U.S. President Gerald Ford survived two assassination attempts over the span of eighteen days in September, 1975:
On September 5th, in Sacramento, Lynnette “Squeaky” Fromme, a member of the Manson family, aimed a Colt .45 automatic pistol at Ford, at point-blank range, and pulled the trigger, but the gun did not go off (it apparently did not have a bullet in the chamber). Fromme was then disarmed by Secret Service agent Buendorf.
On September 22nd, in San Francisco, Sara Jane Moore fired two shots at Ford, from a .38 Special revolver, from a distance of about 40 feet. The first shot barely missed Ford’s head; Moore was grabbed by a bystander, retired Marine Oliver Sipple, who deflected her arm as she took her second shot, which also missed Ford, but struck and wounded a taxi driver.
Robert De Niro prepared himself for the role of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver by working 12-hour shifts driving a cab for a month. At one point he was recognized by someone who thought he must have been out of work to be driving a taxi. He also studied different aspects of mental illness during this period to get into Bickle’s mind.
Over the course of a long career, Robert De Niro has played a gangster (Analyze This), a cabbie (Taxi Driver), a Wall Street tycoon (Limitless), the father of a mentally-ill son (Silver Linings Playbook), a retired CIA agent (Meet the Fockers), a fire investigator (Backdraft) and a commando plumber (Brazil), among many other roles.
First published on July 8, 1889, the Wall Street Journal was founded by Charles H. Dow of Dow Jones & Company. Its mission was initially to cover business and financial news, but in the 1930s the paper began covering other topics as well. As of last year, the newspaper boasts a daily circulation of almost 3.5 million between its paper and digital offerings.
The parent company of the Journal, the Dow Jones & Company, is owned by Rupert Murdoch.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Mirage Studios) was originally intended as a parody of early 1980s comics including Cerebus, Ronin, and Daredevil (Marvel). In the TMNT origin, after the traffic accident where young Matt Murdock saves the old man and gets radioactive ooze spilled on him, that same ooze falls into the sewers and mutates the turtles. The turtles’ mentor “Splinter” is a take on Daredevil’s mentor “Stick”. In the comics, Daredevil fights a mysterious group of ninjas known as “The Hand”, whereas the TMNTs’ nemeses are known as “The Foot”.
Duke University’s athletic teams are nicknamed “the Blue Devils.” The name became associated with the school’s teams in the 1920s, and appears to have been inspired by the nickname “les Diables Bleus,” or "the Blue Devils,’ which was given to the Chasseurs Alpins, an elite mountain infantry force of the French army, during World War I.
In the 1800s, the phrase “Blue Devils”, as in “to have the blue devils” or “to be blue-devilled” meant melancholy; a popular farce with that title was shown at Covent Garden in London in 1798 and published in 1808. According to Google Ngrams, use of the phrase peaked in 1849.
The Mexican-American War was influenced by 3 future US presidents. Zachary Taylor and Franklin Pierce were diplomats and Ulysses S. Grant served in the military. Other future US Civil War generals who served as well were George Meade, George McClellan, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and George Pickett. The war ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1849.
La Villa de Guadalupe is a neighborhood in northern Mexico City. (map).
In 1531 a small, hastily erected chapel was built near the hill of Tepeyac, where the Virgin Mary is believed to have appeared to Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin several times in December 1531. One apparition was before don Juan de Zumárraga, who was then the bishop of Mexico.
In 1709 a shrine was built there.
In 1974 the Basílica de Guadalupe was built. It is a National shrine of Mexico. The Basílica de Guadalupe is the most-visited Catholic shrine in the world, and the world’s third most-visited sacred site. In 2010, 22 million people visited the Basílica (map).
Juan Diego is the first Catholic saint indigenous to the Americas. He was beatified in 1990 and canonized in 2002 by Pope John Paul II.
In 1848 the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits and Settlement between the United States of America and the Mexican Republic was signed in La Villa de Guadalupe.
That treaty is informally called the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, for the place where it was signed. The Villa de Guadalupe Hidalgo is now a neighborhood of Mexico City.
San Diego is the second-most populous city in California (after Los Angeles) and the eighth-most populous in the country. It is sometimes referred to as the ‘birthplace of California’ because it was the first site visited and settled by Europeans on the west coast of the United States. Originally home to the indigenous Kumeyaay people, the site was first claimed and settled by Spain, then became part of the Mexican Republic, before California became part of the United States following the Mexican-American War.
San Diego has more farms than anywhere else in the United States (approximately 7,000) and produces most of our nation’s avocados. Singer Jason Mraz owns a 5.5 acre avocado farm in San Diego.
Robin is the superhero name of Batman’s sidekick in DC comic books. In the primary DC continuity, five different people have held the title of Robin: Dick Grayson (the original Robin), Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, and Damian Wayne (Bruce’s son).
Drake University, located in Des Moines, Iowa, was founded in 1881 by George T. Carpenter, a teacher and pastor, and Francis Marion Drake, a Union general during the Civil War. The university was originally affiliated with the Disciples of Christ, although there is no official religious affiliation today. The law school at Drake is among the25 oldest law schools in the country.
In 1904, the athletic teams received their nickname of Bulldogs from a sportswriter who noticed that John L. Griffith, who coached every sport, was bringing his pet bulldogs to the practice fields.
Palmer College of Chiropractic is a private chiropractic college with its main campus in Davenport, Iowa. It was established in 1897 by Daniel David Palmer and was the first school of chiropractic in the world. The college’s name was originally the Palmer School and Cure and later became the Palmer School of Chiropractic . Most early chiropractic schools were founded by Palmer alumni.
“Palmer” was a medival English term for a pilgrim, especially ones who had gone to Jerusalem, who often came back with an emblem such as a cross made with dried palm leaves.
A palm tree is not actually a tree. Technically, it is a type of grass. It does not grow bark or annual rings with which to date a palm tree (pun intended).