And the Village.
2021 is the 100th anniversary of the West Virginia Mines War. I heard about it on NPR today. Some say as many as a million rounds were fired between the miners and law enforcement at the siege of Blair Mountain corroborating source
From August 20, 1921, miners began rallying at Lens Creek, approximately ten miles south of West Virginia state capital of Charleston. Estimates of total numbers vary, but on August 24, between 5,000 and 20,000 miners began marching from Lens Creek into Logan County, West Virginia.[3][8] Many of the miners were armed, and some acquired weapons and ammunition from the towns along the march’s path.
Logan County Sheriff Don Chafin had assembled a fighting force of approximately 2,000 county police, state police, state militia, and Baldwin-Felts agents to stop the approaching miners in the mountain range surrounding Logan County. On August 25, the miners began arriving in the mountains surrounding Logan, and fighting began between the two forces. Though Sheriff Chafin commanded fewer men, they were equipped with machine guns and rented aircraft, from which they dropped rudimentary bombs on the attacking miners.[3]
First time I see Nacogdoches mentioned in the wild.
I have very fond memories of my time there during grad school.
The Jetsons took place in the 2060s and according to canon, George Jetson was born in August of 2022. That means that George’s mother is probably now newly pregnant. George’s parents and Mr. Spacely are Millennials.
This somehow feels incredibly profound.
I wonder if George was conceived on Thanksgiving.
I posted that on Facebook a few weeks ago.
For the past few years (at least), there has been a write-in petition to get the NFL to book heavy metal shock rockers Gwar to perform at the Super Bowl Halftime Show.
I myself have signed this petition yearly.
Paducah: a city in westernmost Kentucky, named after a Yiddish euphemism for the buttocks (or at least it sounds like one).
I posted this yesterday in the newly resurrected thread about favourite trivia, I may as well post it here while I wonder what the difference between an interesting random fact and a favourite trivia is:
George Bernard Shaw was the first to win both a Nobel Price (1925, for literature) and an Academy Award (for the screenplay for a filmed version of Pygmalion in 1938). He described his award for “best-written screenplay” as an insult, coming from an Academy he loathed. He further refused all state honours, including the Order of Merit in 1946.
He was probably also pissed because they changed the ending of the story. I doubt if spoilers are needed this late in the game, but if not, duck out now.
In Shaw’s original play, Eliza Higgins marries the sophomoric Freddy, to Professor Doolittle’s dismay and amusement. Shaw even wrote a lengthy post-script to the published version of the play explaining what happened afterwards. (Show wrote a lot of lengthy prologues to the published versions of his plays. This is the only case I know of a lengthy epilogue).
When they made the movie version of Pygmalion (1938), they changed the ending so that Eliza comes back to Higgins. I don’t know who was responsible – three screenwriters are credited – W.P. Lipscomb, Cecil Lewis, and Ian Dalrymple. Anatole de Grunwald and Kay Walsh also contributed. But, of course, the director ought to get some of the blame. Anthony Asquith’s name is on the film, but Wikipedia also credits the star, Leslie Howard, with some direction.
Lerner and Loewe adapted the musical My Fair Lady from Pygmalion, apparently from the movie script rather than directly from Shaw’s play, and kept the changed ending. In the published edition of the play, Alan Jay Lerner adds a note saying that he changed the ending because he didn’t think that Shaw was right. He didn’t mention that someone else had changed the ending before him.
Shaw himself wrote a script and scenario for a possible motion picture to be made from his play, and it differs from both the 1938 film and any version of My Fair Lady. It’s possible that Shaw was mad because they chose to ignore his clear indications and intentions.
Paul Soles, the first man to play The Hulk, Spider-Man, and Hawkeye died earlier this year at the age of 90. He’s also the only man to play those all three of those superheroes. . . and Rudolph’s pal Hermey the Elf.
When completed, the Washington Monument was the World’s Tallest Building, soon to be surpassed by the Eiffel Tower.
Don’t forget Max the 2000-Year-Old Mouse! Every Canadian of a certain age remembers this educational filler between Saturday morning cartoons.
If you constructed a cylinder that could contain the Eiffel Tower, the air inside the cylinder would weigh more than the tower.
And before that, it was the Cologne Cathedral, which took almost 600 years to be finished until 1880. The cathedral took the honor of tallest building from the Great Pyramid of Giza. So it took about 4300 years to build a higher building than Khufu’s pyramid.
Tomb…
Womb…
Clearly Bomb SHOULD be pronounced BOOM!
(You know I’m right!)
There were other taller structures between the Pyramid and Cologne - such as London’s Old St Paul’s (lost in the fire of 1666), and a couple of others which lost their spires or burned down. (it also depends on how the Pyramid height was/is measured, due to erosion) https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Timeline-of-Tallest-Structures-in-History.html
What about comb?
Or wombat?
Or tomboy?
“comb,” so spelled, is pronounced “coom” in some place-names (Combe - Wikipedia).
And the cute and fuzzy “wombat” is pronounced wom-bat so that people don’t confuse it with the rare and terrifying parasitic womb-bat. You thought covid was bad…
A young lady was eating lunch alone at a restaurant and couldn’t help overhearing a discussion among four men at a neighboring table.
Said the first man, “Just spell it the simplest possible way: W-O-O-M.”
“There’s a B in it, you dope,” said the second. “It’s spelled W-O-O-M-B.”
“You don’t have enough letters,” objected the third. “I think it ought to be spelled W-O-O-O-M-M-B.”
“Nonsense,” said the fourth. “It’s ridiculous to put in all those letters. Besides, there’s a final R. It’s W-O-M-B-R-R.”
The young lady could stand it no more. Having finished her meal, she approached the other table and said, “Gentlemen, if you’ll consult the dictionary, you’ll find that the word is spelled W-O-M-B. That’s all.” And she walked away.
The men gazed after her with astonishment.
“Do you suppose she’s right?” asked one.
“How can she be?” said a second. “A slip of a girl like that! I’m sure that never in her whole life has she heard an elephant fart!”
I seem to have stumbled into a Gallagher skit.
