Richard I was one of the eight kings of England who died a violent death. The list is:
William II - died of an arrow while hunting in the New Forest
Richard I - shot by a crossbowman while he was besieging a castle in France; died of infection
Edward II - killed gruesomely by political rivals, including his wife
Richard II - killed in secret while imprisoned, likely on the orders of his cousin, Henry IV
Henry VI - died in the Tower, likely on the orders of his cousin, Edward IV
Edward V - died in the Tower, likely on the orders of his uncle, Richard III
Richard III - killed in action at the Battle of Bosworth
Charles I - beheaded on the order of the Parliamentarians
During the 16th century, King John was seen as a good king, because he had stood up to the pope.
By the time of the Whig revolution of the 18th century, he was irredeemably considered a bad king, because he had opposed the barons, the proto-parliamentarians.
USS John King (DDG-3) was a Charles F. Adams-class guided missile armed destroyer in the United States Navy named for Medal of Honor recipient John King. The ship was laid down by the Bath Iron Works at Bath in Maine on 25 August 1958, launched on 30 January 1960, and commissioned on 4 February 1961. The USS John King was decommissioned on 30 March 1990, was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 12 January 1993 and sold for scrap on 10 February 1999.
The only US President to be awarded the Medal of Honor was Theodore Roosevelt. TR received the award for his heroic acts during the 1898 Spanish-American War, most notably the charge up San Juan Hill. Three years after this feat, Roosevelt became President. However, he was not awarded the Medal of Honor until January 16, 2001.
Theodore Roosevelt’s ancestor, Claes Maartenszen van Rosenvelt, owned the land on Manhattan Island where the Empire State Building is now located. At that time, it was farmland.
I was there as a 10-year-old in 1963. Scared shitless, as I recall.
In play: The world’s tallest building is now the Burj Khalifa, located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It stands 2722 feet tall and contains 160 stories. Construction was begun in 2004, and the exterior was completed in 2009. It was open for occupancy in 2010. The building was originally named Burj Dubai but was renamed in honor of the president of the UAE, Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
The Burj Khalifa was prominently featured in several hair-raising action sequences in the 2011 Tom Cruise action movie Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.
Argentine-born pianist and composer Lalo Schifrin was a successful jazz pianist before he began composing soundtrack music. Schifrin has frequently collaborated with Clint Eastwood, and wrote the soundtracks for many of Eastwood’s films, including Dirty Harry and Coogan’s Bluff, but he is likely best-known for composing the iconic theme song for the television series Mission: Impossible.
John Williams is another accomplished musician who has written the thematic music and soundtracks for dozens of blockbuster movies, including the Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Superman, Jurassic Park, and Harry Potter franchises. as well as many one-off projects such as E.T., Close Encounters, Schindler’s List, and the Olympic Fanfare/Theme first heard in 1984.
But before moving into movies, “Johnny Williams” (as he was then known) also worked in TV, even winning an Emmy award for his soundtrack for the infamous TV version of ‘Heidi’ (1968). He was also responsible for TV themes such as ‘Checkmate’ (1960-62), ‘Lost in Space’ (1965-68), ‘The Time Tunnel’ (1966-67), and the calypso-flavored theme found on the rarely-seen original 1964 pilot episode of ‘Gilligan’s Island’.
William Tell, an opera written by Italian composer Gioachino Rossini, premiered in 1829 in Paris. It was the last of Rossini’s 39 operas, although he lived for 40 more years. The story was based on Friedrich Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell, which drew on the William Tell legend.
The overture to the opera is probably best-known to Americans as the theme music for the radio and television shows of The Lone Ranger. It was also used in the soundtrack of the film A Clockwork Orange, among others.
William Tell is a folk hero of Switzerland, and is seen as a symbol of defiance against tyranny. Tell’s legend states that he was an expert marksman, and that, in 1307, after he would not show deference to an Austrian noble, Albrecht Gessler, Tell and his son were both sentenced to death. Gessler then gave Tell a chance for clemency, if he could shoot an apple off of his son’s head with a single shot. Tell, of course, succeeded in this; in some versions of the legend, Tell then assassinated Gessler with another shot.
Although Tell, and his legend, became a key figure in Swiss independence, and in Swiss culture as a whole, there is little historical evidence of Tell himself, and his legend bears similarities to several other European legends.
Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Wallenstein was a Bohemian military leader and statesman who fought on the Catholic side during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). His successful martial career made him one of the richest and most influential men in the Holy Roman Empire by the time of his death. Wallenstein became the supreme commander of the armies of the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand II and was a major figure of the Thirty Years’ War. However, in 1634, he was assassinated at Eger in Bohemia by one of the army’s officials, with the emperor’s approval.
Eusebius of Caesarea, writing in the late 4th century / early 5th century, is known as the Father of Church History for his numerous writings. His History of the Church is the first comprehensive history of the Christian church from beginnings to his own time. His scholarly habit of quoting passages from numerous sources have actually preserved writings which have been lost and are now known only via Eusebius.
Mormon patriarch Brigham Young chewed tobacco for most of his adult life. He acquired the habit before he converted to the Mormon Church, and he struggled valiantly to give it up, managing to quit for a nine-year period between 1848 and 1857.
Author Orson Scott Card is a great-great-grandson of Brigham Young; NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young, and journalist/politician Bob Young, are both great-great-great grandsons of Brigham Young.
The “playing card money” of New France is one of the earliest examples of fiat currency. New France was chronically short of coinage. In 1685, needing to pay soldiers for defence, the Intendant, Jaques de Meulles, began issuing redeemable notes on playing cards. Although the French government disapproved of this expedient, card money was frequently used in New France until the Conquest in 1763.
Gambling using cards has a long history, and the Chevalier de Méré wanted to know how to divide stakes if the game ended early, based on the chances of winning. Discussions with Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat led to the beginnings of probability theory and concepts like expected value. This study of gambling was expanded to lotteries, insurance, economic speculation, banking and the philosophical idea of Pascal’s Wager - saying it is safer to believe in God in case “He” exists. Probability was expanded by other scientists like de Moivre and first discussed in a book by Huygens. Though much of the mathematics of the time was by French noblemen “amateurs”, they were pretty astute and advanced. If you studied a top engineering degree, most of the needed mathematics was settled before the end of the nineteenth century.