Word: trivia
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...rejected the main dogmas of religion, a generous miser, a snob 'who championed the underdog. If contrast described his psyche, irony defined his life. Like Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes entertainments outlasted his "serious" work, Andersen was to see his poetry, novels and travel books fade and his trivia be come immortal...
Karnow in reply says that Peretz never raised any issues of expenses with him and that Peretz is trying to demean him in the easiest way. "He's trying to drown the issues between us in that kind of trivia...his arguments on that subject merely reveal his pettiness," he says. Karnow also says he has repaid Peretz for everything he owed...
Died. Ross McWhirter, 50, master of trivia, which he collected with his identical twin Norris in their Guinness Book of World Records, a compilation of every conceivable record, and holder of one in its own right as the alltime best-selling copyrighted book; after being gunned down at his doorstep following his public offer of a $100,000 reward for the apprehension of I.R.A. killers; in London...
Rose: My Life in Service is a cut above such backstairs trivia. Rosina Harrison of Yorkshire was 30 years old when she became Lady Astor's personal maid in 1929. Her salary was about $300 a year, plus room, board and entertainment. There was plenty of the latter before Rose retired at Lady Astor's death in 1964. The lady had been born Nancy Langhorne of Danville, Va., the spirited daughter of a horse auctioneer. After divorcing her first husband, a Boston sporting man and alcoholic, Nancy took her young son to England. There, in 1906, she married...
THAT MAKES the trivia interesting is that it often tells you quite a bit about the era and the social milieu in which the person grew up, like a trip backwards in time and vertically in class. And since the celebrities are ordered alphabetically, you get some pretty stranged juxtapositions. One minute you're at the White House with Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who always thought kissing was "a disgusting habit" and seems fairly contemptuous of the whole subject and the next minute you're in Butcher Hollow, Ky., with Loretta Lynn, who got married at the age of 13 knowing...