This LL Study Guide moves from Airport (the 1970 ensemble disaster film that helped launch the decade’s big-budget disaster cycle) through Hokusai’s sketchbook Manga, the French Revolutionary month Thermidor, and 19th-century Cincinnati’s meatpacking boom, to witch hazel in Native American medicine and Queen Victoria’s trend‑setting white wedding dress and Prince Albert’s typhoid‑attributed death. Airport’s box‑office success and 10 Oscar nominations made it a template for 1970s disaster movies. Hokusai’s 15-volume Hokusai Manga popularized the word manga, now used worldwide for Japanese comics. Thermidor, named from a Greek root for “heat,” was the 11th month of the French Republican calendar, roughly mid‑July to mid‑August, and later gave its name to both the Thermidorian Reaction and Lobster Thermidor. Cincinnati’s 19th‑century role as a pork‑packing hub earned it the nickname “Porkopolis,” while German immigrants contributed sausages like goetta and the city’s famous chili, which is actually a beef‑based Mediterranean‑spiced meat sauce. Witch hazel’s bark and leaves, long used by Native Americans as an astringent decoction for swellings and skin problems, became a staple of modern over‑the‑counter skin and hemorrhoid remedies; its name comes from Old English wice (“pliant, bendable”), not sorcery. Finally, Queen Victoria’s highly publicized 1840 marriage to Prince Albert in a white satin and Honiton lace gown popularized the white wedding dress in the West; Albert’s death in December 1861 was contemporaneously attributed to typhoid fever.

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Study Notes

Question 1: 1970 Disaster Film “Airport”

Q1. FILM - Nominated for 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture and spawning three sequels of its own, what 1970 film (named generically for the setting where its plot unfolds) is often credited with launching the decade’s disaster-movie craze?

Airport is a 1970 American disaster film written and directed by George Seaton, based on Arthur Hailey’s 1968 novel, and is credited with originating the 1970s disaster-film genre while becoming the first entry in the four‑film Airport series. It won Helen Hayes the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and received nine additional Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, for a total of ten.

A disaster film is a movie genre built around an impending or ongoing catastrophe—natural or man‑made—that drives the main plot and places an ensemble cast in peril. The Academy Awards (the Oscars) are annual prizes presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence in cinematic achievements such as acting, directing, and Best Picture.

Connections

  • Airport’s box‑office haul—over $128 million worldwide on a roughly $10 million budget, at one point Universal’s biggest moneymaker—proved that star‑studded disaster spectacles could be hugely profitable and encouraged studios to green‑light more such films.

  • Film histories credit Airport with originating the 1970s disaster-film boom, leading directly to blockbusters like The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974), both Irwin Allen–produced ensemble disaster movies.

  • Airport spawned three sequels—Airport 1975, Airport ’77, and The Concorde … Airport ’79—that codified tropes like aging stars in peril, intersecting melodramas, and highly detailed aviation procedures.

  • The 1980 parody Airplane! built much of its comedy by spoofing the clichés of 1970s airline‑disaster films, especially Zero Hour! (1957) and Airport 1975, so recognizing those references can help you map the lineage back to Airport.

Sources

Question 2: Hokusai and the Term “Manga”

Q2. LITERATURE - Early 19th-century Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai popularized what term, commonly translated to English as “whimsical pictures” or “impromptu sketches”, particularly via his 15-volume sketchbook series whose title included the word?

The term is manga (漫画), now used primarily for Japanese comics and graphic storytelling; it combines the characters 漫 (man, often glossed as “rambling, free, overflowing” and popularly rendered as “whimsical”) and 画 (ga, “picture, drawing”). Hokusai’s hugely popular Hokusai Manga sketchbooks—15 volumes published from 1814 into the late 19th century containing thousands of small images—did much to popularize both the word and the idea of playful, impromptu sketches.

In contemporary English, manga usually refers to comics created in Japan (or by Japanese creators in a Japanese style), while in Japanese the term can encompass both comics and cartooning more broadly. Many introductory guides translate 漫画 as “whimsical pictures” or “impromptu sketches,” but manga historian Eike Exner argues that this neat origin story oversimplifies a more complex etymology and usage history.

Connections

  • Hokusai is also the ukiyo‑e artist behind The Great Wave off Kanagawa, one of the most reproduced images in art history; his name thus bridges elite woodblock printmaking, instructional sketchbooks (Hokusai Manga), and the later mass medium of manga.

  • A WIPO overview of “the manga phenomenon” notes that by the late 20th century manga had become one of Japan’s most popular cultural exports, turning a term associated with Edo‑period sketchbooks into the label for an industry worth billions annually.

  • Early 20th‑century cartoonists like Kitazawa Yasuji helped fix the word manga in the sense of satirical newspaper cartoons and comics, showing how an artists’ manual term from Hokusai’s time migrated into mass media.

  • Japanese animation was commonly called manga eiga (“manga films”) or “TV manga” before the English‑derived term anime took over, so Hokusai’s word ended up naming both print and screen storytelling for a time.

Sources

Question 3: Thermidor and the French Revolutionary Calendar

Q3. WORLD HIST - The name of which month of the French Revolutionary calendar comes from a root relating to heat, fittingly as the month roughly covered late July through late August?

The month is Thermidor, the 11th month of the French Republican calendar, which roughly covered July 19 or 20 through August 17 or 18 in the Gregorian system. Its name was coined from the Greek root thermē/thermon (“heat, summer heat”), matching the hot midsummer period around Paris.

The French Revolutionary (Republican) calendar was introduced after the Revolution, with Year I beginning at the autumnal equinox of 1792, and replaced traditional month names with nature‑based ones such as Vendémiaire (grape harvest), Brumaire (mist), and Thermidor (heat); it remained in official use until Napoleon restored the Gregorian calendar in 1806. The Thermidorian Reaction—Robespierre’s overthrow on 9 Thermidor Year II in July 1794—gave “Thermidor” a lasting political meaning as the moment when a revolution sheds its most radical phase and swings back toward moderation.

Connections

  • Lobster Thermidor, a classic French dish of lobster meat in a rich wine, egg‑yolk, and brandy sauce topped with cheese and browned, was named after Victorien Sardou’s 1891 play Thermidor, itself titled for the Revolutionary month.

  • Food historians trace the dish to Parisian restaurants in the 1890s, where chefs created it for the premiere or revival of Sardou’s play, cementing yet another culinary link back to the Revolutionary calendar.

  • Neil Gaiman’s comic series The Sandman includes an issue titled “Thermidor,” set during the French Revolution and explicitly referencing the month, which can be a handy pop‑culture mnemonic for remembering the name.

  • In modern political analysis—especially of the Soviet Union and other revolutions—writers sometimes refer to a regime’s “Thermidor” to describe a conservative or moderate turn that reins in earlier radical policies, echoing the fate of Robespierre and his allies.

Sources

Question 4: Cincinnati, “Porkopolis,” and Chili

Q4. GEOGRAPHY - “Porkopolis” is a former nickname for what American city, reflecting the city’s German immigrant influence and contributions to its sausage and meatpacking traditions (though pork and sausage are not common chili ingredients there)?

The city is Cincinnati, Ohio, which became a major 19th‑century pork‑packing center and was widely nicknamed “Porkopolis” because of its huge pork “interests” and stockyards. Large waves of German immigrants helped build its industrial base and food culture, including pork‑and‑grain sausages such as goetta, while the city’s signature Cincinnati chili is a beef‑based meat sauce served over spaghetti or hot dogs, so pork or sausage usually appear separately (for example, in coneys) rather than inside the chili itself.

Connections

  • Cincinnati’s pork history is celebrated by the Flying Pig Marathon, whose name and winged‑pig branding explicitly reference the old “Porkopolis” nickname and the flying‑pig smokestack sculptures at Bicentennial Commons.

  • Public art projects like the Big Pig Gig scattered decorated pig statues around downtown, transforming the once‑derogatory Porkopolis image into a playful civic mascot.

  • Cincinnati chili is officially defined not as a stew but as a Mediterranean‑spiced meat sauce of ground beef, tomato paste, and spices such as cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, served over spaghetti or hot dogs in “two‑way” through “five‑way” combinations with cheese, onions, and beans; recognizing that it usually lacks pork or sausage helps resolve the parenthetical hint in the question.

  • Food writers like Anthony Bourdain and Jane & Michael Stern single out Cincinnati chili—along with goetta and mock turtle soup—as emblematic of the city’s regional cuisine, linking 19th‑century meatpacking to today’s comfort foods.

Sources

Question 5: Witch Hazel and “Bendable” Branches

Q5. SCIENCE - What plant, whose extract has long been used as an astringent for skin care and was used medicinally for centuries by Native Americans before European settlement, has a name that likely comes in part from an Old English word meaning “bendable” and is unrelated to sorcery?

The plant is witch hazel, especially the North American shrub Hamamelis virginiana, whose leaves and bark have long been boiled into decoctions and distilled into extracts used as topical astringents for skin irritation, minor wounds, and hemorrhoids. The English name combines witch from Middle English wiche (Old English wice, “pliant, bendable”) with hazel for its hazel‑like leaves and flexible branches, and is etymologically unrelated to witchcraft.

In medicine and chemistry, an astringent is a substance that causes tissues to contract or shrink, thereby helping to reduce secretions, bleeding, or swelling when applied to skin or mucous membranes. A decoction is a concentrated extract made by simmering tougher plant parts like bark, roots, or woody stems in boiling water to draw out their soluble compounds, a technique widely used in herbal medicine.

Connections

  • Ethnobotanical sources note that many Native American nations used witch hazel: decoctions of stems, bark, or leaves treated swellings, inflammations, sore muscles, and respiratory complaints, knowledge that European settlers adopted and eventually commercialized.

  • In the United States, witch‑hazel water is regulated as an over‑the‑counter astringent for minor skin irritations, and witch hazel is the active ingredient in numerous medicated cooling pads and hemorrhoid treatments marketed by major drug and retail brands.

  • The “witch” in witch hazel was likely reinforced by folk use of its forked twigs as dowsing or divining rods—similar to hazel rods in England—showing how language, folk practice, and plant morphology all contributed to the plant’s modern name.

  • In 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned a manufacturer of witch‑hazel–containing skincare products for making unsubstantiated health claims, illustrating how traditional herbal remedies intersect with modern regulatory standards for safety and efficacy.

Sources

Question 6: Queen Victoria and the White Wedding Dress

Q6. LIFESTYLE - Who is widely credited with establishing the tradition of the white wedding dress when she wore one at her enormous 1840 wedding (before then, European brides commonly married in dresses of many different colors)? The marriage ended with her husband’s death, attributed to typhoid fever, in December 1861.

The answer is Queen Victoria, who married Prince Albert of Saxe‑Coburg and Gotha on 10 February 1840 at the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace, wearing an ivory‑white satin gown trimmed with a deep flounce of Honiton lace based on an old design. Her choice to wear white—departing from earlier royal customs of metallic or richly colored court dress—is widely credited with popularizing the white wedding dress among Western elites and, over time, making white the expected bridal color. Prince Albert died on 14 December 1861 at Windsor Castle; contemporaries diagnosed typhoid fever, though some modern medical historians have suggested alternative causes.

Typhoid fever is a life‑threatening systemic infection caused by the bacterium Salmonella enterica serotype Typhi, usually acquired by ingesting food or water contaminated with human feces; before modern sanitation and antibiotics it was a common cause of death even among wealthy European families.

Connections

  • Victoria’s wedding dress was widely reproduced in engravings and fashion plates, and historians note that its white satin and Honiton lace helped associate white with bridal purity and social status at a time when a costly, easily soiled white gown signaled wealth.

  • She was not the first bride to wear white—royal women such as Philippa of England and Mary, Queen of Scots had done so centuries earlier—but Victoria’s status and the reach of 19th‑century print culture made her gown uniquely influential and turned white into a bridal norm.

  • Ironically, white also had associations with mourning in some European contexts, and Victoria herself became synonymous with elaborate mourning customs by wearing black after Albert’s death—showing how her personal clothing choices shaped both wedding and mourning fashions.

  • Costume historians point out that the modern, one‑time‑use white wedding gown is relatively recent: many 19th‑century brides still married in their best colored dresses, and the mass‑market white wedding dress became truly ubiquitous only with 20th‑century consumer culture and the rise of bridal fashion industries.

Sources