Hero of Alexandria (c. 10 AD – c. 70 AD), was a Greek mathematician and engineer who was active in his native city of Alexandria, Roman Egypt. He is credited with inventing the first vending machine, which dispensed holy water when a coin was inserted. When the coin was deposited, it fell upon a pan attached to a lever. The lever opened up a valve which let some water flow out. The pan continued to tilt with the weight of the coin until it fell off, at which point a counter-weight would snap the lever back up and turn off the valve.
Alexandria VA lies on the west bank of the Potomac River about 7 miles south of Washington DC.
The first fatalities of the North and South in the Civil War occurred in Alexandria.
The warrior-king Alexander the Great, who was born on July 20, 356 BC, named more than seventy cities that were part of his conquests after himself. Alexandria in Egypt was the second largest city he conquered in an empire that reached from Macedonia to the fringes of India.
Near the site of the battle of the river Hydaspes—the costliest victory of his Indian campaign—Alexander founded the city of Bucephala (in northern India). He named the city after his favorite horse, which was mortally wounded in the battle. The full name of the city was Alexandria Bucephela.
Mark WIlliams (Mr. Weasley) portrays Father Brown in the televsion series Father Brown Mysteries. Set in the '50s, he rides a 3-speed Pashley roadster as his transportation. He calls his bicycle Bucephalus after Alexander the Great’s horse.
The name “Bucephalus” by which Alexander the Great’s horse is known is from the Greek, and literally means ‘ox-headed’, from βους , “ox”, and κεφαλή , “head”. Supposedly he was named for an ox-head brand on his haunch, but this seems unlikely since it was one of the most common brands. He was described as having a massive head, which is another possible source of his name.
Mary Renault, in her novel Fire from Heaven, a retelling of the life of Alexander the Great, calls the horse Oxhead.
The Alexander Valley of California, just northwest of Sonoma and Napa and along the Russian River, is noted most recently for quality Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. The region is named Cyrus Alexander, an 19th-century early settler who was born in Pennsylvania. His family moved to Illinois, and then he became a trapper in the Rocky Mountains. He moved to San Diego and became a Mexican citizen and then, at 35, explored the Russian River Valley for suitable land for cattle ranching. In his 40s he settled in what is now known as the Alexander Valley, and in 1872 he died on his ranch there. His wife, Rufina Lucero, died there in 1908.
Cyrus Vance Sr. was a lawyer, who served in several roles in the U.S. government in the 1960s and 1970s. During the Kennedy administration, Vance served as general counsel of the Department of Defense, and then as Secretary of the Army. During the Johnson administration, he was Deputy Secretary of Defense. Vance served as Secretary of State for the Carter administration, though he resigned that post in April, 1980 in protest, on the heels of Operation Eagle Claw (the failed military operation to rescue the U.S. hostages being held in Iran).
Vance’s son, Cyrus Vance Jr., was the Manhattan District Attorney from 2010 through 2021.
Vivian Vance, the actress best known for playing Lucille Ball’s neighbor, Ethel Mertz, on “I Love Lucy”, performed in the Albuquerque Little Theater’s first show ever in 1930. Two years later, she was understudy to Ethel Merman in a production of “Anything Goes”.
1887 — William Frawley was born
1909 — Vivian Vance was born
1911 — Lucille Ball was born
1917 — Desi Arnaz was born
1951 — I Love Lucy began
1957 — I Love Lucy ended
1966 — William Frawley died
1979 — Vivian Vance died
1986 — Desi Arnaz died
1989 — Lucille Ball died
Vivian Stanshall was the one of the leaders of the Bonzo Dog Band, who appeared in Magical Mystery Tour performing “Death Cab for Cutie” as an Elvis impression. He was well known as a British eccentric after the group broke up, with a solo music career and a radio show where he competed with Keith Moon to see who was wilder. He died in 1995 in a fire in his apartment.
4,397,809 acres burned — the 2020 California wildfires was a record-setting year of wildfires in California.
This pales in comparison to Canadian wildfires.
8,600,000 acres burned — the 2014 forest fire season in the Northwest Territories of Canada is reputed to be the worst for at least three decades.
8,105,000 acres burned — the 1989 Manitoba Fires
5,000,000 acres burned — the Great Fire of 1919 in Alberta and Saskatchewan
These are among the worst wildfires in North American history.
On September 1, 1923, an earthquake devastated the Japanese cities of Yokohama and Tokyo. The quake, followed by tsunamis and fires, took an estimated 140,000 lives. 44,000 people perished as they were seeking refuge along the banks of the Sumida River when they were struck by a freak pillar of fire known as a ‘dragon’s twist.’
On August 15, 2020, for the first time in its history, the US National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for a pyrocumulonimbus created by a wildfire near Loyalton CA capable of producing a fire tornado. Loyalton is about 35 miles northwest of Reno NV.
Maryland native Jesse Lee Reno was an Army officer and Union general during the Civil War and generally was considered to be an all-around good guy. So, when he died after being shot in the chest by friendly fire during the Battle of South Mountain in Maryland, some of his buddies appealed to name the railroad station in a newly forming Western town after him, a common way of honoring folks back then. Incidentally, Reno wasn’t even his real name: It was Renault, which people apparently had trouble pronouncing. And yes, he was distantly related to the family that later founded the car company.
American Motors Corporation (AMC) was a U.S. automaker, which struggled to compete with the much larger “Big Three” of Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, AMC forged a partnership with French automaker Renault, which ultimately resulted in Renault eventually owning nearly 50% of AMC’s stock.
In 1987, Chrysler bought Renault’s share in AMC, as well as all other outstanding AMC stock, thus ending AMC’s run as an independent automaker.
The first true crossover vehicle in the US market was the 1980 AMC Eagle.
In the 1980 presidential election, Ronald Reagan defeated President Jimmy Carter by an electoral vote count of 489 to 49. This was the highest number of electoral votes ever won by a non-incumbent presidential candidate. The election was also the second consecutive election in which a sitting president was defeated, as Carter had beaten President Gerald Ford in the 1976 election.
Nebraska was the birth state of Gerald Ford. He was born in Omaha NE in 1913.
Illinois was the birth state of Ronald Reagan. He was born in Tampico IL in 1911.
Georgia was the birth state of Jimmy Carter. He was born in Plains GA in 1924.
Mutual of Omaha is an insurance company who sponsored the TV show Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom from 1963-1988. Featuring Marlon Perkins, it would show footage of animals, often in the wild. His assistant, Jim Fowler, would often do the actual interaction with the animals while Perkins narrated, leading to various jokes about Fowler taking the risk while Perkins just watched. The show has been revived.