Born on Feb. 29, I presume?
In 1954, Frank Sinatra won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the movie From Here To Eternity. That film received 13 Oscar nominations and won 8, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actress, won by Donna Reed.
From Here to Eternity was a 1951 novel by James Jones, which was widely banned because of its obscene language. It was still a best-selller, an early precursor of the disobedient 60s.
In November 1978, California Congressman Leo J. Ryan was killed by gunmen in Jonestown, Guyana, while on a U.S. fact-finding mission investigating cult leader Rev. Jim Jones and rumors that Bay Area families from his district were being held hostage by Jones and his Peoples Temple cult. Ryan was posthumously awarded a Congressional Gold Medal, as the only member of Congress ever killed in the line of duty.
Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) is a Ray Bradbury novel whose title comes from a line in Macbeth spoken by the witches,
“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”
In the novel one character, The Dust Witch, is killed by a bullet carved with a smile.
Dust Bunnies are small clumps of dust that form under furniture and in corners that are not cleaned regularly. They are made of hair, lint dead skin, spider webs, dust and sometimes light rubbish and debris and are held together by static electricity
The Playboy logo of a bunny wearing a bow tie was created by designer Art Paul, and was first used in the second issue of Playboy Magazine. When asked why a rabbit was chosen as the magazine’s logo, founder Hugh Hefner said that, “The rabbit, the bunny, in America has a sexual meaning; and I chose it because it’s a fresh animal, shy, vivacious, jumping – sexy."
A cropped version of a photograph of Swedish model Lena Forsen, which appeared as the centerfold picture in the November 1972 issue of Playboy magazine, became the de facto “standard test image” for computer image processing.
The test image was renamed “Lenna” (at least in part to reflect how the model herself pronounced her name). In recent years, use of the Lenna image has fallen out of favor, as many see it as emblematic of sexism and gender stereotypes.
A link to the Lenna image (SFW): Lenna - Wikipedia
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She’s groovy!
The restaurants in Ikea stores around the world cumulatively sell one billion Swedish meatballs per year.
IKEA’s sales have jumped dramatically this year, as more people stuck at home redecorate or set up home offices or classrooms.
The letters in IKEA stand for the founder’s initials (Ingvar Kamprad), the initial for the farm he grew up on (Elmtaryd), and the town the farm was in (Agunnaryd, Sweden).
Agunnaryd is about 300 miles SW of Stockholm. Here’s a map: Google Maps.
“Stockholm syndrome” refers to a condition in which hostages develop a psychological and/or emotional alliance with their captors during captivity. The term comes from a 1973 event, in which two criminals took four hostages while attempting to rob a bank in Stockholm, Sweden, and held them hostage for six days; after being released, the hostages spoke in defense of their captors, and refused to testify against them in court.
In 1956, the Italian passenger liner Andrea Doria, inbound to New York, sank after a collision with the Swedish passenger liner Stockholm under foggy conditions off Nantucket. The Andrea Doria remained afloat for almost 11 hours after the collision; that, along with the Italian crew’s calm and efficient handling of the emergency (and the close proximity of other rescue ships) resulted in almost everybody on board the Andrea Doria being saved (the 46 persons who did lose their lives are believed to have died as a direct result of the collision itself). Even so, it remains the worst maritime disaster in American waters since the Eastland tragedy in Lake Michigan in 1915.
The Stockhom remained afloat and made it to port. The damage to her bow was repaired; she is still in service, registered in Portugal as the MV Astoria, and is considered (at 72 years of age) the oldest passenger liner sailing deep-water routes today.
-“BB”-
Sverige, the modern Swedish name of the country, comes from svear, meaning “us”, and rike, meaning kingdom. Sverige means “Our Kingdom”.
Astoria, Oregon, was the first American settlement west of the Rockies. The fort was started by Americans, but territory was under joint US-British control until the 49th parallel was agreed to in 1846
Over 100 smaller mountain ranges comprise the Rocky Mountain mountain range, the longest mountain range in North America. These include the Beartooth Mountains, the Tetons, the Big Horn Mountains, the Front Range, the Wasatch Mountains and the Bitterroot Range. One of the highest, continuous paved roads in the country is the Trail Ridge Road, a 34-mile stretch of US-34 running from Grand Lakes CO in the west, to Estes Park CO in the east.
And that, my friends, ties together @jtur88’s ninja’d post with the previous post.
The bitterroot is a small perennial herb native to western North America. Each year, it bears a single pink to lavender to white flower. Some Native American tribes used the plant as an important supplement to a wild-game diet.
In 1895, Montana adopted the bitterroot as its state flower.
Not in play: the Eastland disaster, mentioned by @Bicycle_Bill, did not actually take place in Lake Michigan; it occurred in the Chicago River, about a mile inland from where the river meets Lake Michigan. The passenger ship capsized while at the dock, while being loaded with passengers who were heading to a company picnic at a resort area in Indiana. Though it was in only about 20 feet of water, many people were trapped below decks, and 848 died. (I used to work in an office building which was across the river from the site of the disaster.)
In play: Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana has two sons, Nate and Nicholas, both of whom also were quarterbacks in college football. Nate played at several schools, including the University of Montana, which led to him having the same name on both the front and the back of his uniform.
Nicholas Ridley, MP, served in Parliament from 1959-1992. Later Baron Ridley of Liddesdale, he was a close advisor to Margaret Thatcher and was closely associated with two of the key failures of her service as Prime Minister - the invasion of the Falkland Islands when negotiations he was leading with Argentina failed, and the introduction of the poll tax, the furor over which eventually helped drive Thatcher from office.