The Know-It-All - S

At 2,089 pages, volume S of the Encyclopaedia Britannica is the longest volume in the set. I think it can stand on its own here.

S

Schmeling, Max - I knew Schmeling as Hitler's great Aryan boxer, the Great Nazi Hope, but it turns out he wasn't a soulless person after all. Hitler simply had a great PR department.

Boxing fans know Max as the guy who knocked out Joe Louis in 1936, but was defeated by Louis in their 1938 rematch. I'm not even a boxing fan and I knew that. What I didn't know was that Schmeling openly associated with Jews including his Jewish trainer and hid two Jewish boys in his apartment during Kristallnacht. This kind treatment of Jews earned Schmeling a wartime assignment with a dangerous parachute troop where he was injured in 1941. Instead of getting a cushy position like most celebrities, Maxie got to jump out of airplanes and into battle. After the war, he opened a Coca-Cola franchise in Germany and gave financial aid to the widow of his former nemesis, Joe Louis.

I'm not campaigning for sainthood here, the man did fight for the Nazi's. But it does go to show that people are much more complicated than the one part of them we sometimes know. A good reminder to stay out of the judging business. We rarely have enough information to make judgments, unless of course you've read the entire EB.

Shaw, George Bernard - The Irish playwright wrote Pygmalion on which the musical My Fair Lady was based. I had a bit part in Pygmalion my Freshman year of High School. So, there's that. He wrote a lot of other things too and won the Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938).

I like him most for his clever quote about marriage: "When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal and exhausting condition until death do them part." Good luck with all that.

sleep - The Tajal people of Luzon believe that the soul leaves the body during sleep and goes to a special dreamworld. Therefore, in that culture they dole out severe punishment to anyone who awakens a sleeping person. I would vote for that law!

I was a champion sleeper when I was a teenager, but my sister was even better at it than me. I remember when we sang the old song about going to heaven in church, When I Wake Up to Sleep No More, and she said she thought that sounded awful! She loved to sleep! She preferred the idea behind There is a Place of Quiet Rest.

snorkel - This probably caught my eye because my family is looking forward to a trip to Hawaii this summer, but it interested me for another reason. I'm intrigued by the origins of words, especially commonly used words that had a negative connotation in their inception. "Snorkel" came from the ventilating tube used on German submarines in WW II. I did not know that.

Another favorite is "sandwich" - named after the bribe taking, back stabbing, gambling addict, and earl of Sandwich who invented the snack so he could eat without leaving the gambling tables. Nice guy.

sports - The first basketball game was played with a soccer ball and peach baskets in 1891 in Springfield, Massachusetts. The final score was 1-0 thanks to a mid-court basket by William R. Chase. I wonder what kind of contract and endorsement deals he received for not only scoring the winning basket, but all of his teams points. I'd like to see Kobe or LaBron do that!

Star-Spangled Banner, The - Francis Scott Key's poem was originally called "The Defence of Fort M'Henry." The melody was taken from a British drinking song. Ironic, since Key wrote it during a battle with the British.

Stravinsky, Igor - I know this name more for it's use by Chevy Chase in the original Fletch movie than for the composers' work. Outside of The Rite of Spring, I cannot name any Stravinsky hits. However, I learned that The Rite of Spring caused an opening night riot at the Theatre des Champs Elysees because of its "scandalous dissonances and rhythmic brutality." It's a little more difficult for artists to shock their audiences these days, wouldn't you say?