Montezuma II

EARLY LIFE

Montezuma II (variant spellings include Moctezuma, Moteuczoma, Motecuhzoma) was born in around 1466. in Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City).

His father Axayacatl was the Tlatoani (king of the Aztec empire.)

As a child, Montezuma would have been disciplined for even minor infringements. Disobedient boys were pierced by cactus spikes. Disobedient girls made to inhale chili smoke.

Montezuma leaned to read and write using glyphs and studied astrology, history and medicine. He also practiced how to use bows, arrows, swords and other weapons.

REIGN 

Originally trained to be a chief priest, Montezuma was the head of the Calmecac, the school of the upper classes. Following the death of his uncle, Montezuma became the Tlatoani in 1502.

The personality of Montezuma was more that of a scholar (tlatimine) than a warrior. A philosopher king, he was sensitive and kind for a man of his era, but still ruthless at times.

Moctezuma II in the Codex Mendoza

Legend says Montezuma did not want to be a tlatoani. After he was elected, messengers were sent everywhere to look for him. They found him cleaning a temple.

After he took the charge, Montezuma dismissed most of the authorities, and replaced them with his former students. His general dislike of macehualtin (commoners) led him to create an elaborate ritual to separate him from the common people.

Despite his scholarly temperament and priestly training, Montezuma was a distinguished warrior. He extended the Aztec Empire to modern day Honduras and Nicaragua.

PERSONAL LIFE 

Montezuma wore colorful clothes of richly embroidered cotton and necklaces and collars made of pearls or gold. On his head he wore  magnificent headdresses and at times masks.

Aztec feather headdress attributed to Moctezuma II 

Montezuma ate plenty of spicy food made from hot chilies and sweet peppers, especially tortillas made from corn. For meat he consumed deer, rabbit, turkey, even dog with beans and as a snack roasted ground seeds.

At the end of a meal, Montezuma habitually consumed a thick, dyed red chocolate drink flavored with chili peppers served to him in a golden goblet.

Montezuma once bred a hairless dog that was used as a pet until it was killed and eaten in a stew.

He had many wives and concubines but only two women were his Queens – Tlapalizquixochtzin and Teotlalco.

CONTACT WITH THE SPANISH 

Montezuma's priestly training was his downfall as he believed mistakenly thought the return of Quetzacoatl incarnated in Conquistador Hernán Cortés. It paralyzed him and his Aztec army until it was too late.

When Cortés arrived in 1519, Montezuma was immediately informed and he chose to welcome the Conquistador as an honored guest. On November 8, 1519, Montezuma met Cortés on the causeway leading into Tenochtitlan and the two leaders exchanged gifts. Montezuma gave Cortés the gift of an Aztec calendar, one disc of crafted gold and another of silver.

Cortés and La Malinche meet Moctezuma in Tenochtitlan, November 8, 1519.

Montezuma wanted to find out if Cortés and his fellow Spaniards were gods or mortals. So he tested the matter with gifts of food. His first offerings made the Spaniards feel ill because he had caused them to be splattered with blood, thinking this would be suitable for gods. Later they feasted agreeably on (according to Fray Bernardino de Sahagun's contemporary account ) “white tortillas, grains of maize, turkey eggs, turkeys” and over 20 different types of fruit including four varieties of sweet potato, avocados and some cacti. They flinched from chocolate at first, but when the Indians set the example they drank and found it tasted good.

Montezuma brought Cortés to his palace where the Conquistador and his fellow Spaniards lived as his guests for several months. At some time during that period Montezuma became a prisoner in his own house. Exactly how this happened is not clear.

Montezuma's subjects besieged the palace where he was being held and in an effort to assuage the raging mob, he appeared on the balcony appealing to his countrymen to retreat. The people were appalled by their king's complicity with the Spanish and pelted him with rocks and darts. He died a short time after the attack on June 29, 1520.

Death and cremation of Moctezuma as depicted in the Florentine Codex, Book 12

Following the conquest, Moctezuma's daughter Techichpotzin became known as Isabel Moctezuma. She was given a large estate by Cortés, who also fathered a child by her, Leonor Cortés Moctezuma.

The grandson of Moctezuma II was baptized and married a Spanish noblewoman. His son became the first count of Moctezuma and today the Duke of Moctezuma is still a Spanish noble family with palaces and properties in Spain.

Claudio Monteverdi

EARLY LIFE 

Claudio Monteverdi was born in 1567 in Cremona, Duchy of Milan (now Lombardy, Italy), the oldest of five children.

Claudio was baptized on May 15, 1567, in Cremona.

His father was Baldassare Monteverdi, a doctor, apothecary and amateur surgeon.

During his childhood, Claudio was taught by Marc'Antonio Ingegneri, the maestro di cappella at the Cathedral of Cremona.The Maestro’s job was to conduct important worship services in accordance with the liturgy of the Catholic Church. Claudio learned composition, singing and how to play string instruments such as the viol and viola da braccio.

Claudio Monteverdi has been proposed as the subject of this Portrait of a Musician by a Cremonese artist (c. 1570–1590

Claudio was very talented as a young boy and was only 15 when he published his first pieces of music. a book of three part motets.

MUSIC CAREER

Monteverdi was one of the most significant composers in the transition from the Renaissance to the baroque era and may justly be claimed as the founder of dramatic music, as we now understand it. He did this by developing a new musical style. The old style was known as prima pratica (“first practice”) and the new style was called the seconda pratica (“second practice”). With the prima pratica, the music was thought to be more important than the words. This meant that the music could be very contrapuntal, with several things going on at once so that the words could not be clearly heard. The prima pratica continued to be used for church music. However, in the seconda pratica the words were more important than the music, i.e. it was important to be able to hear all the words clearly, and the music had to be simple enough for this to happen. This was particularly important in opera and in madrigals.

Madrigals were vocal pieces that put the message of the poetry ahead of musical convention. By the time Monteverdi got his first job he had already published two books of madrigals. By his death, he had written nine books full of them.

Monteverdi was once criticized by fellow composer Giovanni Artusi for the licentious use of dissonance in his madrigals. Monteverdi's response was: "Oh, you're talking about the prima pratica, but I'm composing according to the seconda pratica; you might as well compare apples to oranges!"

Monteverdi's first job was working at the court of the Duke of Mantua, joining the orchestra about 1590. The musical director was the famous Giaches de Wert.

By 1601 Monterverdi was recognized as a distinguished composer, and he was appointed maestro di cappella at the Court of Mantua in Italy.

Monteverdi had published four books of madrigals by the time of his first opera, L'Orfeo, in 1607. Based on the Greek legend of Orpheus, L'Orfeo tells the story of Orpheus' descent to Hades and his fruitless attempt to bring his dead bride Eurydice back to the living world. L'Orfeo was premiered on February 24, 1607 in the The Ducal Palace, a group of buildings in Mantua, Lombardy.

Front cover of the score of L'Orfeo, published in Venice in 1609

In 1610 Monteverdi wrote his famous Mass and Vespers of the Virgin. It contained tone colors and harmonies well in advance of his time.

Although not primarily a church musician, Monteverdi was appointed music director of St. Mark's, Venice, in 1613. He revitalized the basilica's music and wrote much church music, madrigals using new devices, and stage music for Mantua.

Monteverdi by Bernardo Strozzi, c. 1630[1]

Venice's first public opera houses opened in 1637 and although Monteverdi was now in his 70s, he wrote four new operas within about three years for Venice. including Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1640) and L'incoronazione di Poppea (1642). They formed a brilliant end to his career.

Claudio Monteverdi's last opera, L'incoronazione di Poppea, premiered in 1643 at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice. Following its initial run, L'incoronazione di Poppea fell out of favor and wasn't staged again until 1913.

The opera's theatrical return took place at the Théâtre des Arts in Paris on February 5, 1913, conducted by Vincent d'Indy. This production introduced the work to a new generation of audiences and revived its critical acclaim. Since 1913, L'incoronazione di Poppea has become a staple of the operatic repertoire, receiving numerous international performances and gaining recognition for its innovative music and dramatic storytelling.

PERSONAL LIFE  

In 1599 Monteverdi married the court singer Claudia Cattaneo who died in September 1607.

They had two sons (Francesco and Massimilino) and a daughter (Leonora). Another daughter died shortly after birth

The only certain portrait of Claudio Monteverdi, from the title page of Fiori poetici, a 1644 book of commemorative poems for his funeral

He dabbled in alchemy. An exchange of letters dating from the year 1625-26, includes (in Monteverdi's own writing) a formula for bonding gold to lead, Also in a sonnet written in 1643, the late Claudio Monteverdi is eulogized as a "Gran proffessor della Chimica".

DEATH AND LEGACY

Monteverdi died, aged 76, in Venice on November 29, 1643. He was held in the highest esteem by his Venetian employers and was buried in the church of the Frari.

Monteverdi's music enjoyed a rediscovery from the 1880s onwards, and he is now seen as a significant influence in European musical history.

Sources Compton's Encyclopedia, Blog.oup.com

Montana

HISTORY

Montana became a United States territory (Montana Territory) on May 26, 1864.

As white settlers began populating Montana from the 1850s, disputes with Native Americans ensued, primarily over land ownership and control.&;U.S. cavalrymen killed 173 Native Americans, mostly women and children, in what became known as the Marias Massacre on January 23, 1870.

Chief Joseph and Col. John Gibbon met again on the Big Hole Battlefield site in 1889

The first ever cafeteria was set up in the YWCA in Kansas City, Montana in 1890. It provided cheap, self-service meals to working women and was modeled on a Chicago luncheon club for women where some aspects of self-service were already in practice.

The U.S. government opened up western Montana to settlers in 1892. The 1.8 million acres were bought from the Crow Indians for 50 cents per acre.

The western third of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges and the state's name is derived from the Spanish word montaña (mountain).

The current flag was adopted in 1905. The ribbon contains the state motto, "Oro y plata" (Spanish for: "Gold and silver").

The first Gideon Bible was placed in a room in the Superior Hotel in Iron Mountain, Montana in 1908.

Jeannette Pickering Rankin (June 11, 1880 – May 18, 1973) was the first woman to hold national office in the United States when, in 1916, she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives by the state of Montana. As April 2019, she remains the only woman Montana has elected to Congress.

Jeannette Pickering Rankin 

About 8 percent of the state’s population went off to fight during World War I, a greater percentage of its population than any other state.

Cat Creek was the site of the first commercially successful oil field in Montana, producing oil so pure it could be used in Model T cars straight from the ground.

The infamous Dust Bowl era began on November 11, 1933 when a dust storm started in Montana. The drought and the resulting dust bowl eventually stretched as far south as Georgia, leaving 500,000 people homeless before it came to an end when normal rainfall resumed in 1939.

Mennonite family in Montana, c. 1937

57,000 Montanans served in World War II, around 10 percent of the population. again a greater percentage of its population than any other state.

Until 1999, Montana didn't have a speed limit on the interstate, and instead encouraged drivers to be "reasonable and prudent."

FUN FACTS

Montana comes from the Spanish word montaña, or mountain. The state is home to 64 mountain ranges.

Montana is the only US state constitutionally mandated to teach and preserve Native American tribal history and culture.

Montana and Canada share a 545-mile (877-km) part of the world's longest undefended border.

Montana is the only state to border three Canadian provinces—Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan.

It’s the largest landlocked American state, and the fourth largest state overall, after Alaska, Texas, and California. However, it is only 44th in population and 48th in population density.

Montana terrain

The largest natural snowflake ever recorded, measuring 15 inches (38 cm) in diameter, fell at Fort Keogh, Montana on January 28, 1887.

The coldest temperature ever recorded in the contiguous United States was in Montana. On January 20, 1954, −70 °F or −56.7 °C was measured at a gold mining camp near Rogers Pass. Located at an elevation of 5,610 feet above sea level on the Continental Divide, Rogers Pass experiences harsh winter conditions due to its high altitude and remote location. The combination of these factors contributed to the record-breaking temperature reading. The only colder temperatures recorded in the entire United States were in Alaska. 

The greatest temperature swing in a 24-hour period is a staggering 103 degrees Fahrenheit (57.2 degrees Celsius) and belongs to the town of Loma, Montana between January 14 and January 15  1972. This dramatic change happened due to a phenomenon called a chinook wind. Chinook winds occur when warm, dry air descends a mountain slope, rapidly compressing and heating up as it goes. In Loma's case, the temperature plunged to a bone-chilling -54°F (-47.8°C) at 9 am on January 14th, but a chinook wind event swept through, boosting the temperature to a balmy 49°F (9.4°C) by 8 am the next day.

Loma, Montana. By J.B. Chandler - Wikipedia

Mentalfloss.com

Marilyn Monroe

EARLY LIFE

Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jean Mortenson in Los Angeles on June 1, 1926. Her mother was emotionally unstable and frequently confined to an asylum, so Norma Jean was reared by a succession of foster parents and in an orphanage.

At the age of 16, Norma Jean married a fellow worker in an aircraft factory, James Doughty but they divorced a few years later.

Norma Jean Mortenson was athletic. In the early 1940s, she studied weightlifting with a former Olympic champion named Howard Corrington.

MODELLING CAREER

Norma Jean Mortenson was discovered while building drone aircraft at Radioplane Company in 1944 and signed a contract with the Blue Book Model Agency in August 1945.

Monroe photographed by David Conover while she was still working at the Radioplane factory in 1944

Ronald Reagan sent out the army photographer, David Conover, who first discovered Norma Jean Mortenson.

Pictures from Norma Jean's first photoshoot in 1946 sold for $352,000 (£225,000) in 2011. According to the auction catalog, the images "captured a sweet, girlish and natural beauty yet to be transformed into the epitome of female glamour’."

In 1946 Mortenson signed a short-term contract with 20th Century Fox, taking as her screen name Marilyn Monroe. She appeared in two small film roles during the contract and was let go after a year.

Monroe in a studio publicity photo taken when she was a contract player at 20th Century-Fox in 1947. 

She returned to modeling, famously posing naked in May 1949 to raise $50 to pay the rent for her room at the Hollywood Studio Club.

Robert Kennedy was killed in the Ambassador Hotel, the same hotel that housed Marilyn Monroe's first modelling agency.

FILM CAREER

After two short-lived film contracts,  Monroe was signed by 20th Century-Fox in 1951. The next year, the scandalous nude photographs of her taken in 1949 were featured in a popular calendar. One of them was also featured in the inaugural issue of Playboy magazine in 1953.

She became one of the most bankable Hollywood actresses with starring roles in comedies such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), and The Seven Year Itch (1955).

Monroe in 1952

Disappointed in being typecast and underpaid, Monroe formed her own production company in 1955 and successfully fought for a better contract with Fox.

She received critical acclaim for her performances in Bus Stop (1956) and Some Like It Hot (1959), winning a Golden Globe for Best Actress for the latter.

Marilyn Monroe had a strained relationship with Laurence Olivier on The Prince And The Showgirl (1957), which he directed. It’s said she never forgave him for saying to her on set: "Try to be sexy."

Monroe needed 47 takes to get the phrase "It's me, Sugar" right in Some Like it Hot. She kept switching from "Sugar, it's me" to "It's Sugar, me" and the director, Billy Wilder, had to write the line on a blackboard.

Marilyn Monroe was so terrified of acting in front of cameras that she broke out in a rash all over her body whenever she did.

Her last completed film was the 1961 drama The Misfits.

Marilyn Monroe, in her final completed film, The Misfits 

Marilyn Monroe, began filming her last movie Something’s Got To Give in April 1962, but she was fired for absenteeism on June 7, 1962 and sued her for breach of contract, with the studio demanding $750,000 in damages.

PERSONAL LIFE 

Monroe's first hiusband, James Dougherty, later became a detective in the LAPD. He forbidden by his second wife from going to see any of the Hollywood star’s films.

Marilyn Monroe published an article in the January 1953 edition of Motion Picture and Television Magazine called "Wolves I Have Known." She writes of the creepy harassment she received from photographers, producers and screen writers who tried to take advantage of new and aspiring actresses.

Marilyn Monroe married her second husband, baseball star Joe DiMaggio on January 14, 1954. DiMaggio's jealousy meant their relationship was fraught and possibly violent. Just nine months after the wedding, the actress told a court her husband had become "cold and indifferent" and a divorce was granted. Their union had lasted just 274 days

With second husband Joe DiMaggio.

Marilyn Monroe secretly married Jewish playwright Arthur Miller in the court house of a New York suburb on June 29, 1956. Only two witnesses and a photographer attended the civil ceremony. The bride, who wore a sweater and a creased skirt, had said she would not care for a Grace Kelly-style white wedding.

Monroe converted to Judaism before the wedding and had a second, Jewish ceremony on July 1. One newspaper greeted their nuptials with the headline "Egghead Weds Hourglass."

As a result of of Marilyn Monroe's conversion to Judaism, Egypt placed a ban on all the films she appeared in.

Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller were granted a divorce in Mexico on the grounds of ‘incompatibility’, after less than five years of marriage, on January 24, 1961.

With third husband Arthur Miller at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, 1957

Marilyn Monroe had a higher IQ (163) than that of Albert Einstein (160).

Marilyn Monroe had six toes.

Monroe was so paranoid about sweat and spots that she washed her face up to 15 times a day.

She suffered from Endometriosis, a condition that causes severe pain due to uterine lining growing throughout the body. Monroe had multiple surgeries for it and couldn't carry any of her much wanted pregnancies to term.

Marilyn Monroe was such an animal lover that her first husband recalled her trying to bring a cow into her house to get it out of the rain.

Monroe had a beloved Maltese terrier who was given to her by Frank Sinatra; he'd acquired the pooch from Natalie Wood's mother. In a nod to the singer's supposed mob connections, she mischievously named him Mafia, or Maf for short. The cute English dog became her inseparable companion in her last years.

DEATH 

Troubled by mental health and addiction problems, Monroe was found dead by her housekeeper in her Los Angeles home at age 36 in the early morning hours of August 5, 1962. Empty bottles of pills, prescribed to treat her depression, were littered around the room. After a brief investigation, Los Angeles police concluded that her death was "caused by a self-administered overdose of sedative drugs and that the mode of death is probable suicide."

Front page of the New York Daily Mirror on August 6, 1962

Joe Di Maggio claimed Marilyn Monroe's body after her suicide, and arranged her funeral, paying for her casket and crypt. The funeral took place at 1:00pm on August 8, 1962, at the Mortuary Chapel on the grounds of Westwood Memorial Cemetery.

Joe DiMaggio wept over the body of Marilyn Monroe at her funeral and kissed her on the forehead. He refused to allow any movie stars to attend the ceremony, saying: "if it hadn’t been for some of her friends, she wouldn’t be where she is now."

For twenty years after the death of Marilyn Monroe, Di Maggio had a half-dozen red roses placed at her crypt three times a week.

Marilyn Monroe left most of her estate to her acting coach Lee Strasberg. When Strasberg died in 1982, his wife Anna, who had never known Monroe inherited her estate. In 1999 she auctioned off Monroe's personal belongings for $14 million.

Hugh Hefner owned the burial vault next to Marilyn at the Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles. He had a rose delivered to Marilyn Monroe's grave every day.

Source Daily Mirror

James Monroe

EARLY LIFE

James Monroe was born on April 28, 1758, in his parents' house located in a wooded area of Westmoreland County, Virginia.

His father Spence Monroe (1727–1774) was a moderately prosperous planter who also practiced carpentry. His mother Elizabeth Jones (1730–1774) married Spence Monroe in 1752 and they had several children.

Between the ages of 11 and 16, James studied at Campbell town Academy, a school run by Reverend Archibald Campbell of Washington Parish. There he excelled as a pupil and progressed through Latin and mathematics faster than most boys his age.

Both his father and mother died when James was aged 16. Monroe inherited their small plantation and slaves, officially joining the ruling class of the planter elite in what had become the slave society of Virginia.

The earliest preserved portrait of James Monroe as Minister Plenipotentiary to France in 1794.

EARLY CAREER

At age 18, Monroe joined the Continental Army where his background as a college student and the son of a well-known planter enabled him to obtain an officer's commission.

In June 1775, after the battles of Lexington and Concord, Lieutenant James Monroe took part in a raid of the arsenal at the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg. They used the loot of 200 muskets and 300 swords to arm the Williamsburg militia.

Monroe took part in the Boxing Day 1776 Battle of Trenton. He was carried from the field bleeding badly after being struck in the left shoulder by a musket ball, which severed an artery.

Battle of Trenton by Charles McBarron.

The Battle of Trenton would be Monroe's only battle as he would spend the next three months recuperating from his wound.

After the war Monroe studied law with Thomas Jefferson. After passing the bar, Monroe practiced law in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Monroe sold his small inherited Virginia plantation in 1783 to enter politics and finance his law career. He was elected to Congress in November 1783

MARRIAGE 

27-year-old James Monroe married 17-year-old Elizabeth Kortright (1768–1830) on February 16, 1786, at her father's home in New York City.

Monroe first came across Elizabeth while serving with the Continental Congress, which then met in New York . His cousin and fellow Congressman from Virginia, described Elizabeth and her sisters as having "made so brilliant and lovely an appearance" at a theater one evening, "as to depopulate all the other boxes of all the genteel male people therein."

Elizabeth Monroe

After a brief honeymoon on Long Island, New York, the Monroes returned to New York City to live with her father until Congress adjourned.

POLITICAL CAREER

Monroe was elected to the United States Senate in 1790. He helped form the Democratic-Republican Party with Jefferson and James Madison.

Monroe was Governor of Virginia from 1799 – 1802 as a Democratic-Republican. He was re-elected Virginia's governor in 1811  but served only four months. In April 1811, President James Madison appointed Monroe as Secretary of State in hopes of shoring up the support of the more radical factions of the Democratic-Republicans.

PRESIDENCY

Monroe was easily elected president in 1816, winning over 80 percent of the electoral vote. His first term was called the Era of Good Feelings because of the national unity that followed the end of the War of 1812.

By John Vanderlyn - 1816

Monroe ran unopposed for his re-election, something that has only happened one other time in U.S. history (George Washington).

Monroe created the Monroe Doctrine with his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, which was a policy that said that the United States did not want Europe to be involved in the New World anymore. He issued the proclamation of opposition to European colonialism on December 2, 1823.

The Missouri Compromise was signed into law by President James Monroe in 1820. The compromise allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, but made the rest of the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase territory slavery-free.

James Monroe and his family were the first to occupy the reconstructed White House , moving there in December 1817. He had the south portico built in 1824.

On one occasion James Monroe disembarked from a riverboat in Georgetown, South Carolina and his welcoming party greeted him with a red carpet. This was one of the earliest reported instances of a ceremonial red carpet.

Liberia's capital Monrovia is named after James Monroe because of his support for its colonization.

Monroe was the last President of the United States to be a founding father of the United States.

Monroe is regarded as the last U.S. President who was a Revolutionary War veteran, since he served as an officer of the Continental Army and took part in combat.

Due to his penchant for outdated Revolutionary War era dress, Monroe’s nickname was “The Last Cocked Hat.”

LAST YEARS AND DEATH

Monroe retired to Virginia where he was plagued by financial difficulties.

After his wife's death in 1830, Monroe moved to New York to live with his daughter Maria Hester Monroe Gouverneur, who had married Samuel L. Gouverneur. Monroe died there from heart failure and tuberculosis on July 4, 1831.

Monroe's grave at Hollywood Cemetery

July 4 is the only date on which three US presidents died: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (both 1826) and James Monroe (1831).

http://ww2.kqed.org

Monopoly (game)

Monopoly is a board game in which players compete to purchase real estate and wipe out their opponents.

HISTORY

Monopoly was invented in 1934 by Charles Darrow (1889-1967), a Pennsylvania heating engineer who had been reduced to selling stoves.

The original Monopoly board patent

Darrow adapted Monopoly from a similar game, The Landlord's Game, devised in 1903 by Elizabeth Magie of Virginia.

The original Monopoly game was made from materials from Darrow's own home. A piece of oil cloth covered the board, and the cards were handwritten. The original houses and hotels were made from wooden molding scraps.

Charles Darrow first suggested using buttons to identify the different players. His nieces had the idea of using metallic pieces from charm bracelets.

Monopoly was initially rejected by Parker Bros for having "52 fundamental playing errors". The   games manufacturer bought it in 1935 after Darrow enjoyed great success in selling it himself.

Parker Brothers begun selling Monopoly on February 6, 1935. The original version of the game in this format was based on real streets and locations in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Parker Brothers acquired the forerunner patents for Monopoly from Elizabeth Magie on November 6, 1935.

The metal pieces in the original 1935 edition were lantern, purse, rocking horse, iron, racing car, thimble, shoe, top hat, cannon and battleship.

During World War II, the dice in the United Kingdom were replaced with a spinner because of a lack of materials.

Monopoly spinner

In 1952 Scottie dog, wheelbarrow and horse and rider replaced the lantern, purse and rocking horse pieces.

The gang that committed the 1963 great train robbery (£2.6 million) in England, played Monopoly with real money after looting the train.

Monopoly was once very popular in Cuba; however, Fidel Castro ordered every Monopoly game to be destroyed and banned the playing of it on the island.

2014 U.S. MONOPOLY Box

Charles Darrow made over $1 million from Monopoly but his subsequent invention, Bulls and Bears, was a failure.

A Minnesota man arrested on a drugs charge in 2017 gave the officer a Monopoly “get out of jail free” card. He is said to have carried it “just in case”.

FUN FACTS

When Monopoly was introduced to communist Czechoslovakia, private businesses were illegal and mortgages didn't exist, so they turned it into a horse racing variant.

More Monopoly money is printed in a year than real money printed throughout the world.

There is a 12 per cent chance that a game of Monopoly will go on indefinitely.

The longest game of Monopoly was played at a frat in Pittsburgh, between November 27 and December 2, 1961. When the bank ran out of money they wired Parker Brothers, who sent the players a million dollars of Monopoly, which was delivered by armored car. The last dice were thrown by Parker Brothers Vice President Randolph Barton. After five days and 120 and a half hours, history’s longest Monopoly game was over.

Image by Perplexity

The name of the character that is behind bars in the Monopoly board game is Jake the Jailbird.

The police officer who points players to go directly to jail, is Officer Edgar Mallory.

When James Robert Ringrose, one of FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, was arrested in 1966, he presented the FBI agents with a "Get out of jail free" card from Monopoly

The space on which a player has the greatest statistical chance of landing in the US edition is Illinois Avenue.

Monopoly Go! ranks among the most expensive video games ever made overall, thanks to its eye-watering marketing budget, which crossed the $1 billion mark.

Monkey

MONKEYS IN HISTORY 

A monkey was washed ashore at the north east English town of Hartlepool during the Napoleonic Wars. Not knowing what a Frenchman looked like, it was mistaken by the townsfolk for a French spy. As the monkey was unable to defend himself against accusations of spying, the townspeople supposedly tried and hanged it.

There is a stable population of rhesus macaque monkeys in central Florida. They were released on an island in a swamp as part of a jungle cruise attraction in 1938, but escaped the island because the tour operator didn’t know they could swim.

Albert II, a male rhesus macaque monkey, was the first primate and first mammal in space. He flew from Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, United States, to an altitude of 83 miles (134 km) aboard a U.S. V-2 sounding rocket on June 14, 1949. Albert died upon re-entry after a parachute failure caused Albert's capsule to strike the ground at high speed.

Miss Able and Miss Baker, two Nasa monkeys, became the first animals ever to return alive from a space mission on May 28. 1959.

Miss Baker awaits launch

After her space flight, Miss Baker set a record for longest lived squirrel monkey before dying at age 27. Her grave can often be found adorned with one or more bananas.

In 1970 a scientist, Dr Robert White, transplanted the head of a monkey to the body of another monkey with some limited success.

Until 1991 there was a dedicated position in the British Armed Forces called 'The Keeper of the Apes'. Their job was solely to care for the monkeys of Gibraltar. The military even had a budget for ape-related expenses. Any sick or injured monkey was cared for in British hospitals.

BEHAVIOR

Monkeys urinate on themselves to attract a mate.

The loudest land animal is the Howler monkey whose deep growls can be heard two miles away in the forest or three miles in the open.

A pair of black howler monkeys vocalising.

The leading cause of a death for a white capuchin monkey in the wild is being murdered by another white capuchin monkey.

Grinning or pulling the lip is a sign of aggression in monkeys.

The Burmese sneezing monkey sneezes uncontrollably whenever it rains.

On the Japanese island of Yakushima, monkeys have been seen riding deer.

ANATOMY

Most monkeys are nearsighted.

Old world monkeys (species from Africa) have 32 teeth; new world monkeys (from the Americas) have 36.

In general, monkeys have tails, apes do not, but the Barbary ape, which lacks a tail, is a monkey.

Monkeys have tails; apes do not.

New World monkeys can generally swing by their tails; Old World monkeys generally cannot.

The largest type of monkey is  the mandrill, which can be up to three feet long and weigh 77 pounds.

The smallest type of monkey is the pygmy marmoset which weighs only about four ounces.

The pygmy marmoset is the world's smallest monkey.

Pygmy marmosets can turn their head 180 degrees.

The nose of a proboscis monkey can be four inches long. Female proboscis monkeys are thought to prefer males with long noses.

Monkeys do have vocal tracts for speaking; they just don't have the brain wiring to do it.

Colobus monkeys were given their name because of their shortened thumbs: “kolobós” is from an ancient Greek word for “docked”.

Monkeys in captivity lose much of their native gut bacteria diversity, to the point where their gut bacteria resemble those in humans.

FUN FACTS

There are over 250 known species of monkey.

The Emperor tamarin is said to have been named for German Emperor Wilhelm II as both had impressive white mustaches.

It's legal in New York to own a monkey if you're paralyzed and the monkey is trained to perform household tasks for you.

A group of monkeys is called a troop.

Source Daily Express