CF = Crosley Field
The home of the Cincinnati Reds for 59 years was the first ballpark in which a night game was ever played. President Franklin D Roosevelt threw the switch to turn on the lights for a baseball game in 1935, ushering in an era in which daytime games became rare.
CG - Carbon group. The group of elements that includes carbon ©, silicon (Si), germanium (Ge), tin (Sn), lead (Pb), and flerovium (Fl). All life depends on molecules including carbon. SF writers have speculated about silicon-based life forms: I wonder what flerovium-based life forms would look like.
CH = Clever Hans, a trotting horse that was claimed to be able to perform arithmetic and other intellectual tasks. It was determined by psychologist Oskar Pfungst that the horse wasn’t actually doing those tasks, but was working from the reactions of the people watching him.
CI = Christmas Island. This Indian Ocean island was named by Captain William Mynors on Christmas Day, 1643. No human lived there in 1643, but the Australian territory now has about 2000 residents. Much of the land is a National Park with many rare plant and animal species. Sadly, several rare Christmas Island species are now extinct. The Island was fought over and bombed during WWII for its potential for phosphate mining.
CJ - Calamity Jane- While much of what Martha Jane Canary or Cannary, better known as Calamity Jane claimed to have witnessed, or participated in, cannot be proved, it is known she was illiterate, an itinerant alcoholic and occasional prostitute.
CK = Claire Kirkland-Casgrain was the first woman elected to the Legislative Assembly of Quebec (1961), the first woman appointed a Cabinet minister in Quebec, the first woman appointed acting premier, and the first woman judge to serve in the Quebec Provincial Court.
CL = Crowley, Louisiana, “The Rice Capital of America”,known for its annual International Rice Festival, occupies an area of just 4.9 square miles.
CM - Cape May diamonds are actually pieces of quartz washed down, and worn smooth in the process, from the upper Delaware River, and are sometimes incorrectly described as river-smoothed glass discarded by the New Jersey’s once-thriving glass manufacturing industry The Native American Kechemeche tribe resided in what is now the southern portion of Cape May County, New Jersey and vVarious sources attribute them with being the first to find Cape May diamonds and then using them as gifts or for trading with other tribes and with the newly arriving European colonists.
CN - Canadian National, the largest railway company in Canada and the namesake of Toronto’s CN Tower, which they built.
CO = Collared Owlet
The Collared Owlet, common from Afghanistan to Taiwan, is the smallest owl in Asia, measuring only 6 inches in length.
CP = Christopher Plummer, film and TV actor, best remembered as Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music, regrets having turned down the role of Gandalf in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings.
CQ = California Quadrangle
The California Quadrangle is a group of historic structures located in Balboa Park in San Diego. They were built for the 1915–16 Panama-California Exposition, and now house the San Diego Museum of Man.
CR = California Raisins, a Claymation musical group known from TV commercials and an Emmy award-winning Christmas special. The only fictional raisin group to have a hit on the Billboard Hot 100 (I Heard It Through The Grapevine).
CS = Coral Snake
Coral snakes are the most venomous snake in the United States. Bites from a coral snake on humans in this country are rare, only about 15 a year. Unlike pit vipers, the coral snake bites… and does not let go. “Red next to yellow will kill a fellow, red next to black is a friend of Jack.” Other multi-colored banded snakes may look like coral snakes, so beware of red next to yellow.
CD = Citroen DS
The Citroen DS was one of the mot iconic cars in automotive history, not just for its styling, but also innovative technology. The DS was in production from 1955-75, and finished third in the Car Of The Centiry polling, behind Model T Ford and Mini, and ahead of VW Beetle. The name DS was a pun, on the French word for “goddess” (“Déesse”), which is pronounced the same as the letters DS.
CE = Con Ed (Consolidated Edison, Inc.), energy producer. A former Con Edison building on West 53rd Street in Manhattan was converted first into the studio for the television game show Let’s Make a Deal, and later into a recording studio called “The Power Station” because of its Edison history. In 1996, the studio was renamed Avatar Studios.
CT = Correct Twosome
CT follows CS, not CD.
CU- country singer Carrie Underwood, who first came to prominence as a contestant on “American Idol,” used to date Tony Romo, the Dallas Cowboys’ newly retired quarterback
CV - Castlemaine, Victoria. A city in central Victoria which was one of the centres of the gold rush in Victoria in the 1850s. The corvette HMAS Castlemaine was named after the city: it served in the Second World War and is now a museum ship.
CW = Connie Willis, Sci-Fi author, whose To Say Nothing Of The Dog was inspired by Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome. In it a team of overworked time travelers work feverishly to recover a Bishop’s Bird Stump. It’s hilarious. Other works by her are generally more serious in tone.