And that if his grandfather hadn’t changed his name when he moved from Sweden to America*, he would have been named Charles Manson.
In “Lindbergh: The Last Hero” by Charles Ross, there is an account of Lindbergh being honored at some ceremony. One of the speakers was very effusive with his praise, calling Lindbergh “one of the finest people who ever lived”, and Lindbergh was observed being very uneasy. The author related the incident to illustrate Lindbergh’s humility and modesty. But since the book was written in 1968, long before anyone knew about all the “Little Lindy’s” in Europe, his reaction may have had a more straightforward explanation. Less Neil Armstrong, more Bill Clinton.
*Ole Lindbergh (ne Manson) was also deserting his wife and seven children when he left Sweden.
I was surprised to learn that Corrie ten Boom was in her 50s when she went into the concentration camps. I had always thought she was in her 20s or 30s.
Civil War General Ulysses Grant was not a regular cigar smoker before the war; however, a picture of him with one of his rare cigars prompted admirers from around the North to send him literally hundreds of cigars, which he felt honor-bound to use. It probably contributed to the throat cancer that led to his death in 1885.
Another thing about Grant; while impoverished near the end of his life, he dictated his memoirs to a neighbor and writer of some note. The memoirs sold so well that they allowed his beloved wife Julia and their children to live a comfortable life afterwards (I have a modern-print of his memoirs). The person who listened to the dictation and saw that they were published? Mark Twain.
Vince Lombardi began his coaching career as an assistant and later as a head coach at St. Cecilia High School in Englewood, New Jersey. I currently live in Englewood, NJ, and I did not know that fact until five minutes ago.
Just so’s you know – Twain wasn’t doing it out of the sheer goodness of his heart. He was trying to become a publisher himself, and was convinced that Grant’s biography would become a best-seller (which it did). He badly misjudged his next book, though, a biography of the Pope that he thought every Catholic would feel compelled to buy.
They didn’t.
Twain’s publishing house eventually failed.
Here’s another fun fact about Twain that I didn’t know until I visited his house in Hartford, Connecticut – Harriet Beecher Stowe was literally his next-door neighbor.
We hoped to do the loop around Maui and see Lindbergh’s grave during our visit back in 2016. However, even though we started early in the day (~7:30 a.m.), because of numerous delays over the course of the drive for various reasons (including a 15-mile backtrack to find a clean bathroom for my wife :rolleyes:), we didn’t get to the Pools of ‘Ohe’o (aka the so-called “Seven Sacred Pools”) until nearly sunset. At that point it got very dark very quickly, and the road got increasingly narrow and gnarly. I’d heard there was an unpaved section on the back side of Maui that it seemed foolish to drive on in the dark (plus there was little point in going that way when we couldn’t see the scenery), so I made a command decision to go back the way we came, over my wife’s objections.
I figured that despite the longer route back, the numerous switchbacks, hairpin turns, one-lane bridges, and the constant rain, we at least knew that the road was paved, and that it was in good condition. Also, there were other drivers present in case of a breakdown, and I’d heard that roadside assistance wouldn’t respond on the backside road. It was a long drive back at night in the rain, taking more than 3 hours. My wife now insists she’ll never take the Road to Hana again. :rolleyes:
I once read a book of Alcott’s short stories that almost convinced me she was reincarnated as Roald Dahl, another author of classic children’s books who also wrote adult horror stories.
And speaking of children’s writers, Beverly Clearly is still alive at 103!!!
Well, you made the right call if it was that late in the day. Easy to understand the delays. there were 3 locations we stopped at were there was some pretty good waves and it was hard to leave those spots. I could watch that kind of stuff for hours at a time. When we got past Hana, the Sun was getting low but we still had enough daylight conditions for about half of that back loop. Just some great scenery especially one part that I would have loved to stop and take the time to enjoy more but at that point the Sun was so low, it was getting to be a real pain to drive. Even with Sun-glasses and the visor down, I was often at a snails pace going up hills with the Sun right on top the hill and couldn’t see anything. Windows down hoping to hear any of those local drivers in time and avoid a head-on. Hardly any traffic compared to the other side though so a bit on my mind about how long it would take to get help if we broke down. I can understand how your wife might be reluctant to do it again. I think all those turns are a lot easier for the driver to handle. My wife and kids are quite the troopers to deal with it with few complaints. I watched a video of a time-lapse of the trip and I was getting pretty woozy after only a few minutes when they got to the twisty portion. If we ever go back, we’ll definitely do the trip in the reverse direction.
I didn’t know about that, but I knew she wrote mysteries – they sold a book of those at Sturbridge village. She also served as a nurse for the Union Army during the Civil War and wrote hospital Sketches about the experience.
I expect that many of you already know this, but Ho Chi Minh, Malcolm X and Emeril Lagasse all worked at the same hotel in Boston (but not at the same time).
Rudyard Kipling, who I had always taken to be a kind of dusty old Empire poster boy (Orwell called him a “jingo imperialist”) was a serious technology buff. In 1902 he installed a hydroelectric generator in the grounds of Bateman’s, his East Sussex home, and ran the household lighting off it.
Lorenzo Da Ponte, who wrote the libretti to Mozart’s operas The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte, later moved to the United States. After briefly running a grocery store in Sudbury, Pennsylvania, he moved to New York City.
One of his friends in New York was Clement Moore (author of “A Visit from St. Nicholas”), who helped him get a job as a professor of Italian literature at Columbia University. Da Ponte lived in New York for the rest of his life, became a naturalized American citizen in 1828, at the age of 79, and died there ten years later.
Florence Nightingale was named after the city she was born in, while her parents were on a three-year honeymoon. So was her older sister, though since this would have led to her being “Naples Nightingale” she ended up as “Parthenope”.
After her time in Crimea, Florence was mostly bedridden from the age of 37 till she died at 90 but this didn’t stop her being a noted campaigner, chiefly by letter, for health and sanitation reform. She was an accomplished mathematician and statistician and invented the polar area pie chart.
A rejected admirer of Florence’s by the name of Sir Henry Verney ended up marrying her sister Parthenope instead. This led to Parthe’s career as an English Civil War historian, since he had the country’s most extensive collection of private correspondence of the era stuffed in his attic, and didn’t know it
