Where did "Olly olly oxen free" come from?

Search: olly olly oxen free

Why: In Breakfast of Champions, p. 260:

Dwayne glanced around craftily. Then he called out a signal he had used as a child to indicate that a came of hide-and-seek was over, that it was time for children in hiding to go home.
Here is what he called, and the sun was down when he called it: "Olly-olly-ox-in-freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee."

Answer: It might be from the German phrase "Alle, alle auch sind frei!" which translates to "All, all are also free" or "Everybody is free."

Source: Wikipedia

The More You Know: The phrase seems to be an English-Norman French-Dutch/German concoction. Other variations include "Alles, alles," "Allez, allez," "Oyez, oyez," and "in kommen frei."

What does a nightingale sound like?

Search: nightingale audio

Why: In Breakfast of Champions, p. 252:

The craze spread. Black people who had never been near the Keedsler mansion could imitate the Lyre Bird and the Willy Wagtail of Australia, the Golden Oriole of India, the Nightingale and the Chaffinch and the Wren and the Chiffchaff of England itself.

Answer: Click here to hear the Thrush Nightingale (Luscinia luscinia).

Source: The Virtual Bird

The More You Know: The scientific name for the Wren is Troglodytes troglodytes. Weird. Troglodytes live in caves. Click here to hear the wren sing!

What does nacreous mean?

Search: nacreous

Why: In Breakfast of Champions, p. 225:

Trout now crossed Sugar Creek on my father's legs and feet, and those appendages became more nacreous with every wading stride.

Answer: Iridescent; pearly

Source: Merriam-Webster

The More You Know: "Nacre" is another word for mother of pearl, which grows inside the shells of mollusks.

What was the temptation of St. Anthony?

Search: saint anthony temptation

Why: In Breakfast of Champions, Rabo Karabekian has a painting called The Temptation of Saint Anthony. On p. 209, Beatrice Keedsler says, "This is a dreadful confession, but I don't even know who Saint Anthony was. Who was he, and why should anybody have wanted to tempt him?"
"I don't know, and I would hate to find out," said Karabekian.

Answer: Anthony decided to follow the words of Jesus: "If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasures in heaven; and come, follow Me" (Matthew 19:21). He sold his estate, donated the money to the poor, and went to live as a hermit. According to his biography by Athanasius, the devil fought St. Anthony by afflicting him with boredom, laziness, silver and gold, and the phantoms of women, which he overcame by the power of prayer. The devil beat him up until friends took him to a church.

He returned to the desert and lived in an abandoned Roman fort for 20 years. The devil found him and sent him phantoms of wild beasts, wolves, lions, snakes, and scorpions. Anthony only laughed and said, "If any of you have any authority over me, only one would have been sufficient to fight me." God declared him the victor over the devil, TKO.

Source: Wikipedia

The More You Know: The theme is oft repeated in art, with famous paintings by Heironymous Bosch and Salvador Dali. A book on the subject - written in the form of a play script - is what Gustave Flaubert considered his masterpiece (not Madame Bovary).

What poem features the word "Excelsior"?

Search: poem excelsior

Why: In Breakfast of Champions, p. 171:

And then Trout saw that a simple fire extinguisher in the Galaxie had this brand name:
EXCELSIOR
As far as Trout knew, this word meant higher in a dead language. It was also a thing a fictitious mountain climber in a famous poem kept yelling as he disappeared into a blizzard up above.

Answer: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1841 short poem Excelsior. Here's an excerpt!

"Try not the Pass!" the old man said;
"Dark lowers the tempest overhead,
The roaring torrent is deep and wide!"
And loud that clarion voice replied,
Excelsior!

"O stay," the maiden said, "and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast!"
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
But still he answered, with a sigh,
Excelsior!

Source: ReadBooksOnline

The More You Know: The title of Excelsior was reportedly inspired by the state seal of New York, which bears the Latin motto Excelsior. Longfellow had seen it earlier on a scrap of newspaper.

What is "Calvary"?

Search: calvary

Why: In Breakfast of Champions, p. 141:

Calvary Cemetery, where George Hickman Bannister was at rest, was named in honor of a hill in Jerusalem, thousands of miles away. Many people believed that the son of the Creator of the Universe had been killed on that hill thousands of years ago.

Answer: It is the site ascribed to the Crucifixion, just outside of ancient Jerusalem's 1st century walls - also called Golgotha.

Source: Wikipedia

The More You Know: I officially had no idea. The only other time (I think) I've ever heard this word is in the song "One Day More" from Les Misérables, which I've seen upwards of a dozen times (at 0:23):

What does a pork pie hat look like?

Search: porkpie hat

Why: In Breakfast of Champions, p. 115:

Dwayne was so glad to see them now - these two little men in matching overalls and work shoes, each wearing a pork-pie hat.

Answer: Like these!


Source: Google Images

The More You Know: The pork pie hat originated in the mid 19th century. Originally referring to a type of woman’s hat, it gets its name from its resemblance to a pork pie, apparently. Throughout his career, Buster Keaton designed and made many of his own pork pie hats:

What makes up an individual species?

Search: species

Why: In Breakfast of Champions, p. 87:

...there were too many species on the planet already, and new ones were coming into being almost every hour.

Answer: Oh - I think I learned this in 7th grade: "A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring." But! "While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are often used, such as based on similarity of DNA or morphology."

• The "species problem" addresses the difficulty in defining the word in a way that applies to all naturally occurring organisms
• Most textbooks follow Ernst Mayr's definition of a species: "groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations, which are reproductively isolated from other such groups"
• However, this excludes animals mated in captivity, animals whose offspring are normally sterile, and animals which may be physically and physiologically capable of mating but do not normally do so in the wild

Source: Wikipedia

The More You Know: Total number of species (estimated):

7 - 100 millions (identified and unidentified), including:

• 5-10 million bacteria
• 74,000-120,000 fungi

Of the identified eukaryote species we have:

• 1.6 million, including:
  • 297,326 plants, including:
    • 15,000 mosses
    • 13,025 ferns and horsetails
    • 980 gymnosperms
    • 258,650 angiosperms
    • 9,671 Red and green algae
  • 28,849 fungi & other non-animals, including:
    • 10,000 lichens
    • 16,000 mushrooms
    • 2,849 brown algae
  • 1,250,000 animals, including:
    • 1,203,375 invertebrates, including:
      • 950,000 insects
      • 81,000 mollusks
      • 40,000 crustaceans
      • 2,175 corals
    • 59,811 vertebrates:
      • 29,300 fish
      • 6,199 amphibians
      • 8,240 reptiles
      • 9,956 birds
      • 5,416 mammals

Who played Bunny Hoover in "Breakfast of Champions"?

Search: breakfast of champions

Why: I am re-reading Breakfast of Champions, which I have called my "favorite book" for the past 10 years. I have never seen the movie.

Answer: Lukas Haas! And the rest of the cast was like:

• Dwayne Hoover - Bruce Willis
• Kilgore Trout - Albert Finney
• Harry LeSabre - Nick Nolte
• Celia Hoover - Barbara Hershey
• Wayne Hoobler - Omar Epps
• Monte Rapid - Owen Wilson
• Eli - Michael Clark Duncan
• Pesky Weber - Tom Robbins
  
• Commercial Director - Kurt Vonnegut

Source: IMDb

The More You Know: OMG!!! Someone's making a movie of Cat's Cradle!!!!

Nice, nice, very nice
So many people in the same device
-The Fifty-Third Calypso of Bokonon