Walter Reed was a physician with the U.S. Army Medical Corps at the start of the 20th century. In 1901, a medical research team led by Reed was able to confirm the hypothesis first developed by Cuban doctor Carlos Finlay, that yellow fever is transmitted by mosquitoes, rather than by direct contact. The finding was instrumental in the completion of the Panama Canal, where previous work had been hampered by yellow fever outbreaks, which sickened and killed many workers on the project.
The original choice for Mike Brady in The Brady Bunch was Gene Hackman. But the studio didn’t want an unknown actor so they instead hired Robert Reed.
Gene Hackman served in the Marine Corps for four years as a field radio operator. He was 16 when he enlisted and he lied about his age to get in. In the Marines he volunteered as a disc-jockey for his unit’s radio station. This turned into a more permanent position which included newscasting.
Gene Hackman has won two Oscars, one for Best Actor in 1972 (The French Connection), and one for Best Supporting Actor in 1993 (Unforgiven). Both movies also won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen (formerly Popeyes Chicken and Biscuits) is a fast-food restaurant chain, specializing in Louisiana-style fried chicken. The chain’s founder, Al Copeland, claimed that he named his restaurant after Popeye Doyle: the protagonist, played by Gene Hackman, in the 1971 film The French Connection.
However, for many years, the restaurant chain also used the cartoon character “Popeye the Sailor” in its ads, under license from King Features Syndicate.
Colonel Harland Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken died in 1980. He was 90 years old. In 2017, actor Rob Lowe played the role of Colonel Sanders in their advertisements. Rob Lowe as a child actually met the real Colonel Sanders.
1980 was the last full year of the Jimmy Carter Administration. Badly defeated at the polls that November by Ronald Reagan, Carter returned to Plains, Ga., worked on his memoirs and became involved with Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit group he has long championed. At 98, he is now not only the oldest living former President, but the longest-lived President ever.
Jimmy Carter is one of four presidents to have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, with Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, Woodrow Wilson in 1919, and Barack Obama in 2009. Jimmy Carter was awarded it in 2002 and he is the only president to be awarded it after his presidency.
U.S. President Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the founding of the League of Nations, an international intergovernmental organization dedicated to maintain world peace, in the aftermath of World War I.
Despite Wilson’s role, the United States never joined the League of Nations.
The covenant of the League of Nations was part of the Treaty of Versailles, signed in June of 1919. The League took became effective on January 10, 1920, with the victorious WW1 allies Britain, France, Italy, and Japan being the permanent members of the Executive Council. At its peak in 1935, the League had 58 members. The onset of WWII in 1939 proved to be the death knell for the League, and it was basically inactive until its demise in 1946.
ENIAC computer(for “Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer”), was unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946. ENIAC weighed 60,000 pounds (over 27 tons), and it occupied a big room. ENIAC was designed and primarily used to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory in Aberdeen MD.
Lt. Cmdr. Montgomery “Scotty” Scott (James Doohan), chief engineer of the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701 in Star Trek: The Original Series, once described himself as “an old Aberdeen pub-crawler,” but several other Scottish cities have good-naturedly claimed him as a future son.
In March 1985, when Riverside, Iowa was looking for a theme for its annual town festival, one of the council members, having read a book by Gene Roddenberry in which Roddenberry stated that Kirk was from Iowa, suggested that the council should designate their community as Kirk’s hometown. The motion passed and, with Gene Roddenberry’s approval, a monument was erected on a vacant lot declaring that the site would become, in 2228, “The Future Birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk”.
Added note: The festival, now called ‘TrekFest’, continues to be held to this day. The 2023 event is scheduled for June 23rd and 24th.
-“BB”-
Capt. James T. Kirk, commanding officer of the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701, begins a never-completed wedding ceremony for two of his crew in the episode “Balance of Terror.” Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, doing the same thing in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Data’s Day,” uses almost identical words, as does Adm. William Ross in a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode, and Capt. Ed Mercer in a The Orville episode.
Even if senior Starfleet or Planetary Union officers are authorized to officiate at weddings, the same is not necessarily true of naval and civilian maritime officers today: RE: Are ships captains allowed to marry people at sea?
In play —
Section 400-402 of the California Family Code states that any “authorized person of any religious denomination ” may officiate a wedding, including those who have received authorization via the Internet from religious groups.
Comment —
I have two sons and they’ve both done it. The magic of the internet.
My daughter officiated at the wedding of two of her friends, who both happen to be women. In Missouri, no less.
In play:
The first same-sex wedding in the USA took place on May 17, 2004, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Marcia Kadish and Tanya McCloskey became the first legally married same-sex partners in the United States. On the same day, 77 other same-sex couples were wed across the state.
Massachusetts is now considering changes to the seal and flag of the Commonwealth, due to objections that they ought not to show a Native American with a sword held over his head. Both symbols of the Bay State may be changed as early as next year.
US Marine officers and NCOs have carried swords since the Revolutionary War. Today, Marines carry two different swords, either the officer’s Mameluke sword or the M1859 NCO sword.
The M1859 Marine NCO sword is the oldest weapon in continued (unbroken) service still in US inventory.
The Mameluke sword carried by US Marine officers today is the same sword that have been carried since 1825. In 1805, a Mameluke sword was presented to Marine First Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon by the Ottoman Empire viceroy, Prince Hamet, during the First Barbary War as a gesture of respect and praise for the Marines’ actions at the Battle of Derna in eastern Libya.
Mameluke swords have been worn except for 1859-1875 when Marine officers were required to wear the U.S. Model 1850 Army foot officers’ sword, and a brief period when swords were suspended during World War II.
Pictured below, the first sword is the M1859 NCO sword and the second is the officers’ Mameluke sword.
Thank you for the additional illustrations and identification of the two different weapons. Although I do wonder one thing … are they functional, as in bearing a sharp edge, or are they merely ceremonial, like the sword my uncle had as a 4th degree Knight of Columbus?
-“BB”-
They are ceremonial. Nothing really sharp on the blades at all.