"Mary Had a Little Lamb" is an English language
nursery rhyme of 19thcentury
American origin. The nursery rhyme was
first published by the Boston publishing firm Marsh, Capen & Lyon, as an
original poem by Sarah Josepha Hale in May, 1830, and was inspired by an actual
incident. As a young girl, Mary Sawyer
(later Mrs. Mary Tyler) kept a pet lamb, which she took to school one day at
the suggestion of her brother. A commotion naturally ensued.
The Silence of the Lambs is a 1991 American thriller film
directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, and
Scott Glenn, the film is based on Thomas Harris' 1988 novel of the same name. It won Academy awards in all 5 top
categories. The film is considered
"culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant by the U.S.
Library of Congress and was selected to be preserved in the National Film
Registry in 2011.
Lambs
are ruminants and eat grass. Elsewhere
in Surrey, UK, a flock of sheep that were bound for abattoir got high on
cannabis plants worth £4,000, after the drugs were ditched in a field.
The stash of marijuana plants, which were each roughly three foot tall,
were dumped at the edge of Fanny's Farm in Markedge Lane, a newspaper reported.
The sheep being inquisitive had an
interesting feast on it !!
Police who raided a brothel in Munich got more than they bargained
for when they discovered a three-week-old lamb living there. Officers had been
tipped off that a prostitute was in possession of contraband but did not expect
it to include livestock. Unlike the wooly situation in the UK, prostitution is
legal in Germany, and tourists are known to flock to Munich's red light
district for the shear thrill of purchasing the affection of women.
The woman, who has not been named, but the lamb is named as
‘birke’- the woman tried to defend herself by claiming the lamb followed her to
the brothel – which the German police have decided is against the rules, after
examining a letter the woman provided, in which a vet established the
conditions in which a lamb should be raised. The prostitute was handed an
immediate ban against keeping animals.
Birke was alter handed over to an animal protection group, according to
the police statement.
In
another interesting incident, a Moscow psychiatric facility that earlier made
the headlines for strapping its child inmates to the beds is now at the center
of another scandal after it showed children with psychiatric disorders the film
"The Silence of the Lambs."
The
film is viewed as a dark and gruesome U.S. thriller about a murderous cannibal
and a serial killer. A court ruled that in showing the Oscar-winning grizzly
tale at the facility, the hospital had broken the law on distributing
information to children that is harmful to their health and ordered the
hospital to pay a fine of an undisclosed size.
In the U.S., the 1991 film was given an R rating upon its release,
meaning that viewers under 17 had to be accompanied by an adult. "The
Silence of the Lambs" placed seventh on a list of "The 100 Scariest
Movie Moments" compiled in 2004 by the U.S.-based Bravo television
channel.
Ending Lamb’s silence, Mary
Sawyer's house, located in Sterling, Massachusetts, was destroyed by arson in
Aug 2007. A statue representing Mary's
Little Lamb stands in the town center. The Redstone School, which was built in
1798, was purchased by Henry Ford and relocated to a churchyard on the property
of Longfellow's Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts. The rhyme [Mary had a little lamb] is also famous for being the very first thing
recorded by Thomas Edison on his newly invented phonograph in 1877. It was the first instance of recorded verse. In
1927 Edison re-enacted the recording which still survives.The earliest recording
(1878) was retrieved by 3-D imaging equipment in 2012.
With
regards – S. Sampathkumar
25th May 2015.
