Fame is up your street
QUESTION
A Birmingham street is named after Charlie Hall, a comic actor who was in in Laurel and Hardy films. What other streets are named after longforgotten celebrities?
CHARLIE HALL was born on August 19, 1899, in a small cottage at 23, Washwood Heath Road, Ward End, Birmingham. He was a member of the Fred Karno vaudeville troupe that gave the world Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel.
Hall arrived in Hollywood in the early 1920s and played the foil for many of the era’s top comics including Buster Keaton and Charley Chase.
He is best remembered as the short, stocky, curly-haired, badtempered Little Nemesis to Laurel and Hardy in 47 of their films. He would play the hotel landlord or bartender, a husband jealous of Hardy’s attentions to his wife, a competing store owner or just a bystander who ends up in an altercation with the pair.
Hall died in Hollywood on December 7, 1959.
The Charlie Hall, a Wetherspoons pub in Erdington, Birmingham, is also named after him.
Jim Richardson, Wolverhampton.
IN HULL, Arthur Lucan Street is named after the vaudevillian who performed the drag act Old Mother Riley, an old Irish washerwoman who was a forerunner to Mrs Brown.
Born in Sibsey, Lincolnshire, in 1885, Lucan was performing in Dublin when he met and married 16-year-old Kitty McShane in 1913. They became a popular double act — with McShane playing Old Mother Riley’s wayward daughter — and featured in the 1934 Royal Command Performance at the London Palladium.
The pair forged a long career on stage, radio and screen with a series of comedy films from the late 1930s to the early 1950s, when they underwent an acrimonious divorce.
Lucan never lived in Hull, but he did have the misfortune to die there.
He collapsed in the wings of the Tivoli Theatre on May 17, 1954, before he was due to perform and died shortly afterwards in his dressing room.
The Hull street Chevy Chase is not named after the American comedian and star of National Lampoon, but after the Ballad Of Chevy Chase — the story of events on hunting land (or a chase) in the Cheviot Hills.
Kevin Hills, Hull.
IMPASSE Louise Brooks is a short street in Bois d’Arcy, a village outside Paris. It is named after the US film star and dancer famous in the 1920s and 1930s for her bob haircut and flapper style.
Ariana Michaels, Oswestry, Shropshire. LIND Street in Sutton, Surrey, is named after a Swedish opera singer. Born in Stockholm in 1820, Johanna Maria Lind performed in Europe and America before settling in the county in 1855.
She was known for her ice queen persona: her singing was described as a ‘cold, untouching, icy purity of tone and style’.
She is said to have inspired author Hans Christian Andersen’s ice-hearted Snow Queen after she failed to return his affections.
It’s a lovely irony that Savile Row, a London street known for men’s tailoring, is named after a woman. Dorothy Savile (16991758) was a noted artist — many of her portraits hang in Chatsworth House.
Mick Leary, Deal, Kent.
QUESTION
Monday, September 30, was the Jewish New Year 5780. Where does this number come from?
ACCORDING to the Hebrew calendar, September 30 marked the 5,780th year since the world was created on Saturday, October 6, 3761 BC.
This reckoning was calculated by 2nd century sage Rabbi Yose ben Halafta, known as Rabbi Yose, though it was not widely used until the 12th century.
The date is calculated from Biblical references, including major events and the life-spans of individuals.
Rabbi Yose was a tanna, a sage of the Rabbinical Mishnaic period, who lived in Sepphoris, a town in Galilee.
He was the author of the chronology Seder Olam (Order Of The World), yet his system did not gain common currency among Jews until Medieval times. They generally took the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD as Year 1.
It was left to Maimonides, the influential 12th-century Jewish philosopher and scientist, to set the precise dates.
In his Mishneh Torah, Maimonides wrote that all calculations should be based on ‘the third day of Nisan in this present year... which is the year 4938 of the creation of the world’ — which correlated to March 22, 1178.
His system continues to be in use, not only for calculating the Hebrew year, but also for co-ordinating it with the lunar cycle that determines the months.
Amelia Brenner, London E14.
QUESTION
What is the longest honorific adopted by a world ruler? What is the world’s longest surname?
FURTHER to the earlier answer, while the Ottoman rulers may have had the longest titles in history, Britain’s Duke of Edinburgh is the holder of the longest title still in use.
His full, and lengthy, honorific is: His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth, Baron Greenwich, Royal Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Extra Knight of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, Member of the Order of Merit, Grand Master and First and Principal Knight Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Knight of the Order of Australia, Additional Member of the Order of New Zealand, Extra Companion of the Queen’s Service Order, Royal Chief of the Order of Logohu, Extraordinary Companion of the Order of Canada, Extraordinary Commander of the Order of Military Merit, Lord of Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council, Privy Councillor of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada, personal aidede-camp to Her Majesty, Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom.
Penny Moore, Writtle, Essex.
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