You are most welcome. evil grin
In play: The Frantics are a Canadian comedy group, which originally formed in 1979. The group had several radio shows and a television show on the CBC in the 1980s. They may be best known for two of their sketches: “Last Will and Temperament” and “Ti Kwan Leep,” both of which were regularly featured on the Dr. Demento radio show, and incorporated the catch phrase “boot to the head.”
Dr. Demento is the on-air name name of deejay Barry Hansen. Hansen, born in 1941 in Minneapolis, created the persona in 1970 while working at an LA radio station. His show went into syndication in 1974, and a weekly online version is still produced today.
On Dec. 7, 1941, delays in decoding a long Japanese Foreign Ministry message sent to the Japanese embassy in Washington, D.C. led to the message being delivered after the sneak attack on the U.S. Navy base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii had already begun. This further inflamed American public opinion against the Japanese government.
My understanding is that the messages they were decoding were not actually the ‘declaration of war’; just a diplomatic communique stating that talks had reached an impasse and notification of this was to be delivered one-half hour before the attack took place (8:00 AM Hawaii time/2:00 PM DC time). The Japanese legation did request a meeting with Secretary of War Henry Stimson — who kept them waiting.
Even if they had been able to deliver it at the prescribed time, it still wasn’t actually a formal declaration of war — merely a long-winded message confirming they were breaking off negotiations — and assuming that the American government would have interpreted it as a preliminary to imminent hostilities, they still would have had no way to put Pearl Harbor or the rest of the US military on a war footing in time to significantly affect the outcome of the attack.
What Japan was doing, basically, was much the same thing the cops or the DEA do when they smash down your door in the middle of night and rush in, guns drawn, in full body armor and tactical gear, screaming “POLICE”, “WE’VE GOT A WARRANT”, and “EVERYBODY ON THE FLOOR”. It satisfies the letter of the law, but not necessarily the spirit or principle of it.
-“BB”-
Good info. This play ties to the last two posts.
Hawaii was the 50th state to join the Union.
Nevada was the 36th state to join the Union. Nevada allows gambling statewide… except for two cities. Boulder City (2010 pop. ≤ 16,000) and Panaca (2010 pop. ≤ 1,000) are the only Nevada cities whose governments specifically outlaw gambling.
Nevada is the only American state to permit prostitution by law, approved by voters and licensed on a county-by-county basis. Prostitution is illegal in the state’s largest county and biggest tourist draw, Clark County, the greater Las Vegas area, but is thought to be most common there. Per Wiki, “Legal prostitution in Nevada grosses about $75 million per year while illegal prostitution in the Las Vegas area grosses about $5 billion per year.”
Prostitution was legalized in Germany in 2002. Since that time, the trade has since exploded into a $16.3 billion a year business, with estimates of over 1 million sex workers.
Sumerian records dating back to ca. 2400 BC are the earliest recorded mention of prostitution as an occupation. These describe a temple-bordello operated by Sumerian priests in the city of Uruk.
Yes, priests. Way to go, men of God.
“Big Nose Kate” (a.k.a. Mary Katherine Horony-Cummings, birth name Mária Izabella Magdolna Horony) was born in Hungary in 1849, and emigrated to the United States with her family at age 11.
As an adult, she often worked as a prostitute, primarily in the West, and was the longtime companion and common-law wife of gunfighter/dentist Doc Holliday. She claimed to have been with Holliday in Tombstone, Arizona for the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
Big nose Kate died in 1940 in Prescott AZ, and she is buried there at Arizona Pioneers Home Cemetery.
John Henry “Doc” Holliday died in 1887 in Glenwood Springs CO, and he is buried there at Pioneer Cemetery.
Wyatt Earp died in 1929 in Los Angeles and is buried in the Hills of Eternity Memorial Park, Colma CA, roughly 400 miles north of LA. That’s about 18 miles from where I’m sitting, at work in my office.
Colma, California became the site for numerous cemeteries after San Francisco outlawed new interments within city limits in 1900, then evicted all existing cemeteries in 1912. Approximately 150,000 bodies were moved between 1920 and 1941 at a cost of $10 per grave and marker. Those for whom no one paid the fee were reburied in mass graves, and the markers were recycled in various San Francisco public works.
With most of Colma’s land dedicated to cemeteries, the population of the dead—about 1.5 million, as of 2006—outnumbers that of the living by a ratio of nearly a thousand to one. This has led to Colma’s being called “the City of the Silent” and has given rise to a humorous motto, now recorded on the city’s website: “It’s great to be alive in Colma”.
Not in play, but a corollary of sorts to the recent Big Nose Kate, Doc Holliday, and Wyatt Earp posts. I am going through some old pictures right now and came across one of Wyatt Earp from Nome, Alaska when I was there. Earp owned one of the bars there and/or ran it for a time. I took this photo in Nome in March 2019.
I couldn’t post it here so I uploaded it to imgur: Picture of a picture of Wyatt Earp in Nome, Alaska. - Album on Imgur.
Play on…
Established in 1848, Calvary Cemetery in Queens, New York, covers 365 acres and is owned by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. With about 3 million burials, it has the largest number of interments of any cemetery in the country.
Musician Josh Homme has been a member of a number of notable bands, including Kyuss (originally called Sons of Kyuss, named after an undead monster in the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game), Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal, and Them Crooked Vultures.
North Amrtica’s two common vulture species look very similar, but significantly differ in feeding, Both are scavengers, but the turkey vulture can smell a carcass from several miles. The black vulture cannot smell well, and watches other scavangers, following them to food. Vultures soar with a shallow V-shaped profile, distinguishing them from the flat wings of raptors.
North Amrtica, like Rivendell, Narnia, Gallifrey and Alderaan, does not actually exist.
The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven fantasy novels by British author C. S. Lewis, first published in the 1950s. The books span the entire history of Narnia, from its creation in The Magician’s Nephew to its eventual destruction in The Last Battle. The books have sold over 100 million copies.
C.S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley and John F. Kennedy all died on Nov. 22, 1963. Huxley’s wife administered LSD to him twice on his deathbed, at his request.
Lake Shore Drive (often abbreviated as LSD by locals) is an expressway which runs along the shore of Lake Michigan in the city of Chicago. Lake Shore Drive is the subject of a 1971 song (of the same name) by Chicago rock band Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah, and has appeared in several films set in the city, including Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Blues Brothers, Risky Business, and My Best Friend’s Wedding.
With her gentie Tennesseee accent, Dinah Shore was one of the first American Southerners to become a super-star. Appearing with Frank Sinatra in 1940, she went with 80 charted hits, through the 50’s when she appeared almost almost weekly on live TV. Crippled at 8 by polio, she lived to celebrate 19 birthdays, every 4 years.