Zacharie Cloutier, who migrated from France to Quebec in 1634, has many notable descendants, including Hillary Clinton, Celine Dion, Ryan Gosling, Robert Goulet, Angelina Jolie, Jack Kerouac, Alex Trebek, and Pierre and Justin Trudeau.
“Cloutier” means “nailer” - someone who bought or sold nails as a trade.
‘Clouting’, or ‘clout archery’, is a form of archery in which archers shoot arrows at a flag (known as ‘the clout’) from a relatively long distance – for men, usually 150 meters or more – and score points depending on how close each arrow lands to the flag. It bears strong ties to the old European practice of massed archers firing a rain of arrows onto an enemy from a distance rather than specifically targeting an individual at close range.
-“BB”-
In 2017, Canada celebrated 150 years of confederation.
The oldest existing prose written in Latin is “De agri cultura”, a rambling work on agriculture, farming, rituals, and recipes written by Marcus Porcius Cato, also known as Cato the Elder. In 150 BC he was the censor for Rome and he urged the senate to destroy the Carthaginian Empire. Cato was known for finishing nearly every speech in the Senate, regardless of the subject, with the phrase ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam — “Moreover, I am of the opinion that Carthage ought to be destroyed”. By 146 BC, Carthage had been destroyed in the third Punic War.
The Romans destroyed the city of Carthage and burned it to the ground. However, although the legend is still widely repeated, there is no evidence that salt was sown into the ruins.
The SALT II agreement was never ratified by the United Sates or the Soviet Union.
The official name of the Soviet Union was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Russian abbreviation of the name was CCCP, using the cyrillic alphabet for Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik. “C” in Cyrillic is equivalent to “S”; while “P” stand for the “R” sound.
In a 1981 episode of the Canadian sketch comedy series SCTV, the fictional SCTV Network’s signal is taken over by “CCCP-1,” an equally-fictional Soviet television network. The episode features a number of spoofs of what television programs might be like in the Soviet Union, including the game show “Uposcrabblenyk” (a word game, with absurdly long Russian words), “What Fits Into Russia” (a comparison of how tiny other countries are, compared to Russia), and “Tibor’s Tractor” (a show in which a Soviet citizen’s tractor comes to live, animated by the ghost of Nikita Khrushchev).
In one of the Black Widowers stories by Asimov, Henry the waiter solves the puzzle by reference to the Russian equivalents to Latin letters, in CCCP.
Adult male and female black widow spiders live solitary lives, meeting only to breed. The name “black widow” comes from the female’s habit of eating the male after mating. The female black widow is approximately 1.5 inches (38 millimeters) long. The male is about half the female’s size. In fact, the male black widow is reclusive and hardly ever seen by humans. The female black widow lays approximately 200 eggs. The eggs incubate for some 20 days in a small, round papery sac that’s attached to the mother’s web. After hatching, the baby spiders stay in the cocoon for up to one month.
Franz Lehar’s operetta “The Merry Widow” premiered in 1905 and enjoyed great popularity. It was Hitler’s favorite operetta, and he had Sophie, Lehar’s wife, who was Jewish, declared an “honorary Aryan”. However, attempts were still made to deport her.
Adolf Hitler moved to Vienna in 1907 and took the entrance exam to the Vienna Academy of the Arts. After two failed attempts, he gave up and was soon homeless, sleeping on park benches and eating at soup kitchens. He eventually earned a meager living by drawing and selling pictures of famous Vienna landmarks. Many of his customers were Jewish shopkeepers.
Plots by time travelers to kill Adolf Hitler before he comes to power as the leader of Nazi Germany in 1933 are featured in Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, Jerry Yulsman’s Elleander Morning and the film Deadpool 2.
English actor and comedian Rowan Atkinson, best known for his TV series Mr. Bean and Blackadder, originally studied electrical engineering before turning to acting. He earned an undergraduate degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Newcastle University, then an MSc degree in Electrical Engineering at The Queen’s College, Oxford. Atkinson had begun work on a doctorate in engineering, before leaving off his studies to focus on acting and writing.
Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In was a sketch comedy television program that ran from 1968 through 1973. Dan Rowan and Dick Martin were the hosts of the fast-moving show, which featured actors such as Ruth Buzzi, Goldie Hawn, Arte Johnson, Joanne Worley, Richard Dawson, and Henry Gibson.
The Rowan Tree is a British folk song. It’s a popular tune on the pipes.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, told of the impending visit of Sir Alfred Bossom, joked, “Who is this man whose name is neither one thing nor the other?”
The Orange Blossom Special was a luxury train that travelled from New York City to Miami. It went into service in 1926 and lasted until 1953. It was created by S. Davies Warfield; one of his first employees was his niece, Wallis Warfield. She would later gain fame by marrying the former British king Edward VIII.
According to legend, two musicians (fiddlers Ervin T. Rouse and Chubby Wise) saw the train in 1938 and were so impressed that they wrote a song about it. The song was first performed by Rouse and his brother in 1939, and has since been covered by many artists.
Two classmates and friends at South Philadelphia High School in the 1950s were aspiring singers by the names of Ernest Evans and Fabiano Forte. The two of them would each go on to stardom in the late '50s and early '60s, by the stage names Chubby Checker and Fabian.