What was the first cartoon series made specifically for television?

Okay, some of you are starting to get a little silly out there. (I don’t feel so alone any more.)

Last week, I pointed out that actor James Doohan as Mr. Scott was the only “redshirt” who survived the entire series of Star Trek. I immediately began getting e-mail from folks who said, “Well, what about Lt. Uhura? She survived the entire series too!”

Yes, she did, and in all except the first episode she was in, Nichelle Nichols wore a red uniform, too, in the role. But it was a skirt, not a shirt.

See, I can be pedantic, too.

Anyway, unless you’re a Star Trek fan, none of this matters to you in any case, so let’s move on to this week’s trivia!

At least that matters.

Did you know…

…only one English word has double letters four times in a row? The word is subbookkeeper. (And that’s probably the reason you don’t see that word very often, too.)

…green was once considered an unlucky color in Ireland? Before the association with the Emerald Isle, green was associated with fairies who stole children and brides. (I’m assuming that has to do with one’s definition of “unlucky,” myself.)

…a gravestone in Salt Lake City, Utah, bears a strange enigma? The grave of Lilly E. Gray (1881-1958) can be found in the Salt Lake Cemetery. Nothing unusual about that – the gravestone lists her name, and the dates of birth and death. The enigma is found in what is inscribed beneath that – “Victim of the Beast 666.” Nobody knows why that was put on Gray’s resting place, or what it was supposed to mean. (And that’s probably a good thing, I imagine.)

…an Ohio teenager found out the hard way about karma? In September of 2010, Tylier Myers (1991-2010) was killed in an auto accident after a semi truck ran a stop sign in Norwalk, Ohio. At the time of his death, Myers was said by police to be in the process of stealing stop signs.

…you may be an ailurophobe? If you are, you hate cats. An ailurophile, on the other hand, is someone who loves cats. (If you’re just ambivalent about cats, you must be an ailurowhatever.)

…the balsamic vinegar you find in grocery stores may not be the real thing? Traditional balsamic vinegar takes a long time to make. It’s aged between 12 and 25 years, in a battery of seven barrels of successively smaller sizes. The cost at the end is more than $100 per fluid ounce. What you find in the grocery store labeled as “balsamic vinegar” is most likely a regular wine vinegar, with flavoring, thickeners, and coloring agents added. (And cheaper, too.)

…the first cartoons produced specifically for television were made in the 1940s and 1950s? Crusader Rabbit was the first cartoon program made for the then-new market of television. Created in 1948, the series was produced by Jay Ward (1920-1989), who used what he learned on the show to make the wildly popular Rocky and Bullwinkle program in the early 1960s. Crusader Rabbit was a black-and-white production, because all television sets except for some experimental models were in monochrome as well. A later series of the cartoons was produced in color, but Ward had no involvement with that series. The first color cartoon created specifically for TV was Colonel Bleep, a bizarre science-fiction-themed program, in 1957. Those cartoons lasted only one season, and are very difficult to find today. (And if you find a Colonel Bleep episode, you’ll realize how bizarre they really were.)

…being cheap can come back to haunt a business? Take, for instance, the case of the famous movie and TV collie, Lassie. In 1951, MGM Studios owed Lassie’s owner and trainer, Rudd Weatherwax (1907-1985), about $40,000 in back pay for the services of the dog. The studio was not planning any more movies featuring the heroic collie, so instead of giving Weatherwax the money they owed him, they gave him the rights to the Lassie trademark. Weatherwax turned that into a television show that ran, under various names, for 19 total seasons between 1954 and 1999 and made him (and the collie and successors) millions of dollars. Additional trivia note: the character of Lassie was a girl in the movies and on television, but was always played by a male collie. (I never understood how Lassie’s owners could interpret her barking to mean “Timmy’s fallen in the well,” but that’s just me. I don’t speak collie, I guess.)

…a baby llama is called a cria? That’s also the term for a baby alpaca.

…in the state of Washington, it is against the law to sleep in someone’s outhouse without their permission? (Why you would want to sleep in an outhouse is another matter entirely.)

…a chef’s hat has 100 pleats? Called a toque, the 100 folds or pleats in it are said to represent the 100 different ways an egg can be cooked. (One hundred ways, eh? List ‘em.)

…you may suffer from cenosillicaphobia? If you do, you’re not alone. Cenosillicaphobia is the fear of an empty alcoholic drink, especially the empty drink left behind after you’ve consumed it. (Oh, the jokes I could do right here…)

…humans cannot taste water? Many animals — among them, dogs and pigs — can taste water. But humans can’t. What we do taste are the chemicals and impurities in water. Pure, distilled water usually “tastes” terrible, because it has no taste at all – and even if it did, we couldn’t tell.

…America’s best-selling ice cream flavor is vanilla? (But of course!)

Now… you know!

HHJ News