John Travolta earned his private pilot’s license around 1976, when he was 22 (and when he was playing Vinnie Barbarino in Welcome Back, Kotter). Today he owns several aircraft, including a Boeing 707-138 that was previously part of Qantas Airways’ fleet.
Tom Cruise is also a licensed pilot with qualifications as a multi-engine instrument-rated pilot and helicopter flying skills. He owns a collection of airplanes, including a vintage P-51 Mustang fighter from World War II and a Gulfstream IV G4 jet.
When President Jimmy Carter cancelled the B-1 Lancer bomber project, the Defense Department considered modifying Boeing 747s as cruise missile carriers, but did not do so. Ronald Reagan, Carter’s successor, revived the B-1 program, and the warplanes remain an important part of the US Air Force arsenal.
Thiamine (also known as vitamin B1) is an important micronutrient for humans and animals. It is present in a number of foods, including whole grains, legumes, and some meats and fish, but is also frequently added to processed foods, or taken as a nutritional supplement. Thiamine deficiency can lead to a number of medical conditions, including beriberi, Wernicke encephalopathy, and Korsakoff syndrome.
There are 8 vitamins recognized as ‘B’ vitamins: B1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, and 12.
Numbers 4, 8, 10, and 11 are substances once thought to be vitamins, but were disqualified once discovered to be either manufactured by the body or not essential for life.
Life is an American magazine published weekly from 1883 to 1972, as an intermittent “special” until 1978, a monthly from 1978 until 2000, and an online supplement since 2008. In its heyday, about one quarter of the American population saw the magazine every week.
Life Cereal was introduced in 1963 by Quaker Oats. Original mascots of the cereal were munchkin-like characters; in the 1970s the character of “Little Mikey” was introduced. Current variations of the cereal today include Cinnamon, Vanilla, and Chocolate.
Little Rock, Arkansas is the home of the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum. Clinton is the only person born in Arkansas to become President of the United States. Per Wiki, its archives are the largest of all presidential libraries, and contain 2 million photographs, 80 million pages of documents, 21 million emails and 79,000 artifacts from the Clinton Presidency.
Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas started as Hot Springs Reservation on April 20, 1832. Although it is not the first national park, it was the first area the US Government set aside as protected federal land for recreation.
I visited this library last July. It is excellent. One of the better presidential libraries I’ve been to. A few days later I was in Boston and visited the JFK library. That was disappointing. Whereas Clinton’s had lots of material and coverage and displays, JFK’s was quite light.
Most Americans are aware that Yellowstone was the first national park, established in 1872. The newest of the 63 national parks is New River Gorge in West Virginia, established in 2020. The New River Gorge itself is the deepest river gorge east of the Mississippi River. The New River originates in North Carolina, flowing north through Virginia into the West Virginia mountains to the Kanawha River, which continues to the Ohio River.
The US Postal Service issued a set of ten postage stamps in May 2022, paying tribute to the enduring power, beauty, history and usefulness of the “Mighty Mississippi” River.
Show Boat is a 1927 musical based on Edna Ferber’s best-selling novel of the same name. The musical follows the lives of the performers, stagehands and dock workers on the Cotton Blossom, a Mississippi River show boat, over 40 years from 1887 to 1927. Its themes include racial prejudice and tragic, enduring love.
Although no evidence has been uncovered to support this, the general consensus is that Amelia Earhart died after crashing into the South Pacific Ocean near Howland Island on or about July 2, 1937. Different theories ascribe her disappearance to being captured (and executed) by Japanese forces, abducted by aliens, or surfacing under an assumed identity of a New Jersey housewife.
Amelia Earhart was born and raised in Atchison, Kansas, a town of 11,000 located along the Missouri River in the northeastern corner of the state. Atchison, founded in 1854, was named for Missouri Senator David Rice Atchison, who purportedly served as US President for a day, although he never took the oath of office.
The SS Amelia Earhart was a US Liberty ship built during World War II. She launched in December 1942 and made it through the entirety of WWII. She took part in the largest convoy of the war, in July/August of 1944 and comprising 166 ships. The 166 merchant ships were arranged in 19 parallel columns to produce a formation approximately 9 miles wide and 4 miles long.
The Liberty Dollar coin, also known as “Flowing Hair Dollar”, was the first coin minted by the US in 1794. The image was based on the popular Spanish dollar coin, used in trade at the time. In 1795 the image was replaced with the “Draped Bust” dollar. Both images depicted a woman’s face, seen from the right side, with an image of an eagle on its obverse.
