Posted by Anne LeVeque on June 25, 1999 at 19:33:09 from 207.197.129.139:
In Reply to: Re: The Big Six/Five posted by Jenna on June 25, 1999 at 19:21:52:
The story so far:
I have been searching for the origins of the phrase "Big Five" and find that it refers to MANY things, some of which I have enumerated below.
The five largest accounting firms in the US.
The five 'big game' animals, usually lions, leopards, elephants, buffalo, and rhinos.
The five corporations that ruled Hawaii economically before statehood.
A group of rides at an amusement park in the UK called Alton Towers.
The five largest Canadian banks.
A college sports league in the US (Pennsylvania?).
A theory of personality (five aspects of personality).
The "Big Five" scandal was the Kim Philby scandal (that one really had me going because Scotland Yard was mentioned, but I realized it was too recent for AR to have used).
The five countries on the UN Security Council who bully everyone else around (at least that's what one would gather from the context).
And the most intriguing, but least likely, was a site at www.geocities.com/Hollywood/3236/index.html, which I think was put together by University of Wisconsin students and seems to be part of some kind of role-playing game. "Big Five Operatives on Assignment. Agents Lehmann and Preston are on assignment in unrelated European locales. Details are classified." Ah, classified details…
Still awaiting word from Scotland Yard. Emailed my friend at the BBC library, and I await her reply also.
Anne LeVeque