Jim Carrey

James Eugene Carrey was born on January 17, 1962, in Ontario, Canada to Percy (an accountant and aspiring jazz saxophonist) and Kathleen.

He is of French-Canadian ancestry on his father's side, and has French, Irish, and Scottish ancestry on his mother's side. His family's surname was originally "Carré".

As a child, Jim Carrey used to wear his tap shoes to bed just in case his parents needed cheering up in the middle of the night.

At age 15, Jim Carrey quit school and became a janitor to support his family. They were living out of a van and he and his family all worked as janitors at a factory to make a living.

Carrey performed his first stand-up routine with disastrous results in a yellow suit and tails, which were made by his mother.

Jim Carrey's first film was a musical comedy called Earth Girls Are Easy.

Jim Carrey auditioned twice for Saturday Night Live and was never offered a role.

Studio execs balked when Carrey asked for $400,000 for Dumb and Dumber. Then Ace Ventura: Pet Detective came out and the studio had to pay Carrey $7 million to do the movie.

In Dumb and Dumber, Jim Carrey's chipped tooth is genuine, resulting from a fight with a classmate in his childhood, but he had since had it capped. He simply had the crown temporarily removed from that tooth to portray Lloyd.

Jim Carrey was supposed to be Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers franchise but he had to back out due to scheduling conflicts.

In 1996, Carrey became the first actor to be paid $20 million for a film - The Cable Guy. 

The makeup process for the 2000 movie The Grinch was so grueling, Jim Carrey had to meet with an expert who trained CIA operatives to deal with torture

He has one child with his first wife, Melissa Carrey, whom he divorced in 1995. Carrey married actress Lauren Holly in 1996, but they split less than a year later.

In 2014, Carey appeared on a Canadian postage stamp.

Carpet

The technique of weaving carpets is thought to have originated in Persia in ancient times, and spread to Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Anatolia, where characteristic forms developed as folk art and in court workshops.

Excavation of royal graves, dating from the 5th to the 3rd century BC, at Pazyryk, in the Altai Mountains of Southern Siberia, have uncovered the oldest known examples of knotting. The finds include a superb carpet with a woollen pile, knotted with the Ghiordes, or Turkish, knot (Hermitage). The carpet, probably of Persian origin, measures 6  61/2 feet (1.8  2.0 metres). The central field has a checkerboard design with a floral star pattern in each square. Of the two wide borders, the inner one shows a frieze of elk, the outer one a frieze of horsemen.

Cleopatra, once wrapped herself up in a carpet as a gift for Julius Caesar. When he unrolled it, he found the beautiful Egyptian queen.

In Western Europe the replacement of carpets and matting for rushes in the first half of the seventeenth century meant that there were fewer fleas in middle class homes, which thus diminished the chance of the richer classes catching the flea-borne plague. Good carpets were by now being made in England or imported from Turkey and Persia.

English carpet maker Thomas Whitty devised his specialized method of creating luxury carpets in 1755. Impressed by a Turkish carpet he saw at Cheapside Market in London, he spent months working on one of similar quality. They are known worldwide as Axminsters after the Devon town where he had his business.

When the fifth President of the United States, James Monroe (1753-1831), 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.

Melville Bissell had a china shop in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and was allergic to the dusty straw scattered on the floor after unpacking china from crates. So, he invented the first carpet sweeper in 1876 to clean up the mess and protect his sinuses..

In 1901 the British engineer Hubert Booth patented an electrically powered machine, which he demonstrated extracting dust from carpets by suction; he called it a 'vacuum cleaner'. The machine was mounted on a horse-drawn wagon, and equipped with a long tube for access into buildings.

Percy Shaw, the inventor of the cat’s eye, lived in a house without any carpets. He thought that carpets harbor unpleasant smells.

Persian rugs have an imperfection by design in them, because of the belief that only Allah can make perfection.

The length of the red carpet at the Dolby Theatre where the Academy Awards are held is about 500 feet. The width is thirty-three feet.

98% of British homes have carpeted floors. In Italy, only 2% do.

Sources Encyclopedia Britannica, Europress Encyclopedia 

Carp

Closely related to the goldfish, carp are native to Asia and eastern Europe.

The first treatise on carp culture was written by Fan Li, an ancient Chinese advisor in the state of Yue in the Spring and Autumn Period. It gave useful advice on the construction, harvesting and economic management of fishponds.

Monks brought them to western Europe from the 13th century as food. Carp ponds in the Middle Ages kept monasteries, courts and manors supplied with fresh food.

Monks fattened the caro up to feast on and they were a delicacy in Tudor England.

Anglers see carp as the cleverest freshwater fish. In The Compleat Angler (1653), Izaak Walton calls it a ‘river-fox’ and a ‘very subtle fish.’

In 1983 Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi blew up Richard Branson's prize carp. Iommi was at the Virgin head honcho's recording studios and launched fireworks into his private lake and accidentally destroyed some of his fish. Iommi described Branson as 'not happy at all' about it.

Demand for carp has declined in time, partly due to the appearance of more desirable table fish such as trout and salmon through intensive farming, and environmental constraints. However, in Germany and Austria carp is still part of Christmas Eve dinner.

Although the carp was not brought to the United States until 1876, it is now established in nearly all parts of the country.

In 2016 the Australian government released a strain of herpes into its waterways to kill an invasive European carp species.

Common carp can grow up to 5ft long.

Carp feed on water plants, crustaceans, insects and smaller fish.

They are often considered an invasive species because they can decimate other fish populations.

Carp have teeth at the back of the throat, which they use to crush and grind food.

One female can lay up to one million eggs in a single spawning. But many eggs and young fish perish because of disease or predators.

The biggest carp ever caught in the world was a 222lb giant Siamese landed by British angler Tim Webb in August 2014 in Thailand.

The rapper Eminem requests on his rider a wooden pond to keep his beloved koi carp in wherever he goes on tour.

Carp are amongst the longest-lived fish species, with wild specimens over 60 years old being recorded.

Source Daily Mail

Carousel

The earliest known record of a carousel device is a Byzantine etching from 500 AD which portrays riders swinging in baskets tied to a center pole.

The first fairground merry-go-round is referred to in records of an event in Philippolis, Turkey in 1620. 

In the early nineteenth century some advertisements claimed that riding the carousel was good for the circulation of blood.

Merry-go-rounds usually turn clockwise. Carousels usually turn counter-clockwise.

Carol

In medieval times the word “carol” had a purely secular meaning. It originally referred to an open air dance, especially a ring-dance accompanied by singing, which later evolved into a merry song with a tune suggestive of dancing. They were often linked to pagan festivals or harvest time as well as Christmas.

Early Christmas carols included the 11th century "sys willekommen heirre kerst," the oldest surviving German Christmas carol.

A strong contender for the oldest Christmas carol that people still sing regularly today is The French version of "The Friendly Beasts" which goes back to the 12th century. The song was written about the animals surrounding Christ at the nativity.

In the thirteenth century St. Francis of Assisi and his fellow Franciscans understood the appeal of catchy carol tunes especially when compared to their rather more stern religious chants, so they borrowed them writing brand new Christian words to fit popular melodies bringing folk songs into churches along with the people who sang them. Among the Christian tunes they sang were some of the earliest Christmas carols around a nativity scene.

The earliest extant English Christmas carol, "A child is boren amonges man" can be found in a set of sermon notes written by a Franciscan friar in the early fourteenth century.

Prior to the fifteenth century the Church felt that Christmas should be celebrated in a solemn way and discouraged the singing of Christmas carols. However when the Church began to relax its attitude, there was a great increase in the writing of Christmas carols and they began to be sung in church. Most referred to the Virgin Mary, the Christ child, or the saints whose feasts follow Christmas. In Britain the earliest printed edition of a “sett of carols” was published by Wynkyn de Worde in 1521.

"Joy to the World" was written by Isaac Watts in 1719. The scripture-based words are from Psalm 98, in particular verse 4: "Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music." It was not written as a Christmas song—the original theme was the second coming of Jesus our Lord and King.

The 19th century revival of interest in the Middle Ages and in folk music led to carols being collected and published. A great many pastiche carols were also written in the same Victorian burst of enthusiasm, but they have mainly been discarded by now in favor of the traditional ones.

Disaster hit the church at St. Nicholas in Oberndorf, Austria when the church organ broke down just before the Christmas of 1818. The curate, 26-year-old Josef Mohr, realized it couldn't be repaired in time to provide music on Christmas Eve. He recounted his troubles to his friend, a headmaster and amateur composer named Franz Gruber, while giving him as a present a poem he had written two years earlier. Gruber was so taken by the rhythm of the poem that he set it to music, and on Christmas Eve there was music after all. Mohr played his guitar while the pair sung the song. It was the first public performance of "Stille Nacht" or "Silent Night".

Autograph (c. 1860) of the carol by Franz Gruber

In the mid 1850s the Americans were only beginning to celebrate the Christmas traditions of their English forebearers. The influence of works such as A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens were beginning to enthuse the American nation. "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear" was possibly the first Christmas song to be composed in the United States, which today is considered a standard. Within 20 years other classic carols celebrating Christmas such as "We Three Kings of Orient Are," "Jingle Bells" and "O Little Town Of Bethlehem" had been written in the United States.

"Away in a Manger" was first published in an 1885 Lutheran Sunday School book, by James R. Murray (1841-1905) but the author of the first two stanzas and the music's composer is unknown. The third stanza  was added in 1904 by Dr. John McFarland of New York City. Because Murray published it with the subtitle "Luther's Cradle Hymn (Composed by Martin Luther for his children and still sung by German mothers to their little ones)" it created the misconception that the lyrics of Away in a Manger were actually written by Martin Luther himself.

Jonny Mark the writer of well-known Christmas classics such as "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," "Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree" and "A Holly Jolly Christmas" didn’t celebrate Christmas because he was Jewish.

Source History World, The Big Issue and information previously written for Songfacts

Carnival

Carnival is a festive season which occurs immediately before Lent. It is traditionally held in areas with a large Catholic and to a lesser extent, Eastern Orthodox makeup.

The word ‘carnival’ originally meant ‘a farewell to meat’ referring to the Christian tradition of giving up meat during Lent.

Dominican friar and preacher Girolamo Savonarola at the 1497 carnival of Florence organised a “bonfire of the vanities” at the carnival celebration before Lent, in which Florentine luxury goods, works of art, pornographic books and gambling equipment were publicly burnt. 

Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) was actually Scottish, born on November 25, 1835 in a Dunfermline weavers cottage. Carnegie came over to the US as a boy, where he got a job as a steel factory worker.

In 1892, the Carnegie Steel Company was created in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company grew and, after Carnegie sold it in 1901, later merged with US Steel, a corporate giant that is still active today.

Carnegie as he appears in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Andrew Carnegie was at one point so wealthy, his fortune represented 0.6% of the entire US GDP.

Carnegie published a famous essay, The Gospel of Wealth, in 1889, which appeared in the North American Review and in Britain in the Pall Mall Gazette. In it he set out his belief that a successful businessman should devote the first part of his life to accumulating wealth and the second to distributing it as, “a man who dies rich, dies disgraced”. By bettering the life of his less fortunate fellowman whilst on earth he will be rewarded when he dies at the gates of paradise.

Carnegie fulfilled this ideal with astounding generosity, giving much of his fortune to schools, libraries and universities before his death at 83. In particular he funded the establishment of a number of public libraries throughout the United States as he believed this would give people the opportunity to better themselves.

Carnegie funded the construction of almost 1700 public libraries across the country, and over 800 abroad, for any town that would agree to set aside the land, and 10% of the construction cost annually to maintain it.

By the time of his death, Carnegie had already given away roughly 90% of his wealth. The total money donated by him would equate to ~$65,000,000,000 in today's currency.

He gave away $288 million ($4.22 billion today) to American charities alone.

Though Carnegie believed philanthropy was a moral imperative, personally he was a religious sceptic and an evolutionist. The philanthropist believed that society was progressing beyond the need for wars towards a time of universal peace, spiritual idealism and prosperity for all.

Built by Andrew Carnegie, New York City's Carnegie Hall opened its doors with a bang on May 5, 1891. The inaugural concert was conducted by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, setting the stage for Carnegie Hall's prestigious future.

The pronunciation of Carnegie differs slightly between the man's name and the hall's name. The former is pronounced with a "カーネギー" (Kārnégī) sound, while the latter is pronounced "カーネギー" (CArnegೀ).

Andrew Carnegie exchanged gag Christmas gifts with fellow billionaire entrepreneur John D. Rockefeller, Rockefeller once sent Carnegie a cardboard vest to make fun of his poor childhood. In return Carnegie sent a fine whiskey to Rockefeller, a devout baptist who had given up drinking.

Despite being of the richest Americans ever, Carnegie never carried any cash. He was once put off a London train because he did not have the fare.