In the musical 1776, General George Washington reports by letter to Congress on disciplinary problems with the Continental Army encamped in New Brunswick, New Jersey. There follow these lines:
John Hancock: “Well, Mr. Adams, you’re chairman of the War Committee. Do you feel up to whoring, drinking, deserting, and New Brunswick?”
Rev. John Witherspoon: “There must be some mistake, I have an aunt who lives in New Brunswick.”
John Dickinson: “You must tell her to keep up the good work.”
The small Sierra Nevada town of Jenny Lind, California, is most likely named after the Swedish singer who lived from 1820 to 1887. However, one story of the town’s name says that the braying of pack mules prompted gold miners encamped there to use the singer’s name in sarcastic humor.
Jenny Lind is about 110 miles east of San Francisco: map —
The Sierra Nevada is a mountain range in the western United States. The majority of these mountains are in California, and a smaller portion is in Nevada. The Sierra Nevada, which is about 400 miles long and 70 miles wide, is home to many notable features. These include General Sherman, the world’s largest tree by volume, Lake Tahoe, the largest alpine lake in the US, and Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States. The Sierra is home to three national parks, twenty wilderness areas, and two national monuments.
Major General William T. Sherman, on September 12, 1864, replied to a letter from the mayor and city council of Atlanta, Ga., protesting his order that the city be evacuated before he and his army began what later became known as the March to the Sea. The letter is, I believe, an excellent summary of U.S. war aims and military policy by that point in the Civil War: Letter of William T. Sherman to James M. Calhoun, E.E. Rawson, and S.C. Wells, September 12, 1864 · Civil War Era NC
The M4 Sherman tank was a WWII tank in service from 1942 to 1957. Almost 50,000 of them were built during its run. It had decent speed and mobility, and it was a reliable and durable tank. It is considered to be a medium tank, and it weighed approximately 35-40 short tons.
In most massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), such as World of Warcraft, a player’s character within the game acts in one of three broad roles:
Faith healing is the practice of prayer and gestures (such as laying on of hands) that are believed by some to elicit divine intervention in spiritual and physical healing, especially the Christian practice. Believers assert that the healing of disease and disability can be brought about by religious faith through prayer or other rituals that, according to adherents, can stimulate a divine presence and power. Virtually all scientists and philosophers dismiss faith healing as pseudoscience.
In 986, Pope Stephen VI had one of his predecessors, Pope Formosus, then dead about seven months, dug up and put on trial in the Cadaver Synod. After the dead pope was found guilty on numerous charges, he was found guilty and the three blessing fingers of his right hand were cut off. He was then reburied in layman’s clothes. Not content with this, Pope Stephen had the corpse re-uninterred a second time and cast into the Tiber.
When police were tipped about grave robbers wanting to ransom Abe Lincoln’s body, it was exhumed and re-buried under ten feet of concrete. John Wilkes Booth was also removed from burial at the Washington Arsenal and re-interred at the family cemetery.
After shooting President Abraham Lincoln, assassin John Wilkes Booth shouted, “sic semper tyrannis,” a Latin phrase meaning “thus always to tyrants.” The phrase was said to have been uttered by Marcus Junius Brutus at the assassination of Julius Caesar, though the historian Plutarch disputed this.
The phrase has endured as a rallying cry against tyranny and the abuse of power, and is the motto of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Playing on the names “orange juice” and “Julius Caesar”, a chain of fruit drink outlets called Orange Julius was started in 1920 and now has over 5,000 location, including the Philippines. Not to be outdone, a Phlippine competitor calls itself Orange Brutus.
Dr. J is now 70 years old — Julius Erving was born in 1950. He played in the ABA from 1971 when he was drafted out of UMass Amherst, to 1976 when the ABA merged with the NBA, and then in the NBA from 1976 to 1987 when he retired.
Dr. J helped to make the slam dunk an acceptable shot in pro basketball. Before him, dunking was a practice most commonly used by big men standing close to the hoop to show off their strength. The slam dunk was seen as style over substance, and even unsportsmanlike by many purists of the game. However, Erving utilized the dunk more as a high-percentage shot started by a move farther from the basket and as a way to avoid his shot from being blocked. He showed that a dunk can incorporate great artistry and almost balletic style to slamming the ball into the hoop, particularly when starting his jump from several feet from that target.
YouTube, “Dr. J Top 10 Dunks” (#9 a reverse slam on Kareem, #4 on Dave Cowens, #3 on Bill Walton, and #1 on Magic [well okay, Dr. J is an inch taller than Magic]):
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Erving State Forest is a publicly owned forest with recreational features located north of the Millers River in the towns of Erving, Warwick, and Orange, Massachusetts. The forest’s network of roads and hiking trails were largely created by the Civilian Conservation Corps between 1933 and 1937. They also constructed a beach, campground, picnic area, and new dam.
The Civilian Conservation Corps was probably the most popular of all the New Deal programs. The CCC employed men from ages 17-28 and offered manual labor jobs on government-owned land. Room and board were provided. Wages were 30 bucks a month, of which 25 dollars had to be sent home to the worker’s family.
NIRA, the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, was one of the larger of the New Deal programs. Under NIRA, the PWA and NRA were created (the Public Works Administration and the National Recovery Administration). NIRA was devoted to industrial recovery, established codes of fair competition, guaranteed trade union rights, permitted the regulation of working standards, and regulated the price of certain refined petroleum products and their transportation. NIRA was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935 due to vagueness of the critical term “fair competition” that was nowhere defined in the Act, and because the Act’s delegation of authority to the executive branch was unconstitutionally overbroad.
Wiley Post Airport (Airport Code PWA) is a city-owned, public-use airport located seven miles northwest of the central business district of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. It was named after Wiley Post, the first pilot to fly solo around the world, who died in the same 1935 crash as the namesake of the city’s major commercial airport, Will Rogers World Airport.
Wiley was the scruffy peg-legged caveman in the B.C. comic strip. It was never explained how he lost his leg.
The comic B.C. was written by Johnny Hart. After a few successful years, he started writing another comic called The Wizard of Id with his friend Brant Parker. It featured characters like the King, the Wizard, peasants, a prisoner named Spook, and lawyer Larsen E. Pettifogger. The medieval theme was inspired by a deck of playing cards. Both strips featured anachronisms, dark humour and philosophical meanderings.
The Wizard of Id first appeared in 1964. By 2002, it was appearing in over 1000 newspapers all over the world. Jeff Parker, son of Brant, took over the illustrating duties from his father in 1997. Johnny Hart died in 2007, and his grandson, Mason Mastroianni, took over the writing duties. In 2015, Jeff Parker also passed his duties to Mastroianni.
The Front Runner is a 2018 film, about former U.S. Senator from Colorado, Gary Hart, who was the frontrunner for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, before an extramarital affair ended his candidacy. The film stars Hugh Jackman as Hart, Vera Farmiga as his wife, Lee Hart, J.K. Simmons as Bill Dixon (Hart’s campaign manager), and Alfred Molina as Ben Bradlee (executive editor of the Washington Post).