In yesterday’s Impromptus, I had some items concerning Churchill, including one about his mishap in New York: Crossing Fifth Avenue, he was hit by a car, and almost killed. He had been looking the wrong way, as we Americans often do in London. A reader writes, “I remember reading that, if Churchill had been killed by that car in December 1931, and FDR, instead of Mayor Cermak, had been fatally shot in February 1933, history might have turned out to be very different.”

I also had an item on the Oscars — the Oscars and race. There was a headline: “Mo’Nique is 5th black woman to win acting Oscar.” I asked, How long will it make sense to keep counting that way? “10th black woman to win acting Oscar”? “15th”? “30th”? When’s the cut-off? Is this sort of like asking Justice O’Connor to divine when race preferences can end? A reader writes, “Jackie Robinson was the first black man to play major league baseball. When my wife was on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? there was the question, ‘Who was the first black man to play in the American League?’ The answer is Larry Doby of the Cleveland Indians, and that is on the border between interesting and trivial. The fifth black man to play major league baseball? That’s a factoid blessedly lost to history.”

I also mentioned that the word “actress” is disappearing, or becoming verboten, in favor of “actor.” Actresses are routinely called actors. I asked, If “actress” goes completely by the boards, how are the people at the Oscars going to distinguish “Best Actor” and “Best Actress”? “Best Actor, Male” and “Best Actor, Female”? Many readers wrote in to say, Why have a sex difference at all when it comes to the acting awards? There is not a Best Female Director and a Best Male Director.

A crafty point.

In recounting a story about Churchill, I said that I had never heard of a “jujube” — a gelatinous candy. Many, many readers wrote to mock me for this, or, more kindly, to express wonderment. Maybe I had just forgotten. In any case, a man wrote, “I read Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales in high school (50th reunion coming up) and have never forgotten one of the delights listed: ‘moist and many-colored jujubes.’”

A different man said that we should not use the old line about sausages and legislation — you know: You never want to see either being made (for the process is gross). Our reader, who online is DaTechGuy, said that we must not malign sausage-making! And he linked to a video he made of this wholesome process: here.

Finally, I mentioned a license plate, a vanity tag. It was on a tiny car in NYC and said “PARKABLE.” Many readers wrote to recall their favorite vanity tags, spotted over the years. For example, there was the plate on an old, broken-down, sputtering VW van: “OK2PASS.” Tickled me, somehow. (No, that is not an allusion to Congressman Massa.)