The Culture Blog For Connoisseurs Of Everything

Looks like Ian Russell gets a maiden cream bun this time. Anyone who’s given up, click continue.

Earlier we asked the latest RB Quiz question, namely:

What links Bryan Ferry, the White Rabbit, a South American river and Robin Hood, in that order?

And the answer is… Mount Rushmore!

The four Presidents carved on the South Dakotan mountain are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

Bryan Ferry hails from Washington, Tyne and Wear. William de Wessyngton was supposedly a forebear of George Washington, the first President of the United States, and Washington Old Hall was the family home of his ancestors.

White Rabbit, with its druggy references to Alice in Wonderland and invitation to ‘feed your head’ is perhaps the best-known song of Jefferson Airplane.

The Roosevelt River (or Rio Roosevelt) runs 400 miles through Brazil, eventually joining the Amazon. It is indeed named after Theodore Roosevelt, who explored it along with Cândido Rondon in 1913-14.

Finally, Robin Hood and his Merrie Men were of course clad in Lincoln green. The dyers of Lincoln produced the cloth by dyeing it blue with woad and then overdyeing it yellow with weld.

The first recorded use of Lincoln green as a colour name in English is in 1510 but by the late sixteenth century but by 1612 it was already a thing of the past, as John Drayton wrote in Poly-Olbion: “Lincoln anciently dyed the best green in England.”