According to usmint.gov there are 147.3 million ounces of gold in the reserves at Fort Knox KY. The standard size of a gold bar is 7” x 3⅝” x 1¾”. That’s small enough to fit in your front pants pocket, except it would weigh over 27 pounds.
In Christie’s Cards on the Table, a bid of a grand slam helps Poirot identify the killer.
The dapper and remarkably keen detective Hercule Poirot, who first appeared in print in 1920, was not, as others sometimes mistook him, a Frenchman, but was, instead, Belgian.
Poirot’s name was derived from two other fictional detectives of the time: Marie Belloc Lowndes’ Hercule Popeau and Frank Howel Evans’ Monsieur Poiret, a retired French police officer living in London.
The character of Hercule Poirot was likely based on Jacques Hornais, a Belgian gendarme who fled Belgium for Britain in 1914, when the Germans invaded. Christie, who was 24 at the time, may have met him during a wartime fundraising event in Torquay, England, at which she played the piano.
Hercule Poirot appeared in 33 novels, two plays, and 51 short stories published from 1920 until 1975, when Agatha Christie published Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case. This was Christie’s final novel published before her own death. In the story, Poirot dies, and then the New York Times published his obituary on its front page. Hercule Poirot is the only fictional character to receive an obituary on the front page of The New York Times.
Agatha Christie’s Poirot was a British television mystery series, which starred David Suchet as detective Hercule Poirot.
Over the course of 24 years and 70 episodes (all of which starred Suchet), the series adapted every one of Agatha Christie’s major written works which featured the character; the final episode, an adaptation of Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case, initially aired in 2013.
There have been over 30 movies made based on Agatha Christie stories, many of which feature Hercule Poirot. Actor Peter Ustinov played the role several times, including the 1978 film Death on the Nile. Of Poirot, Ustinov said “I find Poirot a very engaging character, although he’s quite awful, really. I should hate to know him.”
Besides Peter Ustinov, Hercule Poirot has also been portrayed by Orson Welles, John Malkovich, José Ferrer, Tony Randall, Albert Finney, Alfred Molina, Kenneth Branagh, and Tom Conti.
Einstein’s Universe was a 1979 television documentary, co-produced by the BBC and WGBH (Boston’s public television station) in commemoration of the centenary of Albert Einstein’s birth. Hosted by Peter Ustinov, the documentary featured a group of physicists explaining and illustrating Einstein’s theories, in particular the theory of General Relativity.
In 1632, Galileo Galilei described the principle known as Galilean relativity, or Galilean invariance, where he used the example of a ship travelling at constant velocity, without rocking, on a smooth sea; any observer below the deck would not be able to tell whether the ship was moving or stationary.
Rocket Ship Galileo is Heinlein’s first juvenile novel, featuring teenagers who build a rocket ship, travel to the moon, and discover moon nazis!
Surf Nazis Must Die is a 1987 movie generally regarded as one of the worst movies ever made. It was produced by Troma, a studio known for making schlocky horror films like The Toxic Avenger and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.
“Black Monday”, October 19, 1987, was a worldwide stock market crash where $1.7 trillion was lost globally. Markets first crashed in Asia, then in Europe, and then in the US. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 508 points, or 22.6 percent. It was the largest one-day drop by percentage in the index’s history.
“Black Sunday” was a 1975 novel by Thomas Harris (made into a movie in 1977), in which a “Black September”-like terrorist group creates a massive anti-personnel bomb, then hijacks the Goodyear blimp in order to detonate the device over a packed football stadium during the Super Bowl.
-“BB”-
Black September was the group responsible for the Munich Massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics. Eight members of the Palestinian militant organization infiltrated the Olympic Village, killed two members of the Israeli Olympic team, and took nine others hostage. West German police ambushed the terrorists, and killed five of the eight Black September members, but the rescue attempt failed and all of the hostages were killed. Two of the three surviving gunmen were allegedly killed by Mossad as part of Operation Wrath of God, although this has been disputed. The third surviving gunman, Jamal Al-Gashey, was known to be alive as of 1999, hiding in North Africa or in Syria, and claiming to still fear retribution from Israel. While Mossad killed several prominent Palestinians during the operation, they never managed to kill the mastermind behind Munich, Abu Daoud.
Mossad was formed on December 13, 1949, as the Central Institute for Coordination at the recommendation of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Ben Gurion wanted a central body to coordinate and improve cooperation between the existing security services.
In March 1951, it was reorganized and incorporated into the prime minister’s office, reporting directly to the Prime Minister of Israel. Due to Mossad’s accountability directly to the prime minister and not to the
Knesset, it has been described as a “deep state”.
Harry Truman, Democrat of Missouri, was sworn in for his only full term in office as President of the United States on Jan. 20, 1949. Also sworn in was Alben Barkley, Democrat of Kentucky, his running mate, friend and former Senate colleague. At age 71 that day, Barkley was and remains the oldest-ever Vice President.
There have been nine US vice-presidents who assumed the office of the President due to the death or resignation of the preceding President. This list includes John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Gerald Ford. Of these nine, four went on to win election as president in their own right: Roosevelt, Coolidge, Truman, and Lyndon Johnson.
Since the US presidential election in 1800, every sitting President at each 20-year interval has experienced a major event in their lives.
- 1800: Thomas Jefferson
- 1820: James Monroe
Both men died on the fourth of July, the anniversary of the founding of the United States. - 1840: William H Harrison; the first sitting President to die in office (1840)
- 1860: Abraham Lincoln; assassinated in office (1865)
- 1880: James Garfield; assassinated in office (1881)
- 1900: William McKinley; died in office (1901)
- 1920: Warren G Harding; died in office (1923)
- 1940: Franklin D Roosevelt; died in office (1945)
- 1960: John F Kennedy; assassinated in office (1963)
- 1980: Ronald Reagan; survived attempted assassination (1981)
- 2000: George W Bush; oversaw the events of 9/11/01, the deadliest attack on the continental US in a single day
- 2020: Joseph Biden; oversaw the deadliest attack on US citizens by foreign agent (Covid-19) (2020 - )