Reports differ on the origin of the name of the Ford Mustang. Some sources credit the name to Ford stylist John Najjar, who appears to have suggested the name, having been inspired by the P-51 Mustang fighter plane; this seems to be the company’s official account of the name’s history.
However, other sources credit Ford market research manager Robert J. Eggert for suggesting the name. Eggert had received a copy of book titled The Mustangs as a birthday present from his wife, and it is said that he added the name into a list of names being tested in consumer research during the car’s development.
There is no specific breed of horse called the mustang; rather, the mustang is a free-roaming horse of the Western United States, descended from horses brought to the Americas by the Spanish. It is thought that the term ‘mustang’ comes from a Spanish word meaning wild or stray.
Technically, these horses are not wild horses, but because they are descended from once-domesticated horses, they are actually feral horses.
Thank you. Ignorance fought for this Episcopalian!
In play:
“Mustang” is also U.S. military slang for an officer who began his or her armed services career as an enlisted person. Some notable mustangs have included Nathan Bedford Forrest, William McKinley, Winfield Scott, Tommy Franks, Tulsi Gabbard, James Mattis and Chuck Yeager.
Jeal-Louis Trintignant was the nephew of two internationally-famed auto racing drivers of the 1920s. Jean-Louis instead chose acting, but was then cast as a racing driver in "A Man and a Woman, for which he won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Festival. In the French film, he drove an American Ford Mustang, which in French is pronounced “mees-tong”
The first Cannes Film Festival began on August 31, 1939, with an opening night screening of the movie The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The next day, German troops invaded Poland and World War II began. The festival didn’t resume until September 20, 1946.
The Marquis de Lafayette was a young French aristocrat who came to America during the Revolutionary War, asking for no particular rank or assignment, but only the chance to help the cause of American liberty. He became almost a son to George Washington, on whose staff he served before being given an independent command in the Continental Army. Large portraits of both Washington and Lafayette flank the Speaker’s rostrum in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives.
The city of Lafayette, California, in the SFBA, was named after the Marquis de Lafayette. In the early 1800s the area was called Rancho Acalanes. Other possible names of the area and community may have included Dog Town, Brown’s Corner, Brown’s Mill, Acalanus, and perhaps Centerville. In 1857 the LaFayette post office was established by the U.S. Postal Service.
The pLace name Lafayette occurs in about half the US states, using a variety of local pronunciations. Most use the traditional form of /lah-fi-YET/. But variations include
–Louisiana /LAUGH-i-yet
–Georgia /la-FAY-et
—Florida /la-FEET/.
Jean Lafitte and his older brother Pierre were French smugglers and pirates, who operated in the Gulf of Mexico in the early 19th century.
The Lafittes operated a smuggling warehouse in New Orleans for a time, then moved their operations to Barataria Bay, Louisiana, where they engaged in both smuggling and piracy.
After much of their operations were captured by the U.S. Navy, the Lafittes were pardoned by the U.S. government. They assisted in the defense of New Orleans against the British during the Battle of New Orleans in 1814. Later, they acted as spies for Spain during the Mexican War of Independence; while doing so, Jean established a large and highly profitable pirate colony in Galveston.
According to worldatlas.com, the most common place name in the USA is Washington. This place name occurs 88 times in various cities and towns across the country. The second-most is Springfield, which occurs 41 times, followed by Franklin, with 35.
In California alone, there are five communities named Franklin. They are in Los Angeles County, Merced County, Napa County, Sacramento County, and, San Joaquin County.
A young Benjamin Franklin was first seen by his future wife Deborah when he was homeless (at the moment) and munching on a loaf of bread, walking in the streets of Philadelphia, where he’d just arrived.
Mount Deborah, Alaska is 12,339’ high. It stands between Delta Junction AK and Cantwell AK, and about 175 miles ENE of North America’s highest mountain, 20,310’-tall Denali (map >> Google Maps). In the town of College, Alaska, the street named Deborah Avenue is named after Mount Deborah.
The St. Clair River delta, between the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of Michigan, is the world’s largest delta that empties into a body of fresh water.
Clair is much more often a female name, but almost invariable then spelled Claire. Two notable exceptions without the -e are the Pokemon character, and Clair Huxtable of the Cosby Show.
Claire Bloom has been active on stage and screen for 74 years. She made her stage debut in 1946 when she was 15 with the Oxford Repertory Theatre, and when aged 16 played at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre as Ophelia to Paul Scofield’s Hamlet. Her first major film role was Thereza Ambrose, opposite Charlie Chaplin in Limelight (1952), and according to IMDB she is starring as Teresa in the film Sophie’s War which is in pre-production.
Claire is sometimes a boy’s name. Claire Lee Chennault, nicknamed “Old Leatherface”, Clair Elroy George, and Lieutenant General Claire Elwood Hutchin Jr. are three.
Clair de lune is a French poem written by Paul Verlaine in 1869. It is the inspiration for the third and most famous movement of Claude Debussy’s 1890 Suite bergamasque.
I don’t speak French. ‘Clair de lune’, according to Google translate, means ‘moonlight’ in English.
Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, a French printer, invented the earliest known sound recording device, the phonautograph, which was patented in France in 1857. In 2008, scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory were able to process what looked like squiggles on paper into the playback of a phonautogram; this is the first earliest recognizable recording of human voice, from 9 April 1860, probably the inventor himself singing part of the French 18th century folk song Au clair de la lune (in English, “By the Light of the Moon”)
“By the Light of the Silvery Moon” is a Tin Pan Alley song written in 1909 by Gus Edwards and Edward Madden. First performed on stage by Lillian Lorraine in the Ziegfield Follies of 1909, several recordings of the song were popular in 1910, and later recordings were popular during the 1940s and 1950s.