“Salve a ti, Nicaragua” (“Hail to thee, Nicaragua”) is the national anthem of Nicaragua. It was officially adopted in August 1971 with its current lyrics, but its tune dates back to the 18th century.
Cloverine Salve was a 1920s s product that once had as many as 300,000 children rrecruited to sell their product door-to-door.
The Fuller Brush Company, which sells household products and personal care products, sold its products exclusively through a network of door-to-door salesmen (and saleswomen) for many years – these salespersons became known as “Fuller Brush Men,” and were an archetype of door-to-door sales agents in the U.S.
Red Skelton played a Fuller Brush Man in a 1948 comedy film of the same name, and a number of famous people worked as Fuller Brush Men at one point, including minister Billy Graham, author Clifford Irving, and actor Paul Reubens (a.k.a. Pee-wee Herman).
The Brush Beetdiggers have won several Colorado state high school football championshis. The mascot refers to sugar beets, the chief crop in the prairies around Brush.
Russia leads the world in sugar beet production, followed by France and the United States. In the US, the largest region for sugar beet production is the Red River Valley of western Minnesota and eastern North Dakota. Minnesota and North Dakota rank #1 and #2 among US states in sugar beet production.
The juice remaining after processing the beets for their sugar, when combined with ordinary road salt (which creates brine), has been found to be an effective way of melting ice and preventing slippery roads in winter. Not only does it reduce the amount of salt required to clear the same amount of road surface, the resulting mixture is less corrosive to vehicles than pure salt brine alone.
-“BB”-
“Sea-Monkeys” are a trade name for a species of brine shrimp (genus Artemia) which have been sold as novelty aquarium pets since the 1950s. Brine shrimp, which live in saltwater lakes, are able to undergo cryptobiosis (a process in which their metabolic functions stop, in this case due to desiccation, but can be restarted at a later date). “Sea-Monkeys” are sold to consumers in their dessicated state, but are then revivified when placed in water.
Mono Lake, in east-central California, is an endorheic lake. Water flows in but does not drain out. It therefore has high salinity, and brine shrimp thrive in its waters. Because of the many brine shrimp, Mono Lake is a popular stop for migratory birds. American avocets, killdeer, sandpipers, eared grebes, phalaropes, California gulls, snowy plovers, and Audubon’s warblers are among the many birds that rely on Mono Lake.
The western Audubon’s warbler and the eastern Myrtle warbler are two subspecies of what is now known (since 1973) as the Yellow-rumped warbler, probably the most common American warbler. Dismissively known to birders as “butter-butts”.
The National Audubon Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to conservation of birds and their habitat. It was incorporated in 1905 and its current headquarters are in New York City. The society has nearly 500 local chapters, each of which is an independent non-profit organization voluntarily affiliated with the national society.
Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, with over 1,300 employees, 18,000 volunteers and more than a million members (including 195,000 youth members), is the largest wildlife conservation charity in Europe. (From what I could find, the Audubon society has 600,000 members)
It originated with two women’s groups in 1889; who campaigned against the fashion of the time for women to wear exotic feathers in hats. The groups joined forces in 1891.
Uganda, a country of about 93,000 sqmi, has just under 1100 known species of birds. The United States, a country of nearly 4 million sqmi, has about 1600 species. There is really no need for an alarm clock in Kampala, as the cacophony at sunrise is impossible to sleep through.
The US has barely half that many species. Nobody in record has ever seen 800 in one year. Any claim anywhere near 1600 would include hundreds of species not seen in decades, some seen only once as exotic accidentals. A life list of 850 in North America would make you a well-known celebbrity in birding circles.
In AD 800 Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III. In AD 850 Charlemagne’s grandson Louis II was crowned co-Emperor of the Middle Frankish Empire by Pope Leo IV
The internet begs to differ.
Leo Durocher, Manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, was suspended from baseball in 1947 by Commissioner Albert ‘Happy’ Chandler for association with known gamblers. He returned to managing in 1948.
The saying “nice guys finish last” is attributed to Leo “Lippy” Durocher.
~Max
The saying “I’ve never wished anyone dead, but I’ve read some obituaries with a great deal of satisfaction” is usually attributed to the noted American trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, but he did not take credit for it. A fictionalized version of Darrow, called Drummond, appeared in the play and later movie Inherit the Wind, based on the Scopes Monkey Trial.
On the seventh day of the Scopes Monkey trial, defense attorney Clarence Darrow called William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the prosecution, to the stand as a witness. On that day, because of the stifling heat and the number of spectators jammed into the courtroom, judge John T. Raulston moved the proceedings to the lawn of the courthouse.
The TV show, Daktari, which ran from 1965-1969, was based upon the 1965 film Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion The lion in the show, also known as Clarence and having crossed eyes, died while on tour in 1969.