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1. Kiss Me, Kate is a musical written by Bella and Sam Spewack, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The story involves the production of a musical version of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and the conflict, on and off stage, between the show’s director, producer, and star, and his leading lady, who is his ex-wife. The musical premiered on Broadway in 1948 and ran for more than 1,000 performances. In 1949, it won the first Tony Award for Best Musical. Some of the songs featured in the show were “Why Can’t You Behave?”; “Wunderbar”; “So in Love”; “From This Moment On”; and “Brush Up Your Shakespeare.” In 1953, MGM produced a film adaptation of the play. The cast included Cathryn Grayson, Howard Keel, Anne Miller, Keenan Wynn, Bobby Van, and Bob Fosse. Going straight to the source, in 1967 Columbia Pictures released the film The Taming of the Shrew, a period romantic comedy based on the Bard’s play about a courtship between two strongwilled people in 16th-century Italy. Directed by Franco Zeffirelli, the film starred Elizabeth Taylor (who was also the producer) as Kate, and Richard Burton as Petruchio. Taylor and Burton were both nominated for BAFTA Awards.
8. The painting The Kiss (in German, Der Kuss) is an oil-on-canvas artwork with added gold leaf, silver, and platinum by Austrian Symbolist artist Gustav Klimt. It was painted between 1907 and 1908, during the height of what scholars call Klimt’s “Golden Period.” It was exhibited in 1908 under the title Liebespaar (“The Lovers”). The painting depicts a couple embracing, their bodies entwined in beautiful, elaborate robes decorated in a style influenced by the contemporary Art Nouveau and the organic forms of the earlier Arts and Crafts movement. Klimt’s use of gold leaf in paintings was inspired by a trip he made to Italy in 1903. When he visited Ravenna, he saw the Byzantine mosaics in the Church of San Vitale. For Klimt, the flatness of the mosaics and their lack of perspective and depth only enhanced their golden brilliance, and he started to make unprecedented use of gold and silver leaf in his own work. Klimt painted The Kiss soon after his three-part “Vienna Ceiling” series, which created a scandal and were criticized as “pornographic” and evidence of “perverted excess.” The works had recast the artist as an enfant terrible for his anti-authoritarian and anti-populist views on art. He wrote, “If you cannot please everyone with your deeds and your art, please a few.” However, The Kiss was enthusiastically received and was purchased by the Austrian government – when it was put on public exhibition in 1908. The painting, which now hangs in a museum in Vienna, is considered a masterpiece of Art Nouveau.
11. Pennsylvania earned the nickname the Keystone State due to its essential role in the founding of the United States. “Keystone” is an architectural term that refers to the central, wedge-shaped stone in an arch, which holds all the other stones in place. Pennsylvania adopted the nickname in 1802 when president Thomas Jefferson reportedly referred to the state as “the keystone of the federal union” in his victory speech. Pennsylvania uses the keystone as an official symbol of government.
14. Prolific Hungarian-born Israeli author and dramatist Ephraim Kishon (1924-2005) expanded into cinema in the early 1960s. He wrote, directed, and produced five feature films, all of them comedic/satirical movies: Sallah Shabati (1964); Ervinka (1967); Blaumilch Canal (1969); The Policeman (1971); and The Fox in the Chicken Coop (1978). Sallah Shabati, starring Haim Topol, was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. The movie introduced Topol to audiences worldwide. Similarly, The Policeman, starring Shaike Ophir, was nominated in 1971 for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. In 1972 it won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. The Policeman won several other awards as well, such as Best Foreign Film at the Barcelona Film Festival and Best Director at the Monte Carlo Film Festival.
19. A kelvin is a unit for measuring temperature. The kelvin scale is based on absolute zero, the coldest possible measurement, so there is no such thing as a negative temperature in kelvins. While temperature isn’t commonly measured in kelvins outside the science lab, it is a vital way of calculating temperature for scientists. The kelvin is named after Irish-Scottish physicist Sir William Thompson (1824-1907), also known as Lord Kelvin, the discoverer of absolute zero. In that context, Kelvinator was an American home appliance manufacturer and a line of refrigerators that was the namesake of the Kelvinator company. Kelvinator was founded in 1914 in Detroit, Michigan, by engineer Nathaniel B. Wales, who introduced the idea for a practical electric refrigeration unit for the home. Although the company is now defunct, the name Kelvinator exists as a brand name, owned by Electrolux AB.
24. The cute, cuddly-looking koala bear is not a bear at all but a marsupial. Bears are mammals. Being marsupials, koalas give birth to underdeveloped young that crawl into their mothers’ pouches, where they remain for the first six to seven months of their lives. Koalas, which are native to Australia, typically inhabit open Eucalyptus woodland, as the leaves of these trees make up most of their diet. Koalas are largely sedentary and sleep up to 20 hours a day.