The cops on a catchy beat
QUESTION
Gunther Toody and Francis Muldoon had a song written about them, but who were they?
Broadcast on NBc from 1961 to 1963, car 54 Where are You? was a U.s. sitcom that featured hapless New York cops Gunther toody and Francis Muldoon.
Played by Joe E. ross and Fred Gwynne, the opening montage featured the pair blithely cruising through New York city in their squad car, playing draughts on their dashboard, oblivious of the catastrophes erupting around them.
Playing over this was one of the most memorable sitcom theme tunes:
There’s a hold-up in the Bronx, Brooklyn’s broken out in fights. There’s a traffic jam in Harlem That’s backed up to Jackson Heights. There’s a Scout troop short a child, Khrushchev’s due at Idlewild. Car 54, where are you?
the lyrics, by show creator Nat Hiken, celebrated New York’s boroughs to the accompaniment of John strauss’s jaunty march-time tune. Idlewild (now JFK airport) is so called because it was built over a golf course of that name, and Khrushchev landed there on his famous 1959 visit.
Joe E. ross made his name playing rupert ritzik, the daft mess sergeant, in the Phil silvers show aka sgt Bilko — another Hiken creation.
His trademark phrase ‘ oooh, oooh’ sprang from an inability to remember his lines. He reprised it doing voiceovers for Hanna-Barbera cartoons such as Hong Kong Phooey. the long-faced, lugubrious Fred Gwynne was famous for playing Herman, the Frankenstein’s monster character, in the Munsters.
Stan Wilson, Liverpool.
QUESTION
Has anyone explored the bottom of the Dead Sea?
BordErEd by Jordan to the east with Israel and Palestine to the west, the dead sea is a landlocked lake rather than a sea, and is recognised as one of the saltiest bodies of water on Earth.
the fact it is up to nine times saltier than seawater allows people to float effortlessly on it — this phenomenon makes the dead sea a popular resort, yet notoriously challenging for divers. Its maximum depth is 997 ft, making it the deepest hypersaline lake in the world.
the Jordan river is the only major source of freshwater feeding the dead sea. In the arid low-lying desert, the water that collects in the dead sea evaporates more quickly than water in open ocean, leaving vast quantities of salt behind.
the dead sea’s saltiness means fish can’t survive in it. a high concentration of magnesium also makes it inhospitable to microbes that usually adapt to extreme environments. this means there is not much below the surface except a shifting murky Moonscape.
In 2011, a joint Israeli- German team investigated the cause of concentric ring patterns at the top of the water, which suggested a freshwater input.
they discovered a series of underground springs emerging from craters — each 33 ft wide and 43 ft deep — at 100ft depths on the lake’s bottom. the craters were covered with film and surprisingly thick mats of new bacterial species.
the investigation was not easy. swallowing dead sea salt water would cause the larynx to inflate, resulting in immediate choking and suffocation. Furthermore, the salty water would burn the eyes and probably blind you.
Dr Ken Warren, Glasgow.
QUESTION of a ghost?
What is the first known depiction
tHE concept of a ghost has existed since ancient times. It’s based on the idea that a person’s spirit exists separately from his or her body, and may continue to exist after they die. ancient societies adopted funeral rituals as a way of ensuring the dead person’s spirit would not return. In Mesopotamia, it was believed that after death, a spiritual entity known as a Gidim was created, which maintained the identity of the deceased and travelled on to the land of the dead.
a Gidim would return to haunt the living if proper attention had not been paid to funeral rites or an unlawful act resulted in the person’s death. this concept is comparable to the shades of the deceased in the Underworld in Greek and roman mythology.
the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh of 2100Bc, the first great story cycle, tells of the death of King Gilgamesh’s companion, Enkidu. It describes the underworld adventures of his ghost, and its return to the world when Gilgamesh breaks a hole in the earth.
In Egyptian mythology, dead spirits visited the Hall of truth where they were judged by the god osiris. If the burial rites had not been observed, or some great wrong had been committed in life, the akh (spirit of the dead) was allowed to return to Earth to redress the wrong.
Greek writers such as Homer, Horace, Livy and Plutarch made reference to ghostly phenomena.
In the first century ad, the great roman statesman Pliny the Younger related the first haunted house story. He told of how athenodorus, a Greek philosopher of the 1st century Bc, rented a large house at a reasonable price. this was because the house was haunted by the spectre of an old, bearded man.
the ghost, bound with chains, led athenodorus to a courtyard, where it vanished. athenodorus marked the spot, and the next day dug up the skeleton of an old man, bound with chains.
after the skeleton was given a proper burial, the ghost was said to have never haunted that house again.
In the 3rd century ad, the Greek platonic scholar Porphyry wrote to the Egyptian sage anebo outlining all the ghostly phenomena he was investigating, including prophecy, fire-walking, levitation and poltergeist phenomena.
Martha Reed, Hay-on-Wye, Brecknockshire. IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London, W8 5TT. You can also email them to charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection will be published, but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.