New London, CT, is one of 13 places in the USA that share that name, some of which are unincorporated. Besides Connecticut, New London can be found in Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
New London, Texas was originally known as just “London”. But because Kimble County Texas had already established a US Post Office station named London, the town changed its name to “New London” in 1931.
Six years later, in 1937 and during the Dust Bowl, New London, Texas experienced a disaster when over 290 people, most of them school children, died in an explosion in the town school caused by a natural gas leak. Known as the New London School explosion, as of 2017 the event is the third deadliest disaster in the history of Texas, after the 1900 Galveston hurricane and the 1947 Texas City disaster.
The U.S. Navy submarine captain in Nevil Shute’s 1957 post-apocalyptic novel On the Beach tells an Australian friend that his wife and son lived in New London, Conn., near the large naval base there, and implies that they were almost certainly killed in a Soviet nuclear strike on the base.
New London CT was named Nameaug by the Pequot Indians, native peoples to the area and in Connecticut. The Pequod, the fictional 19th-century Nantucket whaling ship featured in Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick (1851), is named after the Pequot tribe.
Vikings probably did not hunt whales on the high seas. The sagas do not mention whaling boats, but do tell tales of arguments over who had rights to a beached whale carcass. In the harsh days of early Iceland’s settlement, the meat provided by a stranded whale could feed a starving community.
On Saturday Nov 24, 1973 in southern Iceland, a US Navy Douglas Super DC-3 airplane was forced to land on the Sólheimasandur black sand beach after experiencing some severe icing. All crew members survived the crash but the airplane’s fuselage was abandoned. The remains of the airplane’s fuselage can still be visited today, over 45 years after the crash.
Lat / Long: 63.459102, -19.364781
Satellite view of fuselage >> Google Maps
The “DC” in DC-3 stands for “Douglas Commercial”. The Douglas Aircraft Company produced the DC-1 in 1933 and the DC-2 in 1934. The first flight by a DC-3 took place on December 17, 1935.
The first paid-for radio commercial ran on 28 August 1922 on the AT&T-owned New York station WEAF and cost Queensboro Corporation $50 for 50 minutes of airtime to promote the sale of apartments in Jackson Heights.
Though it is generally assumed that the borough of Queens in New York City (and Queens County, in which the borough is located) is named after Catherine of Braganza, who was Queen of England in 1683 when the county was founded, there is apparently no surviving direct documentation that Catherine was the actual namesake.
(The adjacent Kings County (which is where Brooklyn is located) is likely named for her husband, Charles II.)
King and Queen County, Virginia, had a larger population in the 1790 Census, than it has today. It is named for William III and Mary II. That gives it anther distinction. being named after two people, which it shares with Lewis and Clark County Montana. Actually King County, Washington was named at first for Rufus King, and then formally “renamed” for Martin Luther King, Jr.
Lewiston, ID and Clarkston, WA, named for Lewis and Clark, face each other across the Snake River.
The Snake River is 1,078 miles long and is the largest tributary of the Columbia River. The Snake rises in Wyoming and flows westward across the entire width of Idaho. After it takes a northward turn, it forms over half of the boundary between Idaho and Oregon. At the Lewiston/Clarkston area, it meets with the Clearwater River and flows mostly westward to the Columbia.
The Tetons and the Snake River is a famous 1942 photo by Ansel Adams. He shot this photo from northwest Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park.
Damned 50x errors! Missed edit window…
The Tetons and the Snake River is a famous 1942 photo by Ansel Adams. He shot this photo from northwest Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park.
The Snake River ends its 1,078 mile run at Burbank WA, draining into the Columbia River as posted by Railer13. Also located at its mouth are Sacajawea Historical State Park, a city park in Pasco WA, and Two Rivers County Park, a County Park in Finley WA in Benton County.
Mouth of Snake River, Lat / Long 46.201048, -119.029098; map >> Google Maps
Seals are usually thought of as sea creatures, but there are regular sightings of them in rivers. In the Thames they venture far inland as Richmond Locks beyond central London, around 30 miles from the Thames estuary. This winter, a harbor seal made its way up the Hudson River to around Green Island, about eight miles north of Albany and 150 miles from the Atlantic.
The Upper Mississippi River has locks and dams to control its flow. Between Minneapolis and near St. Louis there are 29 locks and dams along the river. Beyond that, there are none. At the Upper Saint Anthony Falls Lock and Dam in Minneapolis, since June 2015 the lock has remained closed to prevent the spread of invasive Asian Carp.
Oops double post.
The Minnesota cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are a well-known example of a set of “twin cities” – two large cities which are in close proximity to each other (and possibly sharing a border).
Other examples of twin cities in the United States include Dallas and Forth Worth in Texas, Raleigh and Durham in North Carolina, Tampa and Saint Petersburg in Florida, and Duluth and Superior in Minnesota and Wisconsin (respectively).
Tri-Cities are groups of three cities tat are in close proximity. Some examples are Briston-Kingsport-Johnson City, Tennessee, and Richland-
pasco-Kennewick, Washington. One tri-city calls itself Quad-citiies, where Davenport, Moline and Rock Island let several other cities fight it out about who is #4.
Albany-Schenectady-Troy NY is a tri-city area in Upstate New York.
(ETA: and my hometown area too)