The Checker Aerobus is an automobile manufactured on two different wheelbases by the Checker Motors Corporation from 1962 until 1977. It was offered as seven- (including the tailgate) or nine-door station wagon, and as a six- or eight-door sedan. Meant primarily to serve as an airport shuttle, as indicated by the name, it is an extended version of the iconic Checker Marathon.
There are doubts whether the story of Pheidippides is true. It seems clear that there was an Athenian messenger-runner by that name, but the story of him running from Marathon to Athens and dying with the words “Joy! we win!” is first recorded by Lucian, five centuries after the battle.
Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry never quite decided, during its original run, whether the original sf television series was set two or three centuries (or so) in the future.
A tablespoon of the Sun, depending on where you scoop, would weigh about 5 pounds (2 kilograms) — the weight of an old laptop. A tablespoon of a neutron star weighs more than 1 billion tons (900 billion kg) — the weight of Mount Everest. So while you could lift a spoonful of Sun, you can’t lift a spoonful of neutron star.
According to Mary Poppins, a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.
The Mary Poppins books are a series of eight children’s novels written by P.L. Travers. The first book was published in 1934 and the last in 1988. P.L. Travers was born in Australia in 1899; her birth name was Helen Lyndon Goff. She took the name Pamela Lyndon Travers when she emigrated to England at the age of 25. She was 89 when the last book was published. She died in 1996 at the age of 96.
The main marketing partner of Kroger grocery stores is PLMarketing
Kroger is the largest U.S. grocery retailer by revenue, and the second-largest general retailer in the U.S., behind only Walmart. Kroger operates grocery stores under its own brand name, as well as a number of other chains (mostly regional chains which it acquired), including Fred Meyer, Dillon’s, Harris Teeter, Ralph’s, Smith’s, and Pick 'n Save.
Fred Meyer was founded in 1931 in Portland, Oregon, USA, by Fred G. Meyer. The stores are found in the western U.S. within the states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, California, and Alaska. The chain was one of the first in the United States to promote one-stop shopping, eventually combining a complete grocery supermarket with a drugstore, bank, clothing, jewelry, home decor, home improvement, garden, electronics, restaurant, shoes, sporting goods and toys.
Oregon’s is the only American state flag which is different on each side.
The Nova Scotia flag, a blue cross saltire on a white field, is the Scottish flag with the colours reversed, plus the escutcheon from the pre-union Scottish coat of arms.
Nova, a science documentary series airing on PBS, is produced by station WGBH in Boston. The show has been running for 48 (!) seasons. The first episode, titled “The Making of a Natural History Film”, aired on March 3, 1974. Tonight’s episode, titled “Ship That Changed the World”, will be episode # 884.
The astronomical term “nova” was coined in 1573 by Tycho Brahe, in his book De nova Stella (Latin for “Concerning the new star”); the “new star” which Brahe was describing was the sudden appearance of a bright star in the constellation Cassiopeia. That star is now classifed as “SN 1572,” and what Brahe saw was the light from an exploding supernova.
Five mice travelled to the moon with astronauts Gene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt, and Ronald Evans on the Apollo 17 mission of December, 1972. This was the last time humans stepped foot on the Moon. On this mission the astronauts gathered crater ray samples, and from these it was determined that the crater Tycho is a relatively young crater, with an estimated age of 108 million years.
Former Space Shuttle astronaut Terry Virts was told by NASA staff, he wrote in his (excellent) nonfiction book How to Astronaut, that it takes about 1,000 mice in various stages of breeding, preflight prep and isolation for every 40 who actually make it up to the International Space Station. The balance don’t die; they just don’t make it onto a timely orbit-bound spacecraft for a mission.
The Mouse That Roared (also known as Grapes of Wrath, the name under which it was published in England) was a satirical novel by Leonard Wibberley, published in 1955. It featured the tiny European Duchy of Grand Fenwick, whose economy was reliant on exports of its signature Pinot Grand Fenwick wine. When a California winery issues a knockoff wine, devastating Grand Fenwick’s economy, the tiny nation declares war on the United States, presuming that they will quickly be defeated, and then be able to rebuild itself through payments from the U.S. (a la the Marshall Plan).
The novel was adapted into a film in 1959, which starred Peter Sellers in three different roles.
There are two Bishop Fenwick High Schools in the United States, one in Peabody, Massachusetts and the other in Franklin, Ohio. They were named after two different Catholic Bishops named Fenwick, Benedict Joseph Fenwick S.J.of Boston and Edward Dominic Fenwick, the first Bishop of Cincinnati.
(Not in play: there is also a Fenwick High School in Oak Park, IL, which is named after Bishop Fenwick of Cincinnati. Its parking lot abuts the apartment building where my wife and I lived just after we got married.)
Wibberley also wrote four other Grand Fenwick novels; a 1958 prequel entitled “Beware of the Mouse”, and three follow-up novels “The Mouse on the Moon” (1962), “The Mouse on Wall Street” (1969), and, some twelve years later, “The Mouse That Saved the West” (1981).
In my not-so-humble opinion, all of them are – even today – well worth reading.
-“BB”-
Modest Mouse is a Washington rock band based in Portland. Similar to precursors Pavement and the Pixies, they achieved some success with their 1996 debut and mainstream success with their 2004 hits “Float On” and “Ocean Breathes Salty”. The Smiths’ guitarist Johnny Marr joined the group in 2006.