Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio has one of the few law schools in the country led by two co-deans. They are Jessica Berg and Michael Scharf.
In the United States, the 351 Cleveland engine was a Ford V8 engine that began production in 1969. Its actual displacement was 351.9 cubic inches, or 5,766 cc. It was used throughout the Ford and Mercury lineup of cars, including the Ford Torino, Mercury Montego, Ford Mustang, Mercury Cougar, and the Ford Ranchero. There were at least five major variants of the engine, defined by the number of valves per cylinder, its compression ratio, the type of combustion chamber heads, and camshaft duration. One special variant was the 351 Boss engine and it was used only in the 1971 Mustang Boss 351. Ford manufactured 1,806 Boss 351 Mustangs in their only year of production, and its carburetor was made specifically — and only — for the Boss 351. The Boss 351 engine is quite rare. Today, there are only 591 of them registered and accounted for on the Boss 351 Registry site.
Gerald R. Ford, Republican of Michigan, is the only person to serve as both Vice President and President of the United States without having been elected to either post by the voters in a national election.
In 1999, Gerald Ford was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bill Clinton. In 2001, he was presented with the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award for his decision to pardon Richard Nixon to stop the agony America was experiencing over Watergate.
The Steely Dan song “My Old School” is about a 1969 drug bust at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; at that time, both of the band’s founding members, Donald Fagan and Walter Becker, were students at Bard, and a female acquaintance of theirs was said to have been complicit in setting up the bust.
Forty-four Bard students, including Fagan and Becker were rounded up in the raid, which was directed by Duchess County assistant district attorney (and future Watergate burglar) G. Gordon Liddy.
While students at Bard College, one of the first bands formed by Don Fagen and Walter Becker was called the Leather Canary. Another member of that band was the drummer, a fellow student named Chevy Chase.
One of the Canary Islands, La Gomera, has a language which uses whistling. It was invented to cover long distances.
Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans, known professionally as Toots Thielemans, was a Belgian jazz musician. He was mostly known for playing the chromatic harmonica as well as his guitar and whistling skills.
In 1958, at the World Fair in Belgium, a man named Walter Cleyman sold waffles within the World’s Fair compound area. He served them topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit, and dusted with icing sugar. This was different from the standard waffle, popular in the US as a breakfast dish topped with butter and maple syrup. When the fair closed, Cleyman licenced his operation to Smitty’s Pancake House in Seattle, who then opened the “Belgian Waffle Chalet” near the university in Seattle.
On the west side of the University of Washington is University Way NE. Despite being “Way” and not “Avenue”, it is called by the nickname “The Ave.”
“Electric Avenue” is a song by Eddy Grant, and was a major worldwide hit in 1983. The song’s title refers to a street in the Brixton district of South London, and the lyrics refer to a riot between black residents and police in that district in 1981.
The song was later used in television advertising for the electronics department of U.S. department store chain Montgomery Ward, and for U.K. electronics and appliance retailer Currys.
Montgomery Ward was called “Monkey Wards” by some people because it reportedly once offered exotic monkeys in some of its stores and through its mail-order catalog. Today, the store’s website features a Monkey Wards page where customers can shop and place orders for many of the retailer’s popular items.
In 1933, Sears, Roebuck, and Company expanded their catalog offerings with the publication and mailing of their first ‘Christmas Book.’ It was an immediate success, and soon many American kids would eagerly look forward to the arrival of the ‘Wish Book’ in the mail several weeks before Christmas. In fact, in 1968, the catalog was officially renamed to the ‘Sears Wish Book.’ The Wish Book ceased publication in 2011.
Off thread, but man I really loved that catalog as a kid in the 50s.
You and me both. My sisters and I would pore over the pages wishing and hoping.
Of course, we never got what we wanted, but a boy could dream.
The Willis Tower is a skyscraper, located in downtown Chicago. The building was originally named the Sears Tower, as Sears Roebuck & Co. was its original owner, and the building served as the retailer’s corporate headquarters.
Sears moved its offices to suburban Chicago in the early 1990s, and sold the tower in 1994. British insurer Wills Group Holdings obtained naming rights to the building as part of their lease of space in it in 2009.
Sears literally sold everything back in the day. You could buy an appliance or a house from them, or a motorcycle or a rifle. It was all available through the mail-order catalogs.
Sears James was the name of a character in Peter Straub’s novel Ghost Story. He is a member of a clique called The Chowder Society, and every year he and his four friends got together to share ghost stories, all the while keeping a terrible secret amongst themselves.
Clam Chowder was a filk music group from Maryland that played at science fiction conventions up and down the east coast.
“Filk” is a fannish form of music developed at conventions, where people sing songs with science fiction connotations, either solo or in groups. Generally, the songs are done for the entertainment of other filkers, though Clam Chowder and some others did appear with concertsn.
The word is derived from a typo for “folk music.”
A story holds from the 1700s that French soldiers crashed near the coast of Maine and were low on supplies, so they tried putting seafood and pork into a creamy stew and they loved how it tasted. The first ever posted chowder recipe was in the mid 1700s, and clam usage in chowder gained popularity in the 18th century.