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Cadillac The inventor of this fine automobile
was Henry Martyn Leland (1843-1952), a small arms manufacturer, who set up
a precision engineering works in Detroit. With the surge in demand for
motor vehicles in the early 20th century, he found it profitable to switch
to a new trade and created a new brand. He named it for Antoine de La
Mothe, Signeur de Cadillac (1658-1730), the French commander of the narrow
strait (French détroit) between Lakes Huron and Erie. The Signeur’s town
of Cadillac is near Bordeax.
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statue of Antoine de La Mothe, Signeur
de Cadillac |
candy
Sugar came originally from the Orient.
Europeans learned how to refine it in the 15th century and later
plantations were established in North America and the Caribbean. Sugary
treats were popular in the royal courts of Europe. Queen Elizabeth I of
England lost her teeth through over indulgence. At the court of Louis XIV
of France, the chef experimented with glazing meats with sugar. This
experiment found particular favour with the youngest member of the court,
the king’s grandnephew, Prince Charles Phillipe de Condé. The king himself
found the innovation delightful and ordered the sugary substances to be
named Condé after his little grandnephew.
cant Andrew Cant (1590–1663), was a
Presbyterian minister in Aberdeen who was a steadfast supporter of the
Royalist cause. On one occasion, he was threatened by Cromwell’s soldiers
for his audacious remarks but fearlessly urged them to strike him dead if
they dared. He supported religious reformation but was totally intolerant
of any views other than his own. He fervently believed in persecuting
adversaries and praying to God for their extermination. To his opponents,
he was a bigot and a hypocrite. His ravings became known as cant.
cardigan sweater
James Thomas Brudenell (1797–1863), seventh Earl of Cardigan, was
frequently seen wearing a collarless sweater with buttons down the front,
a garment he found suitable for winter and summer wear. Cardigan was a
colonel in the 11th Light Dragoons and served in the Crimean War. He
moored his yacht, The Dryad, off Balaclava and dined off elegant crockery
with his meals prepared by a French chef. He even sent home for foxes so that he could do
a spot of hunting. Meanwhile his men slept in muddy tents and many went
down with dysentery. It was Cardigan who led the Charge of the Light
Brigade after foolishly misinterpreting orders. He swept along the Valley
of Death surrounded by Russian canon in order to break the enemy line ahead. He
survived the charge but left two-thirds of his men dead. Cardigan was
carried on the charge by his horse, Ronald, who also survived
and was acknowledged a battle hero. He outlived his master and died in
1872. Ronald's head is exhibited in a glass case at the Cardigan family
home. (Deene Park, Deene, Corby, Northamptonshire, NN17 3EW)
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James Cardigan and
Ronald. |
casanova
A casanova is an unprincipled ladies’ man, a
libertine or a rake. Such a person was Giovanni Jacopo Casanova de
Siengalt (1725–1798), born in Venice and was studying for the priesthood
before he was expelled from the seminary for immoral conduct. After this
he became an adventurer and writer, travelling between the capitals of
Europe, describing the mores of the age. He associated with such
personages as Voltaire, Catherine the Great of Russia, and Frederick the
Great. His major work, Histoire de ma vie (Story of My Life), brags about
his sexual prowess the thousands of willing women he bedded in his career.
Cassandra
According to Homer, Cassandra, the daughter of
Hecuba and Priam, king of Troy, was given the gift of prophesy by the god
Pan, in exchange for sexual favours. Alas Cassandra refused to keep her
part of the bargain, whereupon Pan did not withdraw his gift but ensured
that Cassandra was never believed. Thus her warnings about Troy's imminent
doom were ignored and Troy was captured and burned by the Greeks.
Catherine wheel. A firework in the shape of a wheel.
St. Catherine of Alexandria protested against
the persecution of Christians. She aroused the anger of Emperor Maximinus
who had her confined to prison. When Maximinus found that Catherine had
converted his wife to Christianity and also converted the soldiers who had
taken her to jail, he ordered her to be executed by being nailed on a
spiked wheel. As she was nailed to the wheel, the spikes miraculously
crumbled and the executioners hacked her to death. So a wheel became the
symbol of St Catherine and the circular firework, created in the 20th
century was named after her.
Celsius scale
The centigrade thermometer was an invention of
Anders Celsius (1701–1744), born in Uppsala, Sweden. He was professor of
astronomy at the University of Uppsala, where he revised the Fahrenheit
scale that was in use at the time. He simply took the freezing point of
water as zero and the boiling point at 100 degrees and built the scale
round that. The scale used to be called centigrade until 1948 when it was
renamed by a world conference on weights and measures. In 1741, Celsius
built Sweden's first observatory.
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Anders Celsius, inventor of the Celsius scale |
cereal
Ceres was the Roman goddess of agriculture and was patroness of grains and
plants. She had a daughter by Jupiter, Proserpine, who was abducted by
Pluto, king of Hades and carried off to the underworld to reign with him
as queen. Ceres was mad with neglected the fruits and grains which all
withered and died. The people prayed to Jupiter, king of the gods, who
ordered Pluto to release Proserpine so that she could spend half the year
with her mother. Ceres was pleased and let the grains grow during
Proserpine's time with her, but while Proserpine was away in Hades,
nothing could grow. Mr Kellogg was probably
unaware of this fact when he made the first breakfast cereal.
chauvinist
Nicolas Chauvin of Rochefort, France, was a trooper in La Grande Armée,
wounded seventeen times while serving under Napoleon. He had a fanatical
patriotism and a great admiration for Napoleon. His enemies ridiculed him
for his overzealous patriotism and he appeared as a buffoon character in
several dramas of the period and in The Scarlet Pimpernel by
Baroness Orezy. Chauvinism came to mean being an overzealous supporter of
a cause, but the meaning changed over time to be used by feminists to
attack male supremacy.
chesterfield overcoat
A chesterfield is a velvet-collared, single-breasted overcoat reaching to
the knees. It was designed for Philip Dormer Stanhope (1694–1773), fourth
Earl of Chesterfield, who was noted for his fine dress and elegant
manners. He is chiefly remembered for the Letters to his Son, published in
1774. The work offered sage advice on business, courtly etiquette, and
women. It contained pithy aphorism such as ‘Advice is seldom welcome and
those who want it the most always like it the least’. Dr. Samuel Johnson
hated Chesterfield because he refused to become a patron of Johnson's
Dictionary. Dr. Johnson described Letters to his Son as ‘teaching the
morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing master.’
chicken à la King
This dish is good enough for a king but not named in honour of one. It was
first devised by the chef of Claridge’s Hotel in London and named ‘chicken
à la Keene’, after J. R. Keene, the winner of the Grand Prix in 1881. As
the dish gained popularity, the name was corrupted, by changing Keene to
King.
Codswallop
is a derisive term for senseless talk or anything worthless. It comes from the lemonade bottle invented by Hiram Codd (1838-1887), who developed a method of keeping mineral water fresh. Codd’s patented bottle had a marble in the neck, which under pressure maintained a seal and kept the contents fresh. Codd hoped that his lemonade would replace beer copiously imbibed by workmen and viewed by many as iniquitous. Beer was known as ‘wallop’, an onomatopoeic expression coming from the sound that comes from the bubbles escaping from fermenting beer. Those who preferred beer called Codd’s beverage a load of ‘Codd’s wallop’. Codd had a mineral water business in Camberwell and a marble-stoppered bottle factory in Barnsley. He died in 1887 of liver disease, an affliction usually associated with excessive alcohol consumption, and is buried in Brompton Cemetery.
Cologne eau de cologne
Cologne, a city on the Rhine, where eau de cologne originates, was founded
in 38 B.C. as Ara Ubiorum. When the Romans captured the city in A.D. 50,
its name was changed to Colonia Agrippina in honour of the Roman empress
Agrippina Minor (A.D. 15–59), who was born there. Later the name was
corrupted to Cologne. The empress was not entirely a good character. She
poisoned one of her husbands, committed incest with her brother, the
emperor Caligula, and married her uncle, the emperor Claudius. She was the
mother of Nero and conspired to make him emperor but he came to hate her
and had her put to death. The poet Coleridge wrote these lines on the
city.
The river Rhine, it is well known
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
But tell me, nymphs, what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?
colossal
In ancient times the Colossus was the bronze statue of Rhodes, an image of
the sun god Helios, built to commemorate the successful defence of Rhodes
against the Macedonians in 305 B.C. The Colossus was a gigantic statue
bestriding the entrance of the harbour of Rhodes town. Pliny the Elder
relates that the statue was 70 cubits (120 feet) tall and was so large
that ships could sail between its legs. It was one of the Seven Wonders of
the Ancient World. In 224 B.C. an earthquake toppled the statue and it
crashed down and split into fragments.
Colt revolver
Samuel Colt (1814–1862) was born in Hartford, Connecticut. He had little
education, and at the age of sixteen he ran away from home and went to
sea. The story goes that he spent his nights on deck whittling a pistol,
the model for the Colt revolver, which he patented in 1835. His patent was
the first practical revolver, a rotating barrel of six chambers, with a
cocking device. His gun became the universal pistol of the Wild West, used
by soldiers, sheriffs, bandits and cowboys.
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Samuel Colt inventor of
the Colt revolver |
Copernican system
The Polish astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), postulated a
heliocentric or sun-centred theory of the universe, contrary to the
current theory of Ptolemy that the sun moved round the earth. Copernicus
was obliged to delay publication of his theory, fearing retribution from
the church, whose theology was an earth-centred universe. His masterpiece,
Concerning the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres, was published
when he was lying on his deathbed. Immediately on publication, the Church
placed the work on the Index of Forbidden Books.
crap
Thomas Crapper (1836-1910) was an engineer who is credited with the
invention of the flushing toilet and adding the word crap to the English
language. He ran a business, Thomas Crapper and Co, which manufactured
sanitary ware and the flush toilet. Some ‘Crapper’ manhole covers may be
seen today in Westminster Abbey. Crapper was commissioned to fit out the
Royal country house of Sandringham with water closets with cederwood
seats. But the assumption that Crapper invented the flushing toilet in
untrue. The device was created by Sir John
Harington, a courtier of Elizabeth I, who had a ‘john’ built at the
palace. The notion that Crapper gave his scatological name to faeces is
just crap. The word ‘crap’, according to the Oxford English Dictionary,
derives from the Middle English ‘crappe’, meaning chaff or residue from
rendered fat. Crapper died in 1910 and is buried in Beckenham Cemetery,
Elmers End Road, Beckenham, Kent, BR3 4TD.
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A brass rubbing of a Crapper manhole. |
Rich as Croesus
Croesus was the last king of Lydia who reigned from 560 to 546 B.C. He was
reputed to be the wealthiest man in the world. When a wise man, Solon,
comes to visit him, Croesus asked Solon if he had ever seen greater
opulence. Solon replied that peacocks are incomparable in their beauty.
Croesus told Solon of vanquished foes and battles won, but Solon replied
that the happiest man he had ever met was a peasant, because the peasant
was happy with what he had. Croesus was angry and dismissed Solon from the
court but then tragedy struck. His oldest son was killed in a hunting
accident, and then the Emperor Cyrus of the Persians invaded. Croesus was
defeated, captured and ordered to be burned on a pyre. Before being taken
for execution, Croesus told Cyrus Solon's story and how Fate can bring
misery to a rich man and happiness to a poor man. When Cyrus heard this,
he released Croesus and the two become good friends. |