Shakespeare's writings are the source of so many of our common sayings. Brilliant writer and maybe one day we'll find out who he really was, or did he really exist. It seems extraordinary that so much amazing writing was produced by a single person. Maybe it was a "group write" done by performers as they rehearsed his plays.

If not for concrete, which the Romans invented, some of ancient Rome would not have been built at all. They had some amazing architecture. The Colosseum alone, according to Google, is the largest standing amphitheater in the world today.

When I was learning Russian, we were taught that a large portion of Russian is idiomatic and cannot be translated literally. For example, дождь идёт translates literally as "rain takes a walk," but really means "It is raining." This makes learning Russian even that much more difficult than English, not to mention the complex grammar in Russian with multiple declensions and cases for nouns and adjectives (even more than in Latin) and multiple ways of conjugating verbs, not counting all the irregular verbs. We were also taught that most Russians do not speak proper Russian - mainly because it is too difficult. English is much simpler and easier, and still native English speakers often do not speak proper English. It's too bad that Latin is not taught as much in schools as it used to be.

I remember in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, Judas refuses to accept the money given to him for disclosing Christ's location. "I don't want your blood money." I really like that movie for the music and acting, but especially love the way the beginning and end are framed by "real" scenes where the actors arrive and leave. Another wonderful Norman Jewison film.