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“The Assassin Cult, a name that may be derived from the Arabic “hashashin,” meaning hashish user, is surrounded in mystery and legend. This is in part because they were secretive, but also because the historical record we have of their activities is written from many different and conflicting perspectives. One of the best known of these, and probably least accurate, is that of Marco Polo. He is supposed to have visited Alamut in 1273, seventeen years after it was destroyed by the Mongols. The Mongols, under Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis, had proceeded from Alamut to sack Baghdad in 1258 and Damascus in 1260.”

Iran’s Castle of the Assassins in the National Geographic. I first heard of the hashashin in Terry Jones’ series The Crusades.

From the Boston Globe: The Mossad agents who went to Buenos Aires in 1960 to capture Adolf Eichmann found Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death”, but decided not to risk their original mission by going after Mengele. After Eichmann’s capture Mengele moved to Brazil. He was never caught. He drowned in 1979, and the body was identified six years later.

“Mengele was one of the most wanted Nazi war criminals, a doctor who conducted cruel experiments on twins and dwarves at the Auschwitz concentration camp and killed children with lethal injections. He selected prisoners who would be subjected to his experiments and sent others straight to their death in gas chambers. . .Mengele was infamous for his sadistic experiments in the death camps. He injected dye into the eyes of twins to change their color and sewed them together to try to create artificially conjoined twins. He ordered twins killed simultaneously and then dissected for examination of their organs. His horrors earned him the title ‘Angel of Death’.

“After the war, Mengele fled Germany under an assumed name and ended up in Argentina, a popular refuge for many senior Nazi officials.”

That’s what the producers of the Showtime  historical soft-porn melodrama The Tudors assured its viewers. “We don’t want to destroy his good looks,” said executive producer Morgan O’Sullivan. “An exact portrayal of Henry is not a factor that we think is important.” 

Towards the end of his life, Henry VIII was so heavy he had to be hoisted onto his horse. You’ve seen the famous portrait by Hans Holbein—look at those calves, each one is about the waist size of pouty Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, who plays Henry VIII. But then we don’t watch The Tudors for the history lesson. Grover and I watch it for Henry Cavill, who plays Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. If the duke wishes to take his clothes off now and then, we shall not protest overmuch. Jeremy Northam is in the series, too, as Sir Thomas More. Naturally he wears too many clothes.

The Tudors takes liberties with historical fact, but it’s still a more credible depiction of the era than The Other Boleyn Girl (not to mention better-acted). Elizabeth, the movie, wasn’t much more accurate. My favorite historical drama series are still Rome and Deadwood.

In Salon, David Zax notes the unusual African-American names in the Olympics roster (Tayshaun, Deron, Rau’shee, Raynell, Deontay, Taraje, Jozy, Kerron, Hyleas, Chaunte, Bershawn, Lashawn, Sanya, Trevell, Sheena, Ogonna, Dremiel) and offers a history lesson on distinctive black names in the United States. From early on, he writes, some distinctive black names were tied to black resistance against white oppression.

Alright, who will explain “Jejomar”, “Heherson”, “Hexilon”, and “Joker”? (We know what they mean and how they were concocted, what we need is a context.) Not to mention the onomatopoeic “Dingdong”, “Bingbong”, “Bongbong”, and the botanical “Apple”, “Strawberry”, “Peaches” etc. What is the socio-historical basis for these Filipino names? (I can account for “Baby Girl”. It was explained to me some years ago that many senior citizens are named “Baby Girl” because they were born during World War II, and in the chaos, these generic labels were scrawled on their birth certificates.)

You can’t say “Only in the Philippines” and roll your eyeballs because other countries have the same experience. In Venezuela they actually tried to limit name choices to an approved list of 100, because people were having their children baptized “Hitler Adonys” and “Batman” (I nominate Joker Arroyo for ambassador to Venezuela). There’s a kid in New Zealand with the unfortunate monicker, “Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii” (I say jail the parents). We’re talking about given names, by the way, meaning the parents chose to name their child…that.

According to a study by the University of Wolverhampton commissioned by TV channel Dave, the world’s oldest recorded joke was made in Sumer in 1900 BC. It goes like this: “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.”

Okay, it doesn’t exactly make you weep with laughter, but remember they had just invented cities at the time. I’m sure there are older jokes, but no one bothered to write them down as writing hadn’t been invented yet.

The second oldest joke dates back to 1600 BC Egypt: “How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish.” Pa-rum-pum.

An Anglo-Saxon joke from about 1000: “What hangs at a man’s thigh and wants to poke the hole that it’s often poked before? Answer: A key.” This tells us that the Q&A format, dirty jokes, and unfunny jokes are nearly as old as recorded history. What I want to know is how many people were executed for gags that flopped. Like the jester in Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex, going : “TB or not TB, that is consumption…”

In the documentary The Aristocrats, comics riff on what is purportedly the filthiest joke ever made. The joke itself isn’t that funny, but embellishing, adding layers and stretching it out to a half-hour is impressive.

Tinker, tailor, chef: Famed chef Julia Child was a spy, recently declassified documents reveal. In WWII she joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor of the CIA. She was assigned to Ceylon, China, and India, where she became interested in cuisine, and where she met her future husband, the connoisseur Paul Child. After the war they moved to France, where her gastronomic epiphany would lead to the writing of Mastering the Art of French Cooking.