Flavour of the month: November – Celebrity homes, the Tube and Disney romance

This month’s crop of trivia includes a secret about the Tube map, the US state that’s named after Elizabeth I and something Jimi Hendrix had in common with Winston Churchill… 

• 1 November 1947 – birth of Nick Owen. The television presenter and Luton Town fan has a lounge named after him at the club’s ground – to which he was once refused entry. ‘You can’t go in,’ said a steward. ‘It’s packed.’ Not being a ‘don’t you know who I am?’ type, Owen simply walked away. He heard someone say to the steward: ‘Don’t you know who that is?’ ‘Haven’t a clue,’ came the reply. ‘His name,’ the steward was told, ‘is in bloody great capitals above your head.’
• 2 November 1889 – North and South Dakota are granted statehood in the US. The Dakota Building in New York, where John Lennon lived and died, got its name because when it opened there were few other buildings on the Upper West Side, so it bore the same relation to the rest of Manhattan as the Dakotas did to New York State.
• 4 November 1890 – the City and South London Railway, forerunner of the Northern line, opens between King William Street (now part of Bank station) and Stockwell. It was the city’s first ‘deep-level’ line, dug by a tunnelling machine that stayed underground the whole way – the first two lines (now called the Metropolitan and the District) were built by digging up the road, laying the tracks then replacing the road. Obviously this means they are much nearer the surface, a fact reflected on the Tube map: whenever one of those two crosses a deep-level line (for instance near King’s Cross and Euston), the line on the map goes over rather than under the other line. 
• 5 November 1913 – King Otto of Bavaria is replaced by his cousin Ludwig III. Otto had never actually exercised power, because of severe mental illness (Ludwig and his father Luitpold had served as regents). Every morning Otto’s servants indulged his desire to shoot a peasant by taking it in turns to disguise themselves as one, then collapsing in the distance after Otto had ‘hit’ them. Unknown to the king, the bullets in his gun were blanks.
• 6 November 1893 – Tchaikovsky dies. In a school exam, Peter Ustinov answered the question ‘name a Russian composer’ with the answer ‘Rimsky-Korsakov’. He was told that the ‘correct’ answer was Tchaikovsky. He queried this, and was then chastised in front of the entire school for ‘showing off’.
• 8 November 2016 – Donald Trump is elected the 45th president of the United States. He was actually the 44^th man to do the job – because Grover Cleveland’s two terms were separated by that of Benjamin Harrison, he is counted as both the 22^nd and 24^th presidents. This presumably means that were Trump to regain the White House next year, he would be the 45^th and 47^th presidents. During his first term he had shirt cuffs monogrammed with ‘45’ – might he have shirts made with ‘45’ on one cuff and ‘47’ on the other?

• 13 November 1955 – Whoopi Goldberg is born. The star (originally Caryn Elaine Johnson) gained her nickname as a child because she suffered from flatulence: ‘People used to say to me, “you’re like a whoopee cushion.’
• 14 November 1922 – the BBC begins its radio service. The first transmission was a news bulletin, read twice, first at normal speed and then more slowly so that listeners could take notes. The list of subjects about which comedians were banned from making jokes in the BBC’s early years included ‘Scotsmen, Welshmen, clergymen, drink or medical matters’. The entertainer Norman Long responded with the satirical song We Can’t Let You Broadcast That. The BBC promptly banned it.
• 17 November 1558 – Elizabeth I begins her reign. The US state of Virginia would later be named in her honour, as she was the Virgin Queen.
• 18 November 1928 – release of Steamboat Willie, the first cartoon starring Mickey Mouse to be distributed. One of the actors to voice the character in the 1980s was Wayne Allwine. He began a relationship with, and eventually married, Russi Taylor, the voice of Minnie Mouse. Disney were reluctant to publicise the union, as they have always stated that Mickey and Minnie are just good friends. Allwine and Taylor’s pairing became known as ‘the love that dare not squeak its name’.
• 20 November 1947 – wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten. By marrying the future queen, Philip took himself out of the line of succession: because he was descended from Queen Victoria, he had a place on the list (well into three figures), but by becoming Elizabeth’s husband he renounced that claim.
• 27 November 1942 – birth of Jimi Hendrix. The guitarist’s death certificate lists his address as the Cumberland Hotel near Marble Arch. He had a regular room on the fifth floor, and used the hotel’s stationery to write the lyrics to ‘Look Over Yonder’ and ‘Suddenly November Morning’. It was at the Cumberland that he gave his last interview, six days before his death. The hotel now has a guitar service in which you can order one of several ‘axes’ to your room, while the mirror in the Star Suite is marked with the heights not just of Hendrix himself (5’10”), but of other performers from Ariana Grande (5’0”) through Bob Dylan (5’7”) to Buddy Holly (5’11”). It’s fitting that Hendrix died in London: it was there that he had achieved fame and felt at home – he became a fan of Coronation Street, particularly of the character Ena Sharples. His body was embalmed by the same man who had done George VI and Winston Churchill. Question from the mirror – there is a seven inch height difference between Lady Gaga and Adele. Who is taller? (Answer below.)