A ‘pocket veto’ occurs when a president, governor, or other official with veto powers takes no action on a bill that has been passed by the legislative body; instead, the bill dies because the legislative session expires.
However, in some countries and states, a bill automatically becomes law if the executive takes no action.
“What have I got in my pocket?” asked Bilbo Baggins
A ring is worn on the fourth finger of the left hand to indicate being married. If the engagement ring is also worn it is on the outside, i.e. further from the hand, on the same finger.
Der Ring des Nibelungen (“The Ring of the Nibelung”), also often referred to as “The Ring Cycle,” is a set of four epic music dramas, written and composed by Richard Wagner in the 19th century. The dramas are based on Germanic legends and epic poems, particularly Nibelungenlied, an epic poem which was written around 1200 CE.
The four dramas, in sequence within the cycle, are:
J.R.R. Tolkien always stoutly denied that he was inspired by the early German or later Wagnerian magic-ring tales in writing his Middle-earth legendarium, but literary scholars have since nevertheless done their best to draw connections.
J.R.R. Tolkien was born in South Africa to English parents and lived there until he was 4. He was bitten by a baboon spider or a tarantula, but said as an adult that he had no memory of the incident and no particular aversion to spiders. However, literary critics say that the evil giant spiders in his works must have been inspired by his subconscious memories of the incident.
There are some 900 species of tarantulas, and they all spin silk. They range in size from as small as a BB pellet, up to a dinner plate.
The spruce-fir moss spider can be as small as a BB pellet.
The Goliath bird-eating tarantula can be as big as a dinner plate.
Hank Pym is a Marvel Comics superhero, who has operated under several different superhero identities, including Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath, and Yellowjacket. While Pym’s powers have varied over the years, they are largely centered on his ability to shrink or grow in size, by use of the “Pym particles” which he discovered.
In the Marvel Cinematic Universe films, Hank Pym is portrayed by Michael Douglas.
The Goliath bird-eating tarantula is found in northern South America. Despite its name, it rarely preys on birds. It got its name from an early 1700s copper engraving showing one feeding on a hummingbird. It is part of the local cuisine in northeastern South America, prepared by singeing off the hairs and roasting it in banana leaves. Its flavor has been described as “shrimp-like”.
Not chicken, but shrimp-like.
Goliath was a Philistine warrior in the Old Testament. He was the champion of the warriors of town of Gath. The name refers to Greek name Alyattes.
Goliath was unusually large. His height was said to be “six cubits and a span” - some 290 cm - and he fought as an armored charioteer. The Bible describes how he challenged the Israelite warriors for single-handed duel.
290 cm = 9’ 6”
Goliath was pretty big. According to the Old Testament book 1 Samuel the battle took place in the Elah Valley, which is about 25 miles WSW of Jerusalem.
Map —
https://goo.gl/maps/hqP5TZhUhzk2LybB9
Pic of map —
Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, is one of the oldest cities in the world. It is considered a holy city by the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. The current population is about 957,000, which means that more than one in every ten Israelis live in the city.
Jerusalem’s Lot, abbreviated over the years by its residents to ‘Salem’s Lot, is a fictional small town in Maine which figures in several tales by Stephen King. It was overcome by vampires in the mid-1970s and later largely destroyed by fire.
Many of Stephen King’s novels and short stories have been adapted into films, but in one case – Maximum Overdrive – King himself served as the director of the film adaptation of his book.
King has since claimed that he was “coked out of my mind” throughout the production; afterwards, he vowed to never again attempt to direct a movie.
In Maximum Overdrive, the characters talk about going to an island named Haven where there are no cars. The TV show Haven (2010), also based on King’s work, premiered in 2010. In the season 2 episode Haven: Love Machine (2011), cars and boats are seen coming to life and attacking humans much as they did in this film.
In Star Trek, a Class M (Earthlike) world in the Beta Cassius system was known as Haven. Capt. Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise said in a log entry, “It is a world so renowned for its peaceful beauty that some believe it to have mystical healing powers.” Lt. Cmdr. Data of his senior staff, a skeptic, did not believe the legends.
The most recent definition of a planet was adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 2006. It says a planet must do three things:
It must orbit a star (in our cosmic neighborhood, the Sun).
It must be big enough to have enough gravity to force it into a spherical shape.
It must be big enough that its gravity cleared away any other objects of a similar size near its orbit around the Sun.
The IAU’s 2006 definition of a planet led to the de-classification of Pluto as a planet, as it does not meet the third criterion listed in @Bullitt’s post – Pluto’s mass is only 0.07 times that of the combined mass of the other objects in its orbit.
The IAU decided that objects like Pluto, which meet the first two criteria, but not the third, would henceforth be termed “dwarf planets.”
Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff AZ. Tombaugh had been searching for a trans-Neptunian planet predicted by Percival Lowell based on calculations by his associate mathematicians. Tombaugh compared photos of the same section of the night sky that were taken days apart. While the distant, fixed stars remained stationary, one object changed its location. Pluto’s discovery was made on Tuesday, February 18, 1930, using images taken the previous month.
That was exactly 92 years ago this coming Friday.
The Vatican operates its own astronomical observatory, located at the old papal summer palace at Castel Gandolfo, fifteen miles from Rome. The four domes of the observatory house a 38 inch reflector astrograph telescope, a 24 inch reflector astrograph telescope, a 16 inch visual refractor telescope and a 13 inch refractor astrograph telescope.
