Western South Dakota is home to incredible sights like the Badlands and the Needles of the Black Hills, but nothing “sticks out” quite like Mount Rushmore National Memorial.  Danish-American sculptor Gutzon Borglum was enlisted to help with the project.  At the time, he was working on the massive carving at Stone Mountain in Georgia, but by his own account said the model was flawed and the monument wouldn’t stand the test of time.  He was looking for a way out when South Dakota called.  The mountain that Borglum chose to carve was known to the Lakota as the “Six Grandfathers.”  It had also been known as Cougar Mountain, Sugarloaf Mountain, Slaughterhouse Mountain, and Keystone Cliffs, depending who you asked.  The mountain’s official name came from a New York lawyer who was surveying gold claims in the area in 1885.  Charles E. Rushmore asked his guide, William Challis, “What’s the name of that mountain?”  Challis is said to have replied, “It’s never had one . . . till now . . . we’ll call the damn thing Rushmore.”  In 1930, the United States Board on Geographic Names officially recognized it as Mount Rushmore.  Dylan Mancy  https://www.travelsouthdakota.com/trip-ideas/story/75-surprising-facts-about-mount-rushmore  Thank you, Muse reader!  

The U.S. Supreme Court’s start date is mandated by a law passed by Congress.  Originally, the Judiciary Act of 1789 set two annual sessions for the Court.  Starting in 1791, the Court met on the first Monday of February, with the second session in August.  At the time, the Justices also had to travel regionally to hear court cases.  Over the years, the Court consolidated its two sessions into one annual term in 1802, and then started that term on the first Monday in January (1827), first Monday in December (1844) and the second Monday in October (1873).  Then, in 1916, Congress moved the Court term’s start date from the second Monday in October to the current first Monday. T he change was approved on September 6, 1916, as part of the act to redefine the Judicial Code and expand the number of appeals petitions considered by the Court. The new start date took effect in 1917.  https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/why-the-supreme-court-starts-on-the-first-monday-in-october  In addition to being the opening day of the Court’s Term, First Monday in October is also the name of a 1978 Broadway play written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, and a 1981 movie starring Walter Matthau and Jill Clayburgh.  Both productions are about the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court.  The movie was released in theaters on August 21, 1981. Interestingly, one month later, Sandra Day O’Connor took her seat on the Bench as the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, and thus turned the plot of the play and the movie into reality.  https://www.supremecourt.gov/  

From the New York City Public Library:  For a history of the term “Gotham,” one doesn’t have to go much further than Edwin Burrows’ and Mike Wallace's Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898.  Always one of our most popular reference books in the Milstein Division of U.S. History, Local History, and Genealogy, Gotham is a massive but fascinating chronicle of New York City history.  It is here that we learn that the term Gotham is tied to the author Washington Irving, famous for his short stories “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” and “Rip Van Winkle.”  It’s also here that we learn Irving was being less than flattering when he nicknamed the city in 1807.  Irving was sort of a ringleader of a group known as the Lads of Kilkenny, a group Burrows describes as “a loosely knit pack of literary-minded young blades out for a good time.”  The Lads made their rounds of the Park Theater and the Shakespeare Tavern, and some of them eventually organized to create the literary magazine called Salmagundi (full text available in Google Books).  In Salmagundi, Irving and the Lads published essays concerning events in “the thrice renowned and delectable city of GOTHAM,” thereby creating a nickname for New York which is now over two hundred years old.  Irving, coincidentally, also coined the term “Knickerbocker” with his book A History of New York, From the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty by Diedrich Knickerbocker which Irving attributed to the fictional Knickerbocker.   https://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/01/25/so-why-do-we-call-it-gotham-anyway   

New York City is known by many nicknames—such as “the City that Never Sleeps” or “Gotham”—but the most popular one is probably “the Big Apple.”  How did this nickname come about?  Although uses of the phrase are documented in the early 1900s, the term first became popular in the 1920s when John J. Fitz Gerald, a sports writer, started a column about horse racing called “Around the Big Apple.”  However, it wasn’t until a tourism campaign in the 1970s that the nickname came to be synonymous with New York City.  Nora Gonzalez  https://www.britannica.com/story/how-9-famous-cities-got-their-nicknames  

Cilantro (aka the leaves of the coriander plant) is a tasty herb to most people.  A pleasing combination of flavors reminiscent of parsley and citrus, the herb is a common ingredient in many cuisines around the world.  However, some people find cilantro revolting, including, famously, the chef Julia Child.  Melissa Petruzzello  https://www.britannica.com/story/how-9-famous-cities-got-their-nicknames  

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2726  October 2, 2023