The first commercial winery in California was the Buena Vista Winery, established in 1857 in Sonoma. Today there are over 1200 wineries in the state. Sonoma County is home to more than 425 wineries.
“Buena Vista” (Spanish for “good view”) is a brand name which was often used for subsidiaries of the Walt Disney Company. Disney has largely retired the Buena Vista brand name in recent years, rebranding those divisions with the Disney brand name, though the name is still used for a few subsidiaries, as well as in the name of the city where Disney World is formally located (Lake Buena Vista, Florida).
Bueno Vista Social Club started out as an idea by Ry Cooder to make an album with old Cuban musicians who had been lost to history due to the trade embargo. He told his idea to documentarian Wim Wenders and a film was also made, which debuted in 1999 to great acclaim. Some musicians were in their nineties, yet they showed that Cuban music was alive and well and helped to increase tourism to the country. Many of them were allowed to tour the world soon after the album was released.
Malpaso Creek in California’s Garrapata State Park in Monterey County is generally regarded as the north end of Big Sur, a region which has been called one of the most beautiful coastlines anywhere in the world. Malpaso means ‘bad crossing’ and indicates the extreme difficulty in crossing the dramatic canyon at the coast where the creek empties into the Pacific Ocean. In 1935 the Malpaso Creek Bridge was built across it.
Malpaso is the name of Clint Eastwood’s film production company. Clint bought 650 acres there years ago. Bug Sur extends from Malpaso Creek in the north to San Carpóforo Creek near San Simeon in the south, a distance of about 70 miles along the coast highway.
Map: Google Maps
The Malpaso Creek Bridge, built in 1935:
The city of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, became known as an “art colony” in the early 20th Century, with many musicians, writers, artists, and performers living and working in the area. Several of the city’s mayors have been actors, including Herbert Heron, Perry Newberry, and Clint Eastwood.
Clint Eastwood started out with a 7-year training contract with Universal Pictures. They fired him after only 5 years in 1959. According to Burt Reynolds (who was fired the same day), the studio said it was because of a chipped tooth and an overly protruding Adam’s apple. It also didn’t help that he was uncredited in 9 of the 10 films he did for Universal including Revenge of the Creature (an awful sequel to The Creature From the Black Lagoon).
Not in play: Reynolds once told an anecdote on The Tonight Show, about himself and Eastwood being fired on the same day; Reynolds claimed that he was fired because he was told that he couldn’t act. He claimed that, as he and Eastwood left the studio, he turned to Eastwood (who had been fired for his looks), and said, “At least I can learn to act.”
In play:
Burt Reynolds attended Florida State University on a football scholarship, as a running back. Reynolds had a successful season as a freshman player, but in the first game of his sophomore season, he tore up his knee. Later that same fall, he was in a car accident, in which he injured his other knee (and lost his spleen); the injuries derailed his football career, and he turned to acting.
Reynolds portrayed football players in several of his films, including The Longest Yard and Semi-Tough, and later played a high school football coach (and retired professional football player) in the television comedy Evening Shade.
Sámuel Guttmann (1945-2008) was born in Hungary, moved with his family to Norway when he was 7, and eventually settled in the United States where he joined the army and later became a licensed commercial pilot. After he lost his piloting license due to alcohol-related arrests, he turned to acting. Because he was a Burt Reynolds lookalike, he worked as a stand-in for Reynolds on several films. Known professionally as Sasha Gabor, he made his mark as a porn actor, while also performing in Burt Reynolds parody films, where he used the stage name Turd Wrenolds.
From 1971 to 1979, Ernő Rubik was a professor of architecture at the Budapest College of Applied Arts. While there he invented his toy cube. The cube was originally known in Hungary as the Magic Cube. Rubik licensed the Magic Cube to Ideal Toys in the US in 1979. Ideal rebranded The Magic Cube to the Rubik’s Cube before its introduction to an international audience in 1980.
To date, over 350 million Rubik’s Cubes have been sold, making it one of the best selling toys of all time.
(Not in play: I wonder if, when Norm Macdonald, as Burt Reynolds on Saturday Night Live’s “Celebrity Jeopardy” sketch, used the name “Turd Ferguson,” it was a nod to that. 
)
Never thought of that! Could be.
In play:
Burt Reynolds provided the voice for a fictionalized version of himself on the FX cartoon spy parody Archer, the title character of which is a huge Reynolds fanboy.
The 1896 Olympics were the first competition in the modern games. No women competed in those Olympics, which were held in Athens. In the 1900 Paris games, 22 women competed in five sports: tennis, sailing, croquet, equestrianism and golf. However, in the 1904 games held in St. Louis, archery was the only sport in which women were allowed to compete. Six archers, all from the United States, took part in the competition, which was won by Matilda Howell.
Yusra Mardini was 17 when she and her sister Sara fled Syria in August 2015. When they reached Turkey, they arranged to be smuggled into Greece by boat with 18 other migrants, in a boat meant to be used by no more than 6 or 7 people. After the motor stopped working and the boat began to take on water in the Aegean Sea, Yusra, her sister, Sara, and two other people who were able to swim got into the water and pushed and pulled the boat for over 3 hours until the group reached Lesbos. They then traveled on foot to Germany, where they settled in Berlin.
In June 2016, Mardini was one of ten athletes selected for the Refugee Olympic Team. She competed in the 100 meter freestyle and the 100 meter butterfly at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
The term “Lesbian” was originally the English demonym for a person from the Greek island of Lesbos. During the 6th Century BCE, Lesbos was home to the poet Sappho, who wrote about women’s lives and relationships; in the 19th and 20th centuries, Sappho came to be regarded as a symbol of romantic love and desire between women, and the term “lesbian” became a common term for female homosexuals, as a reference to the poet’s home city.
Mount Lepetymnos at 3176 ft and Mount Olympus at 3,173 ft are the tallest points on Lesbos. But that is a different Mount Olympus than the one in Thessaly on the Greek mainland. That Mount Olympus is the highest mountain in Greece, at 9,570 ft. The tall Mount Olympus has 52 peaks and deep gorges.
In Ancient Greek religion and mythology, “Olympus” was the name of the home of the Twelve Olympian gods. This was conceived of as a lofty mountaintop, and in all regions settled by Greek tribes, the highest local elevation tended to be so named; among the numerous peaks called Olympus are mountains in Mysia, Laconia, Lycia, Cyprus, Attica, Euboea, Ionia and Lesbos, and others.
Roman naturalist and philosopher Pliny the Elder died in AD 79 in Stabiae while attempting a rescue by ship of a friend and his family from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which had already destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The wind caused by the sixth and largest pyroclastic surge of the volcano’s eruption did not allow his ship to leave port, and Pliny died during that event.
The author, lawyer, and magistrate Pliny the Younger, who was located 18 miles away in the Bay of Naples, observed the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD. As he watched the fateful events unfold, he wrote what he saw, and his account became the first detailed description of a volcanic eruption in history. He wrote:
“Its general appearance can best be expressed as being like an umbrella pine, for it rose to a great height on a soft trunk and then split off into branches.”
Volcanologists now refer to eruptions with a tall plume that cover large areas with ash as ‘Plinian’ eruptions.
Italy’s Autostrada A1 links Milan to Naples via Bologna, Florence, and Rome. It is the oldest of the European highways, which are known as the E network. The A1 is part of the E35 and E45 highways. At 452 miles long, it is the longest Autostrada in Italy. Construction of the A1 began in 1956, and when it was completed in 1964 it reduced the travel time from Milan to Naples from two days to 7-8 hours. The A1 is nicknamed the Autostrada del Sole, or the Sun Motorway.
Neapolitan ice cream is a type of ice cream which is composed of three separate flavors, arranged side-by-side in the same package. Its name comes from the Italian city of Naples, where it was presumably created, as well as the numerous Neapolitan immigrants to the U.S. in the 19th century, some of whom had expertise in Italian frozen desserts, including the similar Italian dessert of spumone.
While early versions of Neapolitan ice cream used flavors and colors selected to reflect the three colors of the Italian flag, modern Neapolitan ice cream in the U.S. is typically composed of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry flavors.
In 1984, President Ronald Reagan designated July as National Ice Cream Month and the third Sunday of July as National Ice Cream Day. Thus, yesterday, July 17, was this year’s National Ice Cream Day.
(Unknowingly, the Railer household and guests consumed two cartons of ice cream yesterday evening. As it turns out, we were doing our patriotic duty.)