IN: Bertram "Bertie" Wilberforce Wooster is a recurring fictional character in the comedic Jeeves stories of British author P. G. Wodehouse. A young English gentleman, one of the "idle rich", Bertie appears alongside his valet, Jeeves, whose intelligence manages to save Bertie or one of his friends from numerous awkward situations. As the first-person narrator of ten novels and over 30 short stories, Bertie Wooster ranks as one of the most vivid comic creations in popular literature. Bertie Wooster is the central figure in all but one of Wodehouse's Jeeves short stories and novels, which were published between 1915 and 1974.

Bertie is approximately 24 years old when he first meets Jeeves in "Jeeves Takes Charge". His age is not stated in any other story. In the reference work Wodehouse in Woostershire by Wodehouse scholars Geoffrey Jaggard and Tony Ring, it is speculated that Bertie's age ranges from appproximately 24 to 29 over the course of the stories, excluding Ring for Jeeves. Nigel Cawthorne, author of A Brief Guide to Jeeves and Wooster, also suggested that Bertie is approximately 29 at the end of the saga.  Tall and slim, Bertie is elegantly dressed, largely because of Jeeves. He has blue eyes. Normally clean-shaven, he grows a moustache in two different stories, and ultimately loses the moustache, as Jeeves does not think a moustache suits Bertie. It seems that he has an innocent-looking appearance; when Bertie wants to wear an alpine hat in Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves, he states, "I was prepared to concede that it would have been more suitable for rural wear, but against this had to be set the fact that it unquestionably lent a diablerie to my appearance, and mine is an appearance that needs all the diablerie it can get." Bertie has an expressive face that Jeeves can read easily.  In illustrations, Bertie Wooster has frequently been depicted wearing a monocle. However, this is probably merely a stereotypical depiction of an upper-class gentleman, as Bertie does not seem to wear a monocle in the original stories. The only evidence of Bertie wearing a monocle occurs in "The Spot of Art", when Bertie sees a portrait of himself, wearing a monocle, in a poster advertising soup. Bertie is revolted by the image, which gives him a look of "bestial greed". The monocle seems to exaggerate this expression, and Bertie makes fun of how large the monocle looks, calling it "about six inches in circumference". Bertie is never described as wearing a monocle elsewhere. It is unlikely that Bertie would wear a monocle that would not be mentioned, since the glasses of other characters, particularly Bertie's friend Gussie Fink-Nottle, are well-described, and another prominent Wodehouse character, Psmith, has a distinctive monocle that is mentioned many times.

why did it have such a range?

OUT: excluding Ring for Jeeves. Nigel Cawthorne, author of A Brief Guide to Jeeves and Wooster, also suggested that Bertie is approximately 29 at the end of the saga.


IN: Hedy Lamarr (; born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, November 9, 1914 -  January 19, 2000) was an Austrian-born American film actress and inventor. At the beginning of World War II, Lamarr and composer George Antheil developed a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes, which used spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of jamming by the Axis powers. Although the US Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s, the principles of their work are arguably incorporated into Bluetooth technology, and are similar to methods used in legacy versions of CDMA and Wi-Fi.

On August 10, 1933, Lamarr married Mandl, an Austrian military arms merchant and munitions manufacturer who was reputedly the third-richest man in Austria. She was 18 years old and he was 33. In her autobiography Ecstasy and Me, she described Mandl as an extremely controlling husband who strongly objected to her simulated orgasm scene in Ecstasy and prevented her from pursuing her acting career. She claimed she was kept a virtual prisoner in their castle home, Schloss Schwarzenau.  Mandl had close social and business ties to the fascist government of Italy, selling munitions to Mussolini, and although like Hedy, his own father was Jewish, had ties to the Nazi government of Germany, as well. Lamarr wrote that Mussolini and Hitler attended lavish parties at the Mandl home. Lamarr accompanied Mandl to business meetings, where he conferred with scientists and other professionals involved in military technology. These conferences were her introduction to the field of applied science and nurtured her latent talent in science.  Lamarr's marriage to Mandl eventually became unbearable, and she decided to separate herself from both him and her country. In her autobiography, she wrote that she disguised herself as her maid and fled to Paris, but by other accounts, she persuaded Mandl to let her wear all of her jewelry for a dinner party, then disappeared afterward. She writes about her marriage:  I knew very soon that I could never be an actress while I was his wife.... He was the absolute monarch in his marriage.... I was like a doll. I was like a thing, some object of art which had to be guarded--and imprisoned--having no mind, no life of its own.

Who did he marry?

OUT:
Mandl,