Opus – Page 96 – Encyclopædia of the sublime

Lord Lucan

Lord Lucan was a British peer suspected of murder who disappeared in 1974. Once considered for the role of James Bond in the cinematic adaptations of Ian Fleming's novels, Lucan was known for his expensive tastes; he raced powerboats and drove an Aston Martin. On the evening of 7 November 1974, his children's nanny, Sandra Rivett, was bludgeoned to death in the basement of the Lucan family home. As the police began their murder investigation, Lucan telephoned his mother, asking her to collect the children, and then drove a borrowed Ford Corsair to a friend's house in Uckfield, East Sussex. Hours later, he left the property and vanished without trace.

Udumbara

The udumbara flower is said in Buddhist legend to bloom only once every 3,000 years, the last time being before the birth of Buddha.

Cherenkov radiation

Cherenkov radiation is electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle (such as an electron) passes through an insulator at a constant speed greater than the speed of light in that medium.

Kronenhalle

Kronenhalle is a legendary restaurant in Zurich. Thomas Mann liked the red room - it reminded him of a German luxury ship. Braque and Miro sat around the tables, and they hang on the walls; Picasso, too. But the most devoted habitue, the one whose regular seat everyone asks to see, if not sit in, was James Joyce. ''Joyce lived here for eight years,'' says Gustav Zumsteg, Hulda's son and the Kronenhalle's owner. ''He came here every day. And he left this place to die.''

Jim Cramer

Jim Cramer is an American television personality and former hedge fund manager.

Light Years Away

Light Years Away is a film in which a young drifter meets up with a strange old man who claims that he has been taught to fly by birds.

Glyptodon

Glyptodon was a large, armored mammal of the family Glyptodontidae, related to armadillos, that lived during the Pleistocene Epoch. Flatter than a Volkswagen Beetle, but about the same general size and weight, Glyptodon is believed to have been an herbivore, grazing on grasses and other plants found near rivers and small bodies of water.

Houbigant

Houbigant was a perfume manufacturer founded in Paris in 1775, originally selling gloves, perfumes, and bridal bouquets. A Houbigant legend has it that when Marie Antoinette was fleeing to Varennes to escape the French revolutionaries she was recognized as royalty because of her Houbigant perfume, which only royalty could afford.

Geraldine Chaplin

Geraldine Chaplin is an actress and the fourth child of Charlie Chaplin.

Jack Parsons

Jack Parsons was an American rocket propulsion researcher at the California Institute of Technology and co-founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. An enthusiastic occultist, he was one of the earliest American devotees of Aleister Crowley, and a leading member of his organization, Ordo Templi Orientis. Amongst many other things, Parsons and an associate attempted to bring about some sort of incarnation of the goddess Babalon. Parsons performed rituals (reportedly to the background music of Prokofiev and Rachmaninoff records) for 11 days in a process known as the Babalon Working.