Lon Chaney was born April 1, 1883 in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  He was the son of deaf mute parents, Frank and Emma Chaney, and he learned from childhood to communicate through pantomime, sign language and facial expression.  In 1901, he went on the road as an actor in a play that he co-wrote with his brother titled “The Little Tycoon.”  After limited success, the company was sold and Lon continued on with the new owner.  By 1918 with over a hundred film credits for Universal, he asked for a raise and was refused.  Shortly thereafter, he left the studio to become a freelance actor.  In 1919, Lon received critical acclaim for his role in George Loane Tuckers “The Miracle Man” portraying “The Frog,” a con man who pretends to be crippled and is miraculously healed.  Lon often suffered to achieve the character he was portraying.  In 1920, for “The Penalty,” he had his legs bound tightly behind him in a harness, inserting his knees into leather stumps devised as artificial legs with his feet bound at the thighs.  This was a very painful ordeal that would cut circulation to his legs resulting in broken blood vessels.  For “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” in 1923 he devised a hump and harness reportedly weighing in excess of 50 pounds, twisting his torso to feel the pain of Quasimodo.  He delivered an outstanding performance earning him worldwide fame.  In 1924, Lon starred in Metro-Goldwyn’s “He Who Gets Slapped” a circus melodrama voted one of the best films of the year.  The success of this movie led to a series of contracts with MGM Studios for the next five years.  In 1925, Lon created the makeup that secured him into film immortality with his portrayal as “Erik,” the tortured opera ghost in “The Phantom of the Opera.”  In 1930 he made his one and only talking film, a remake of 1925 “The Unholy Three.”  He played Echo, a crook ventriloquist and used five different voices in the movie, thus proving he could make the transition from silent films to the talkies.  https://lonchaney.com/lon-chaney/  Lon Chaney Sr. was known as "The Man of 1,000 Faces."  

Famous as the Wolfman, Lon Chaney, Jr. (1906-1973), excelled as a character actor for five decades.  Born Creighton Tull Chaney on February 10, 1906, in Oklahoma City, Chaney entered the world three months prematurely.  The tale of his birth is as astounding as some of his "B" motion pictures.  Reportedly, young Creighton was not breathing when he was born, and his famous father, Lon Chaney, plunged the baby into nearby Belle Isle Lake to resuscitate the lifeless baby.  Creighton Chaney took up acting after his father's death in 1930.  In 1935 he changed his name to capitalize on his father's success.  Chaney, Jr., had small parts in movies until producer Hal Roach and director Lewis Milestone cast him as Lennie in the 1939 version of Of Mice and Men.  The next year Universal signed him to a contract.  He acted in over 170 films and earned his reputation as a star in low-budget horror films.  He also had early success as a character actor in mainstream cinema.  His most notable film, The Wolfman (1941), began his horror career, in which he played all of the big four creatures, the Wolfman, Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Mummy.  Chaney, Jr., can still be seen on late-night television in movies such as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), The Mummy's Tomb (1942), Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943), and House of Dracula (1945).  As a non-horror actor his best-known role came as the marshal in High Noon (1952).  Other notable movies were The Defiant Ones (1958), The Indian Fighter (1955), The Boy From Oklahoma (1954, with Will Rogers, Jr.), My Favorite Brunette (1947), and Springfield Rifle (1952).  https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=CH004 

The potato is a member of the Solanaceae (nightshade) family, which includes tomato, pepper, eggplant, petunia and tobacco.  The enlarged, edible, underground storage portion of the potato plant is called a “tuber”.  The tuber develops from underground stems called stolons.  Potatoes are the number one non‐grain food crop in the world.  In the United States, over 1 million acres are planted each year for commercial production.  Potatoes can grow in harsh climates and many potato varieties can be produced in 90 days or less on small parcels of land.  Potatoes are native to the Andean region of South America.  European explorers introduced the potato to Europe in 1536 but it did not arrive in the United States until 1719 when Irish immigrants brought the potato with them to the New World.  Kelly A. Zarka, Donna C. Kells, David S. Douches and C. Robin Buell Michigan State University  https://www.canr.msu.edu/uploads/files/growingpotatoes.pdf

A gimbal is a pivoted support that permits rotation of an object about an axis.  A set of three gimbals, one mounted on the other with orthogonal pivot axes, may be used to allow an object mounted on the innermost gimbal to remain independent of the rotation of its support.  For example, on a ship, the gyroscopes, shipboard compasses, stoves, and even drink holders typically use gimbals to keep them upright with respect to the horizon despite the ship's pitching and rolling.  The gimbal suspension used for mounting compasses and the like is sometimes called a Cardan suspension after Italian mathematician and physicist Gerolamo Cardano (1501–1576) who described it in detail.  However, Cardano did not invent the gimbal, nor did he claim to.  The device has been known since antiquity, first described in the 3rd c. BC by Philo of Byzantium, although some modern authors support the view that it may not have a single identifiable inventor.  See many graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimbal 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2466  December 8, 2021