North Pacific loggerhead sea turtles migrate back and forth from Baja California to Japan, a distance of 6,000 miles.
Mountain Dew Baja Blast was sold exclusively through Taco Bell for 10 years since its release in 2004 until it was available in stores in 2014.
Taco Bell was founded in 1962 by entrepreneur Glen Bell. The first location was a 400 square foot building in Downey, California. Two years later, the first franchisee opened, and by 1967 there were 100 restaurants. Today, there are over 7,000 locations worldwide.
The #1 overall draft pick in the 1977 NFL Draft was running back Ricky Bell from USC. He was drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, back when they were in the AFC West division (yes, West). The other expansion team from 1976, the Seahawks, has also been in the AFC West. The Seahawks moved to the NFC West, and the Buccaneers moved to the NFC Central.
Ricky Bell didn’t have a long career. He played five seasons for the Buccaneers and one for the Chargers, and then was done. He died young, at just 29, from heart failure brought on my dermatomyositis which is an inflammatory condition that attacks the skin and muscles.
Alexander Graham Bell’s mother and wife were both deaf, and his main concern was to teach deaf people to communicate orally rather than use sign language. He was much more interested in his work with integrating deaf people into the speaking community than in his invention of the telephone.
Recent researchers have seen Bell and his work as destructive to deaf individuals and their community. Katie Booth’s recent biography of Bell is written from this perspective, saying “When my grade-school social studies book said that Alexander Graham Bell was the inventor of the telephone, it sounded as absurd to me as introducing Adolf Hitler as a vegetarian who once ruled over Germany”.
American Sign Language (ASL) is the predominant sign language used by Deaf communities in the United States and Anglophone Canada. It originated at the American School for the Deaf, in Hartford, Connecticut, in the early 19th Century.
Hartford, Connecticut is the historic international center of the insurance industry. Several companies are based in Hartford:
- Aetna
- Conning & Company
- The Hartford
- Harvard Pilgrim Health Care
- The Phoenix Companies
- Hartford Steam Boiler
Companies with major operations located in Hartford:
- Prudential Financial
- Lincoln National Corporation
- Sun Life Financial Travelers
- United Healthcare
- Axa XL
It was aboard his flagship USS Hartford at the 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay that Rear Adm. David Glasgow Farragut is said to have uttered the immortal words, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”
In the original Star Trek television series, the USS Farragut (ship registry NCC-1647) had been the ship on which James T. Kirk (the future captain of the USS Enterprise) had first served after his graduation from Starfleet Academy.
On June 8, 1647, England’s parliament abolished Easter and Christmas as holidays.
In the US, Christmas is the only religious holiday that is a federal holiday. Some businesses allow employees of non-Christian religions to take paid time off for their religious observances.
December 25 was selected as the day to celebrate Christmas in part because it is nine months after the date linked to the conception of Jesus, March 25, which is celebrated as the Feast of the Annunciation. The Annunciation is the date observed for recognizing the archangel Gabriel’s visit to the Virgin Mary, when he informed her that she would be the mother of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
According to Christianity.com, there are just four angels explicitly named in the Bible: Gabriel, Michael, Lucifer, and Abaddon.
The Los Angeles Angels was founded in 1961 by Gene Autry as one of MLB’s first two expansion teams and the first to originate in California.
Gene Autry was an actor and singer, known as “The Singing Cowboy.” In addition to starring in a large number of Western films in the 1930s and 1940s, he had a successful recording career, and was one of the pioneers of country music.
Some of Autry’s novelty holiday recordings, including “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Here Comes Santa Claus,” still regularly receive airplay during the Christmas season.
The late Gene Roddenberry and former President Bill Clinton share a birthday, August 19, in 1921 and 1946, respectively.
While still married to his first wife, Gene Roddenberry became involved with both Nichelle Nichols and Majel Barrett. In 1969 he got a divorce and married Majel in Japan. Majel remained married to him until his death in 1991, even as he maintained a long-term relationship with his executive assistant, Susan Sackett.
Nichelle Nichols’s younger brother was a member of the Heaven’s Gate cult. They lived in a mansion in Encinitas, California, about 25 miles north of San Diego. Their mansion’s address was 18241 Paseo Victoria, Encinitas. On 3/25/1997, when Comet Hale–Bopp made its closest approach to the Earth, 39 members of the cult committed mass suicide by eating phenobarbital mixed with apple sauce or pudding, washing it down with vodka, and tying plastic bags onto their heads to suffocate themselves.
Nichols’s brother was among these 39 members. They believed that after their deaths a UFO flying behind the comet would take their souls to another “level of existence above human”, a physical and spiritual state.
The American Humane Association (AHA) was barred from monitoring the animals on set of Heaven’s Gate, prompting protests from animal rights groups across the country at screenings. The film was largely responsible for sparking the now-common use of the “No animals were harmed …” disclaimer and more rigorous supervision of animal acts by the AHA, which had been inspecting film production since the 1940s.
“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”, a song written and performed by Bob Dylan, was written for the soundtrack of the 1973 film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. It was released as a single two months after the premier of the film, and it rose as high as #12 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart.