A second post in this thread about the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti!
Inspired by the find of a drawing by him in a local National Trust property, I read his wiki.
Rossetti was fascinated with wombats, asking friends to meet him at the “Wombat’s Lair” at the London Zoo in Regent’s Park, and spending hours there. In September 1869, he acquired the first of two pet wombats, which he named “Top”. It was brought to the dinner table and allowed to sleep in the large centrepiece during meals. Rossetti’s fascination with exotic animals continued throughout his life, culminating in the purchase of a llama and a toucan, which he dressed in a cowboy hat and trained to ride the llama round the dining-table for his amusement.
On my way to looking up something else I learned that collard greens are called that because it’s a “worn down” version of colewort, as in “cole” = cabbage (as in cole slaw) and “wort” = “plant” (as in St. John’s wort)
The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964) and Castle Keep (1969) are certainly among a very tiny number – possibly the only examples - of movies which feature two cyclops each.
That’s awesome. How about The Mountain and the dragons - are they characters or weapons? If The Mountain is a character, I feel that “violence” should be a weapon.
And as far as the GOT game, all i’ve been able to learn is that it’s a two-sided board. Here’s a review (which I have not watched). Clue: Game Of Thrones — Rules of Play
After the Uberlingen midair collision involving a DHL plane and Bashkirian Airlines Flight claimed the life of his wife and two children (71 total deaths), architect Vitaly Kaloyev held air traffic controller Peter Nielsen responsible. So he murdered him, stabbing him to death.
in 2005, he was sentenced to eight years for manslaughter. However, his sentence was later reduced after a Swiss judge ruled that he had acted with diminished responsibility.[33]
He was released in November 2007, having spent less than four years in prison, because his mental condition was not sufficiently considered in the initial sentence. In January 2008, he was appointed deputy construction minister of North Ossetia. Kaloyev was treated as a hero back home, and expressed no regret for his actions, instead blaming the murder victim for his own death.[33] In 2016, Kaloyev was awarded the highest state medal by the government, the medal “To the Glory of Ossetia”.[23] The medal is awarded for the highest achievements, improving the living conditions of the inhabitants of the region, educating the younger generation, and maintaining law and order.[34]
At post 1341 in this thread, a conversation about naming gritters started (culminating with a vehicle called Gritter Thunberg, which is why I looked her up in passing - hence my earlier post).
What I didn’t know until today is that refuse trucks (“Bin Lorries” in the UK) are also named by certain UK local authorities. It started in 2018 (or possibly earlier) and so may predate the naming of gritters. We found out about the names because we drove past Bin Crosby, one of the trucks operated by Reigate and Banstead (link lists all their trucks’ names and has a photo).
According to this video (free if you have Prime), some of the dead from the crash were taken to a morgue and guarded because their bodies were worth $1M (it turns out they were drug mules who had ingested balloons with cocaine and the police were afraid the cartels would steal the bodies).
Perhaps this tipped off the authorities (from the article at top):
Two male passengers were arrested at North Shore Hospital after a nurse informed police that 46-year-old Antonio Zuluaga had swallowed containers filled with cocaine. Zuluaga, who had a fractured spine, broken ribs, and a dislocated hip, was the second passenger to be found in possession of cocaine packages, after doctors operating on Jose Figueroa on the day after the crash to stop internal bleeding had also discovered packets of cocaine.
English surnames can tell you a lot about a person’s ancestry.
First some meanings of some prefixes and suffixes. Cald means ‘cold’. Lang means ‘long’. Brad means ‘broad’. Lee (or ‘-ly’, ‘-ley’, ‘-lea’, etc.) means ‘meadow’. And I once read somewhere ‘-ing’ is a patronymical suffix (try saying that after three drinks).
So Caldwell means ‘cold well’ (Aren’t all wells cold? I digress.) Bradford means ‘broad ford’ (a ford is a shallow crossing in a stream that can be easily traversed—just think of the Scandinavian fjord). Langley means ‘long meadow’.
George Washington apparently had an ancestor who lived by a stream (that is the meaning of wash BTW).
But I can’t get over Oxford. It is one of the preeëminent universities in the world. And its name literally means a passing in the stream where people used to take their oxen through.
BTW speaking of Oxford, did you know that the adjectival form of Oxford is ‘Oxonian’? It’s derived from the Latin word for Oxford, ‘Oxonia’. There is an Oxford in Michigan where I live. Is that the proper adjectival form for it too? (I’m still wondering if people from Troy, Michigan are really Trojans .)
The relationship between these two words is interesting. A fjord is not something easily crossed - quite the opposite, it’s a glacial inlet that passes between steep cliffs (cognate also with firth in English). It appears that the root for both ford and fjord was a word that meant pass through, penetrate. In a ford it is a traveler passing through the water, a shallow crossing; in a fjord it is the water passing between steep cliffs.
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