{"id":259630,"date":"2024-03-07T09:50:18","date_gmt":"2024-03-07T14:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=259630"},"modified":"2024-03-07T09:50:18","modified_gmt":"2024-03-07T14:50:18","slug":"the-idea-of-darth-vader-being-lukes-father-started-as-a-joke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2024\/03\/07\/the-idea-of-darth-vader-being-lukes-father-started-as-a-joke\/","title":{"rendered":"The idea of Darth Vader being Luke’s father started as a joke"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Inverse<\/a>: “George Lucas didn\u2019t plan on making Darth Vader the secret father of Luke Skywalker. As much as fans have been told that Lucas had a massive plan for the Star Wars saga prior to 1977, the sources closest to that process say the opposite. \u201cWhen I was his wife, I never knew there were nine stories,\u201d Marcia Lucas says in the new docuseries Icons Unearthed: Star Wars<\/em>. \u201cI never knew there were two<\/em> stories.\u201d But perhaps the greatest revelation in this under-the-radar documentary involves the origin of the franchise\u2019s most famous twist. It turns out the \u201cI am your father\u201d moment started as an offhanded joke at a dinner party. Lucas was struggling to come up with some kind of big twist for Empire\u2019s<\/em> third act when he invited screenwriters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz over for dinner. When Lucas described his struggles with writing the Empire<\/em> story, Huyck joked, \u201cYou can always make Darth Vader Luke\u2019s father.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The children’s classic Goodnight Moon was inspired by a stormy lesbian romance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From The Hornet<\/a>: “A biography of\u00a0Margaret Wise Brown by Amy Gary reveals that Brown, author of the classic children\u2019s books\u00a0Goodnight Moon<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0The Runaway Bunny,<\/em>\u00a0had a tumultuous love life which included an affair with a married woman. Brown never married or had children. Instead she had a string of apparently torrid romances, including one with Blanche Oelrichs (who used the male\u00a0nom de plume<\/em>\u00a0Michael Strange for her erotic poetry), a married woman 20 years her senior. The two women\u2019s romance was actually the inspiration behind the beloved children\u2019s book classic\u00a0Goodnight Moon<\/em>. During one breakup, she wrote a poem about a girl who moved from the country to the city and to soothe herself imagined her old room. Later, the poem returned to her in a dream along with images of her downstairs neighbor\u2019s apartment \u2014 its bright green walls, red furniture with yellow trim. The result was\u00a0Goodnight Moon<\/em>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note<\/strong>: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Greeting someone by saying hello started when the telephone was invented<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From NPR<\/a>: “The Oxford English Dictionary says the first published use of “hello” goes back only to 1827. And it wasn’t mainly a greeting back then. Ammon says people in the 1830’s said hello to attract attention (“Hello, what do you think you’re doing?”), or to express surprise (“Hello, what have we here?”). Hello didn’t become “hi” until the telephone arrived. It was Thomas Edison who put hello into common usage. He urged the people who used his phone to say “hello” when answering. His rival, Alexander Graham Bell, thought the better word was “ahoy.” “Ahoy,” it turns out, had been around longer \u2014 at least 100 years longer \u2014 than hello. It too was a greeting, albeit a nautical one, derived from the Dutch “hoi.” Why did hello succeed? Aamon points to the telephone book. The first phone books included authoritative How To sections on their first pages and “hello” was frequently the officially sanctioned greeting.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editor’s note<\/strong><\/em>: If you like this newsletter, please share it with someone else. And if you <\/em>really <\/strong><\/em>like it, perhaps you could subscribe, or contribute something via <\/em>my Patreon<\/em><\/a>. Thanks for being a reader!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aethelred, the Queen of the Saxons, was mostly written out of British history<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From the BBC<\/a>: “How does a ruler defeat bloodthirsty invaders, secure a kingdom and lay the foundations for England – and then almost get written out of history? When that ruler is a woman. Born into a war for survival against Viking invaders, Aethelflaed, daughter of Alfred the Great, grew up in a realm teetering on the brink of disaster. Married at 16 to Aethelred, Lord of Mercia, Aethelflaed’s new lands were the front line as an uneasy and fitful peace came to a fiery end with Alfred’s death in 899. Aethelflaed’s marriage strengthened an alliance between Mercia and Alfred’s Wessex in the south west and south east. As her older husband’s health declined, Aethelflaed’s reputation seems to have grown. Building projects, treaties and even – unusually for a woman – military campaigns, were conducted in her name. An Irish chronicler, observing her skilful handling of troublesome Vikings in Chester, called her “Queen of the Saxons”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The founder of Little Caesar’s paid Rosa Parks’ rent for more than a decade<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From CNN<\/a>: “Mike Ilitch, the Little Caesars founder and Detroit Tigers owner, had an impact on the daily life of one of the most iconic figures from the civil rights movement. For more than a decade, Ilitch had quietly paid for Rosa Parks\u2019 apartment in downtown Detroit. Shortly after her famed defiance of segregation sparked the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, Parks moved to Detroit and became an important presence in the city for years afterward. But in 1994, Parks was robbed and assaulted in her home at the age of 81. Friends worked to find Parks a new, safer apartment at the Riverfront Apartments in Detroit. Ilitch read the story in the newspaper and offered to pay for Parks\u2019 housing indefinitely. He continued paying for the apartment until Parks died in 2005.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Napoleon III wanted meat for his troops so a Scottish butcher invented Bovril<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Wikipedia<\/a>: “In 1870, Napoleon III ordered one million cans of beef to feed his troops. The task of providing this went to John Lawson Johnston, a Scottish butcher living in Canada. Large quantities of beef were available across the British Dominions and South America, but transport and storage were problematic. Therefore, Johnston created a product known as ‘Johnston’s Fluid Beef’, later called Bovril. By 1888, over 3,000 UK public houses, grocers and dispensing chemists were selling Bovril. The company also made concentrated pemmican-like dried beef as part of the British Army’s emergency field ration during the war. The ration came in the form of a pocket-sized tin can that contained the beef, which could be mixed with water to create a beef tea.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This catfish can survive for years in dried mud until the rains come<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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This catfish can hibernate for months or years in dried mud without water until the rain comes pic.twitter.com\/XQaUWuNjgA<\/a><\/p>— non aesthetic things (@PicturesFoIder) March 6, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>