In Canada the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction over “Naturalization and Aliens”. Parliament and the provinces share jurisdiction over immigration.
The United States is the most popular destination for immigrants by a wide margin. There are an estimated 51 million immigrants residing in the US, which is about 19% of the world’s migrant population. The next country is Germany, which has 13 million immigrants, just less than 5% of the total number of migrants. Saudi Arabia also has about 13 million immigrants; Russia has 12 million, and the UK has 10 million.
The national flags of the United States, Russia and the United Kingdom are all red, white and blue.
Red giants are stars that have exhausted the supply of hydrogen in their cores and switched to thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen in a shell that surrounds its core. They have radii tens to hundreds of times larger than that of the Sun . However, their outer envelope is much lower in temperature, giving them an orange hue. Despite the lower energy density of their envelope, red giants are many times more luminous than the Sun due to their large size.
Hydrogen is the lightest element in the periodic table, and it is the most abundant chemical substance in the universe.
British author and screenwriter Douglas Adams was best-known for his The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series of comedy science fiction stories, which were published as novels, as well as radio plays, a TV series, and a movie.
The original three novels in the series: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and Life, the Universe, and Everything, were referred to as the “Hitchhiker’s Trilogy” – however, Adams published two addtional novels (and a sixth and final one was written and published after his death), leading those novels, and reprints of the original three, to be humorously labeled as part of “the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker’s Triology.”
The Hitchhiker Program was a NASA program established in 1984 and administered by the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). The program was designed to allow low-cost and quick reactive experiments to be placed on board the Space Shuttle. The program was discontinued after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.
HitchBot was a Canadian robot programmed to hitchhike. It won international attention after hiking across Canada, Germany and the Netherlands after 2013. Attempting to hitchhike across the US, it was stripped and decaptitated in Philadelphia in 2015. It was wearing a Patriots jersey. No, it wasn’t.
Just one year after hitchBOT’s journey came to a premature end in Philadelphia, Hillary Clinton accepted her party’s nomination for President at the Democratic National Convention in that city. She was defeated later that year by Donald Trump, Republican of New York.
I am not suggesting cause and effect.
A child believed to be the smallest premature baby to ever survive was born in December 2018. “Baby Saybie” (her family did not want her real name revealed) was born at 23 weeks in San Diego, weighing just 8.6 ounces, less than 1/10 of the average baby weight.
“Saybie” was about 7 grams lighter than the previous surviving smallest baby, who was born in 2015 after 25 weeks of gestation in Germany. She spent 5 months in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) at a hospital in San Diego, CA, and was sent home, healthy and weighing a little over 5 lbs, in May 2019.
George Conner was a 4-time Pro-bowl selection, one if the biggest players in the NFL (6’3", 240) with the Chicago Bears in the 1950s. He was not expected to survive his 3-pound per-maturre birth weight.
Cam Newton, NFL quarterback now playing for the New England Patriots, is 6’5" tall and weighs 250 pounds.
In 2018, the average offensive lineman in the NFL was 6’5" tall and weighed 314 pounds.
Patriots’ Day is a holiday which is observed on the third Monday in April in five states (Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, Wisconsin, and North Dakota). It is held in observance of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, and the Battle of Menotomy, which were the first battles of the American Revolutionary War. The Boston Marathon race is traditionally held on Patriots’ Day.
Theodore Roosevelt lived in North Dakota from 1884-1887 for health reasons. He fell in love with the West and wrote a book titled Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail before becoming the US president. The book was illustrated by famous Western artist Frederick Remington.
A World’s Largest Buffalo monument is in Jamestown ND, which is about midway between Bismarck and Fargo. Named Dakota Thunder and finished in 1959, the buffalo is 46 feet long, weighs 60 tons, and is 26 feet tall.
The buffalo stands next to Jamestown’s I-94 exit, but for some reason it was built with its butt facing the interstate.
The World’s Largest Bull is named Albert and is located in the town of Audubon, Iowa, population 2100. Completed in 1964, Albert is a replica of a Hereford bull, weighing 45 tons. He stands 30 feet tall and is 33 feet long. Albert was constructed with a steel frame (the steel was salvaged from Iowa windmills) and a concrete skin.
Albert’s large gonads are often used as a canvas, sometimes by rival high schools.
William Fries, better known as C.W. McCall (of 1976’s “Convoy” fame), was originally from Audubon, IA. He subsequently recorded and released six albums, one of which featured a song entitled “Audobon” that purportedly told the story of his boyhood in that western Iowa town.
-“BB”-
Thomas Jefferson is generally credited with introducing the French fry to America; and in his case the fries were definitely French (the origin of the fry is disputed between Spain, France and Belgium), Jefferson having encountered them while serving as American Minister to France from 1784 to 1789.
McCain Foods is a privately-held frozen food company, founded (and still headquartered) in the small Canadian town of Florenceville-Bristol, New Brunswick. McCain is the world’s largest producer of frozen French fries and other frozen potato products.
Florenceville, New Brunswick, is one of the few places in North America named after a non-royal woman. After the Crimean war, Buttermilk Flats was renamed in honor of Florence Nightingale.