. Then in 1921, Chuck Taylor walked into Converse complaining of sore feet. Converse gave him a job as a salesman and ambassador, promoting the shoes around the United States.

By the mid-20s, Taylor played and managed a group of cagers who played for the traveling Converse All-Stars barnstorming team. The team hosted basketball clinics in high school and college gyms across the country. Taylor "almost single-handedly taught Americans the fundamentals of basketball," making his name into a brand. In 1932, his signature was added to the Converse All-Star.

During WWII, he worked as a physical fitness instructor and coach for the Army and Navy. In 1944-45, he trained the Wright Field Air Tecs in a Navy pre-flight program at Marquette University.

He was also popular for his All-American picks. He only selected players he had personally seen play, many from small rural colleges where big-city sportswriters never went. His picks always were highlighted in the popular Converse Basketball Yearbook.

Source: Chuck Taylor Biography (by Abraham Aamidor), Wikipedia

The More You Know: And who was Jack Purcell? Not the guy from "30 Rock" (that's Jack McBrayer / Kenneth Parcell). He was the 1933 world champion of badminton!

He designed a canvas and rubber badminton sneaker for B.F. Goodrich in 1935. In the 1970s, Converse purchased the trademark rights to Jack Purcell sneakers - which it still produces and sells today.

What are pieces of eight?

Search: pieces of eight

Why: Yesterday, so utterly hungover from 2 consecutive 6-in-the-morning bedtime "nights" and barely able to breathe or speak (let alone stand up [let alone actually walk]), I did that thing where I brought a regular bedroom pillow into the living room, hid under a blanket, and watched Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End because I had never seen it and also because, with commercials, it has a 3.5-hour running time. There's a whole deal with "pieces of eight," and also, there's a store outside the exit of the ride called Pieces of Eight.

Answer: They're old Spanish money! Silver coins were "Reales" and gold coins were "Escudos." The "Pieces of Eight" were the largest silver coins (1 oz.) worth 8 reales. I don't know why it was 8; maybe they didn't use the base 10 system.

These coins were also used in the American Colonies. Rather than calling them "pieces of eight," people usually just referred to them as peso, Spanish dollars, or - in the English-speaking colonies - just dollars. They were legal tender in the US until 1857.

You've also heard of "doubloons." These were gold, not silver, because Doblón means, doy, "double." There is some debate about how much a doubloon was actually worth. The theory that makes the most sense is that these were worth 8 escudos. I mean, obviously. Or "doubloon" was just slang for all the gold coins.

They were melted, poured, and forged or stamped by hand:

If the events of the Pirates movies happened around the 1740s-50s, this is what the coins would have looked like:

Obverse
VTRAQVE VNUM M[EXICANUS] 1739
"Both (are) one, Mexico [City Mint], 1739"
Displays two hemispheres of a world map, crowned between the Pillars of Hercules adorned with the PLVS VLTR[A] motto.

Reverse
PHILIP[PUS] V D[EI] G[RATIA] HISPAN[IARUM] ET IND[IARUM] REX
"Philip V, by the Grace of God, King of the Spains and the Indies"
Displays the arms of Castile and León with Granada in base and an inescutcheon of Anjou.

And an 8!

Source: Pirate Money, Wikipedia

The More You Know: Orlando Bloom and Keikei Knightley are not in the new Pirates movie that you recently ignored. Did you know that? I didn't. The reason is because their story ends after the credits of Pirates 3, which frankly, I find a little rude. In case you missed it (and their whole long boring drama), feast your eyes. Feast them! This is "ten years later":

Why does Chicago have so many Polish people?

Search: chicago polish

Why: I am listening to "Casimir Pulaski Day" by Sufjan Stevens on his album Illinois (which also features a song called "Chicago"). I don't know who that guy is, but he sounds Polish (like Sharon Cherski and Brian Krakow [who are not from Chicago]).

Answer: They started with a small community that got bigger! The first Polish emigrants to Chicago were noblemen who had fled Poland after the Polish-Russian War (1830–31). They arrived with plans of establishing a “New Poland” in Illinois. Why Illinois? I have no idea. I mean, why not? Among these early settlers was John Napieralski, believed to have been the first Pole in Chicago.

By the time of the Civil War, 500-ish Poles had created a small community on the Northwest Side; carpenter / grocer Anthony Smarzewski-Schermann and Union Captain Peter Kiolbassa served as local leaders. They built a church and took on roles in the city and state government.

Then, Polish Chicago ("Polonia") was shaped by at least 3 distinct immigration waves:

1. 1850s to early-1920s - Za Chłebem ("For Bread") was driven primarily by economic and structural change in Poland. This wave was mostly peasants, and they went until restrictions during WWI cut off this immigration. By 1930, Polish immigrants and their children had replaced Germans as the largest ethnic group in Chicago.
2. Post-WWII - Hundreds of thousands of Poles were displaced by WWII and then by the Communist takeover of Poland.
3. 1980s - The "Solidarity" immigration began as a result of the imposition of martial law in Poland (1981) and the decade-long struggle to bring democracy to the Polish Republic. These new immigrants were mainly professionals, artists, and intellectuals that ultimately influenced the cultural and institutional life of Chicago's Polish community.

They had conflicts, of course, about ethnic identity, Catholicism, and land ownership, but now they are living large as heroes and Sausage Kings.

Na zdrowie!

Source: Encyclopedia of Chicago

The More You Know: Incidentally, have you heard this song "Single Again" by Shytown (who is also from Chicago, natch)? It's a pretty catchy jam:

I want to see a picture of Ashley Ellerin

Search: ashley ellerin; ashley ellery

Why: The guy who probably killed her in 2001 is being charged with murder in Chicago. Also, she was Ashton Kutcher's girlfriend when she was murdered. I remember reading about that a few years ago, but I forgot about it until now.

Answer: Here she go:

Source:

The More You Know: Ellerin was dead when Kutcher went to pick her up for a post-Grammy Awards party. Here are the grizzly details:

On February 21 in 2001 in 2001, Kutcher had received a call from his new love interest Ellerin. The student, aspiring model and part-time stripper had tried to make a date with the then 23-year-old actor - but Kutcher had fatefully turned down the offer.

He said he would later come to visit her at her Hollywood bungalow - just behind the famous Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Kutcher told police that he later tried to call Ellergin twice during the evening but she had not picked up her phone.

Kutcher drover to her apartment at 10:45pm in the hope of smoothing over what he thought was a looming argument, and he found that the lights were on in her apartment and her car was parked outside. After knocking at the door and calling out to her with no answer, Kutcher said he looked through a window into the apartment and saw what he thought was red wine pooled on the floor.

He thought she was angry at him for not making the earlier date and left. Unbeknown to Kutcher at the time, Ellerin had been stabbed 35 times and was lying dead just beyond his view from the window. The red wine he had seen pooled on the floor was her blood.

What Shakespeare movie was Anne Hathaway in?

Search: anne hathaway shakespeare

Why: In Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby:

"If someone had had a chance to break into Shakespeare's house, he should have taken it, shouldn't he? Because then we'd know more. It would have been perfectly legitimate to... to rummage around in Shakespeare's sock drawer. In the interests of history and literature."

"So according to your logic Julie Beatty is Shakespeare."

"Anne Hathaway."

"Jesus Christ." Tucker shook his head bitterly.

Wha.

Answer: Haha omg, you guys won't believe this, but she wasn't! (Though she has played Jane Austen.) This isn't even the same Anne Hathaway! It's the one who was Shakespeare's wife. Everyone knows this but me:

Very little is known about her beyond a few references in legal documents, but her personality and relationship to Shakespeare have been the subject of much speculation by historians and creative writers.

Hathaway married Shakespeare in November 1582 while pregnant with the couple's first child, to whom she gave birth six months later. Hathaway was 26 years of age; Shakespeare was only 18.

Made for each other.

There's a whole debate about whether this was a shotgun wedding. Apparently, there was a wedding license issued to "Wm Shaxpere and Annam Whateley," and then a different one issued to "William Shagspere and Anne Hathwey" the very next day. Some people think Anne Whateley was his true lady-love - and that Hathaway's family forced him to marry their pregnant daughter, leaving him a shell of a man henceforth - but others think the name was a clerical error and that Anne Whateley never existed. Who knows? Wills and Hathaway had 3 kids, either way.

Source: Wikipedia,

The More You Know: They named one of their kids Hamnet. Hamnet. They named him after their friend Hamnet the Baker. Hamnet also had a twin sister named Judith. (And they had another sister, Susanna.)

This is Hamnet we're talking about. HAMNET!

I want to see some old English bathing machines

Search: bathing machine; dipper bather

Why: In Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby:

Most museums in seaside towns had bathing machines, the peculiar Victorian beach huts on wheels that allowed ladies to go into the sea without exposing themselves to onlookers... Gooleness, typically, was the last town in the UK to employ dippers and bathers; dippers dunked ladies into the sea, and bathers immersed the gentlemen, and it was a calling that had mostly vanished by the 1850s.

Answer: Look at these hussies!

Well, that looks really fun.

Source: Google Images

The More You Know: Did you know these existed? I didn't. That will teach me to skim Jane Austen. Info:

The bathing machines in use at Margate, Kent, were described in 1805 as "four-wheeled carriages, covered with canvas, and having at one end of them an umbrella of the same materials which is let down to the surface of the water, so that the bather descending from the machine by a few steps is concealed from the public view, whereby the most refined female is enabled to enjoy the advantages of the sea with the strictest delicacy." People entered the small room of the machine while it was on the beach, wearing their street clothing. In the machine they changed into their bathing suit, although men were allowed to bathe nude until the 1860s, placing their street clothes into a raised compartment where they would remain dry.

Probably all bathing machines had small windows, but one writer in the Manchester Guardian of May 26, 1906 considered them "ill-lighted" and wondered why bathing machines were not improved with a skylight. The machine would then be wheeled or slid into the water. The most common machines had large wide wheels and were propelled in and out of the surf by a horse or a pair of horses with a driver. Less common were machines pushed in and out of the water by human power. Some resorts had wooden rails into the water for the wheels to roll on; a few had bathing machines pulled in and out by cables propelled by a steam engine. Once in the water, the occupants disembarked from the sea side down steps into the water. Many machines had doors front and back; those with only one door would be backed into the sea or need to be turned around. It was considered essential that the machine blocked any view of the bather from the shore. Some machines were equipped with a canvas tent lowered from the seaside door, sometimes capable of being lowered to the water, giving the bather greater privacy. Some resorts employed a "dipper," a strong person of the same sex who would assist the bather in and out of the sea. Some dippers were said to push bathers into the water, then yank them out, considered part of the experience.

Bathing machines would often be equipped with a small flag which could be raised by the bather as a signal to the driver that they were ready to return to shore.