Andy Warhol began his life as an artist making Ukrainian Easter eggs with his mother.
[The late] Ukrainian-American singer Kvitka ‘Kasey’ Cisyk’ performed the singing for Didi Conn in the classic movie “You Light Up My Life.” Her version went nowhere, but Debbie Boone’s cover held #1 on Billboard for 10 weeks in 1977-1978.
I bought my wife a set of four of these type of eggs, although they were Xmas ornaments rather than for Easter. They were all different but were all a bird theme. Fantastic detail on them. They were spendy and I did actually get them from a lady in Ukraine.
There is, as of today (March 11 2022) an octopus named after Joe Biden.
No, not an octopus named “Joe”. This is the scientific name of a fossil creature – Syllipsimopodi bideni
In grade school (1974-82) they taught us Thomas Jefferson would never have approved of his monument in DC. I guess he was against all hero worship. He even got angry when people discovered his birth date (grade school, again).
And on the subject of our Founding Fathers, you know George Washington almost became our king. But then he famously (and reportedly with tears in his eyes), simply resigned his commission at the end of the American Revolution.
Yeah, and American Revolution. That reminds me of a few things. It is odd, what other names, the losing or opposing side, gives to wars. In the UK to this day, the ‘American Revolution’ is simply the War of Independence. Even in the South, the American Civil War is simply the War Between the States. Interesting.
On July 11, 1897, three Swedes drifted away in a hydrogen-filled balloon. Their goal was to reach the North Pole. They never returned.
For many years, no one knew what happened to them.
Their camp was finally discovered 33 years later, along with their bodies, journal, and a camera. It was then determined that their balloon had crash, but they did not die from the crash: they survived for weeks by hunting and eating polar bears and seals. And then eventually died.
Like most pitchers, Perry was not renowned for his hitting ability, and in his sophomore season of 1963, his manager Alvin Dark is said to have joked, “There would be a man on the moon before Gaylord Perry would hit a home run.”[14] There are other variants on the story, but either way, on July 20, 1969, just an hour after the Apollo 11 spacecraft carrying Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon, Perry hit the first home run of his career.[15]
Ace Books published a paperback version of the first two books in the Foundation Trilogy in 1955 but not the third book.
Avon Books published a paperback version of the third book in the Foundation Trilogy in 1958 but not the first two.
The complete trilogy wasn’t available in paperback until 1964-1965, when Avon finally got its act together. But since they were released several months apart, it’s hard to know how many people were able to find all three.
A while back, blueberries replaced peaches as the most-produced fruit by weight in Georgia. That seemed really off to me with all the watermelons grown down here which outweigh the peaches and blueberries together by far. I found out watermelons are legally vegetables in Georgia. I emailed the state commissioner of agriculture about it- he replied “It’s complicated.”
I have never like the term “Revolutionary War,” since (IMO) it wasn’t a revolution. We didn’t sail to England to overthrow the king. We simply wanting nothing to do with it; we wanted to be independent of it.
I don’t know if this is ‘stumbled across’ as I’ve been a fan for decades, but it occurred to me yesterday that, from the age of seven until seventeen, Mozart may have been the most traveled person in Europe for that age. As in, when he was seven in 1762, there were no seven year olds traving more than Wolfgang that year. When he was eight, he likely put more miles under his belt than any other 8yo that year.
And so on for at least a half a decade, possibly more.
Ok. This might be of interest only to me. 
I’ll try better next time.
Of interest for urban explorers: in 2013, Google sent an employee to Hashima Island with a Street View backpack. It’s rather fascinating. (I would post a direct link to Google maps, but I’m not sure how to do it.)
You can just paste the Google Maps link.
I agree. It’s like France said, “Hold my beer; I’ll show you what a real revolution is!”
One I’ll fairly readily believe, and another I’m not so sure of.
Shoreham Airport (AKA Brighton City Airport), on the south coast of England, claims to be Britain’s oldest airport. I’ll buy that.
It also claims to be “the first purpose-built commercial airport in the world”. That I’m not so sure about.
(They’re definitely right about the Art Deco terminal, though.)
j
It’s somewhat jingoistically called the Revolutionary War because the colonials threw off the authority of the British monarchy (although really it was Parliament that was responsible for most of the colonials’ grievances), and some years later established a national republic under the 1787 constitution, one of the earliest in modern times. It wasn’t an internal revolution but it was something of a progressive movement established by armed force.
Not the only time paperback companies have done weird things like this.
Roger Sherman Hoar, grandson of a US Attornet General and himself a Massachusetts State SEnator, wrote a seies of “planetary romances” in the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and published mercifully under a pseudonym, Ralph Milne Farley. For years I only saw the second and third of these, The Radio Beasts and The Radio Planet, which Ace, always on the lookout for cheap old SF, published in paperback in 1964 and republished in 1976, But the story seemed to pick up in media res , and it wasn’t until years later that I learned there had been a first volume, The Radio Man, which Avon had published in 1954 under the title An Earthman on Venus, but which Ace had never published. And Avon hadn’t published the second and third volume. I finally got a reprint of the book in 2005 when Pulpville Press published it, with the original Avon cover.
So I’ve always wondered why Ace never reprinted the first book.
All of these, of course, weren’t original publications – these stories were all originally published in the pulp magazine Argosy back in the 1920s. In fact, there were seven more novels serialized up until 1932, but which weren’t republished in most cases until the current century. I haven’t been interested enough to read them, though.
I have a copy of The Radio Man, which I picked up because I’m trying for one of the weirdest possible collections: a full set of the Fantasy Publishing Company, Inc. (FPIC) trade paperbacks. FPCI was a late 40s small press that published mostly early Golden Age sf, but also bound extra copies to release more cheaply without hardcovers. I have them all except for a couple by L. Ron Hubbard, which are unfindable at any price. But, hey, an uncompletable collection means you don’t have to find a new hobby.
Also I know a quick and easy magic trick that anyone can do (if you fancy yourself an amateur magician 
).
It involves a Moebius loop. Simply take a long cloth ribbon. (You could just use paper and a short ribbon. But both these factors help you conceal the trick 
.) Give it a half turn, then connect the ends. Sewing them together or using fabric glue would work. When I make Moebius loops, I just use two staples. Works the exact same.
Then cut the loop right down the middle, and amaze your audience by then creating just a longer loop.
You might want to conceal the half twist in your hand. Plus as I said the longer loop and flexible material may help too.
Plus you can use your own cheap scraps lying around the house. Why go thru the trouble of going to a magic store (especially if you’re not a professional )?
… and if you cut it again you get two interlocking loops.