The President is the de facto but not de jure head of state of the United States.
Eight vice-Presidents have assumed the office of the President of the United States due to the death of their predecessor. This list includes John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry S. Truman, and Lyndon B. Johnson. Additionally, Gerald Ford became President when his predecessor resigned the office.
Bonnie Tyler is a Welsh rock singer. Known for her husky singing voice, Tyler had several hit songs in the 1970s and 1980s.
While her breakthrough was “It’s a Heartache” (1977), her biggest hit was a collaboration with songwriter/producer Jim Steinman (best-known for his work on Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell”), the 1983 song “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which went to #1, and was certified platinum, in the UK, U.S., and Canada.
In North Wales, in the town of Llandudno, Conwy County Borough, located on the Creuddyn peninsula protruding into the Irish Sea, in 1999 there used to be a post office at coordinates ▲ 53.3211, -3.81085. Today a St. David’s Hospice is there.
In 1999 in the post office, flaws in the new system accounting software called Horizon created hundreds if not thousands of false shortfalls. About 700 subpostmasters were falsely accused of theft and required to repay the false shortfalls. The court cases, criminal convictions, imprisonments, loss of livelihoods and homes, debts, and bankruptcies led to stress, illness, family breakdowns and at least four suicides.
“Mr. Bates vs The Post Office” (2024) is a 4-part series documenting the injustice, scandal, and eventual justice of the British Post Office scandal. It is not available for rent but can be purchased for $10 on Amazon. Comment: Mrs. Bullitt and I watched it yesterday and it is quite good.
The phrase, “going postal”, derives from a series of incidents involving U.S. Postal workers, who shot and killed fellow workers and members of the public in 1986.
The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government.
Prior to 1971, the United States Post Office Department was a Cabinet department; the 1970 Postal Reorganization Act eliminated the old Post Office Department, and created the USPS.
The first use of a postal system is believed to have occurred in Egypt in about 2400 BC when Pharaohs used trusted couriers to send out decrees throughout the country.
The Pony Express was an express mail service operated by the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company for 18 months, beginning in 1860. It connected California to the east coast, promising speedy delivery of mail (10 days from St Joseph, MO, to Sacramento, CA.).
The Sacramento Kings are a professional basketball team which plays in the NBA. They are the oldest team in the NBA, having been originally founded as the Rochester (New York) Seagrams in 1923, over twenty years before the formation of the NBA.
They became the Rochester Royals in 1945, and joined what would become the NBA in 1948. The Royals moved to Cincinnati in 1957, then relocated again to Kansas City (and, for a few years, also played in Omaha) in 1972, where they were re-named the Kings. The team finally moved to Sacramento in 1985.
The over 1,800 mile Pony Express route crossed 9 states, from Missouri to Kansas to Nebraska to Colorado to Wyoming to Utah to Nevada to California. It roughly followed the Oregon and California trails to Fort Bridger WY, and then the Mormon Trail (known as the Hastings Cutoff) to Salt Lake City UT. From there, it followed the Central Nevada Route to Carson City NV before passing over the Sierra and reaching to Sacramento CA.
It’s always surprised me that the Pony Express, in existence for less than two years, should still be remembered as well as it is.
In play:
Utah, Minnesota and Mississippi have all adopted new state flags in recent years. Maine is now also considering a change, as is the city of Cleveland, Ohio.
The first LDS settlers in the Salt Lake Valley wanted to call the new territory ‘Deseret’, a word that means ‘honeybee’ in the Book of Mormon. Although the state was eventually called Utah, after the Native America Ute tribe, the state is still known as the Beehive State, and the Beehive is the official symbol of the State of Utah.
I “rode” for the Pony Express, briefly… while living in Seattle during the late 1980s. It was a business courier service, and I used a delivery van.
The beehive is a hairstyle in which long hair is piled up in a conical shape on the top of the head and slightly backwards pointing, giving some resemblance to the shape of a traditional beehive. It is also known as the B-52 due to a resemblance to the distinctive nose of the Boeing B-52 Strategic Bomber.
The Boeing B-47 Stratojet was the backbone of SAC, Strategic Air Command, in the 1950s. In 1959 the B-52 started replacing it. The last of the B-47s were out of SAC service by 1966.
Delta-winged Convair B-58 Hustlers (IMHO some of the coolest-looking jet bombers ever) appeared as SAC Vindicators in the 1964 Cold War drama Fail Safe, starring Henry Fonda, Larry Hagman and Walter Matthau.
The B-58 Hustler (and I agree, very cool looking; I built the scale model as a teenager) was the Air Force’s first operational supersonic bomber. B-58s flew in SAC, the Strategic Air Command, in the 1960s. They set 19 different world speed and altitude records, including the longest non-stop supersonic flight in history on 16 October 1963, when a B-58 named Greased Lightning flew 8,028 miles from Tokyo to London in 8 hours, 35 minutes, and 20.4 seconds.
Of a total of 116 ever built, today, only eight aircraft survive. They are located:
➤ Grissom Air Museum, near Peru, Indiana
➤ Little Rock Air Force Base, Jacksonville, Arkansas
➤ Edwards Air Force Base, Edwards, California
➤ Castle Air Museum, Atwater, California
➤ Lackland AFB, San Antonio, Texas
➤ Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio
➤ SAC & Aerospace Museum near Ashland, Nebraska
➤ Pima Air & Space Museum, adjacent to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, in Tucson, Arizona
➜ Surviving B-58 Hustlers | B-58 Hustler Association | Ensuring the Legacy for Future Generations
➜ Redirecting...
➜ Convair B-58 Hustler - Wikipedia
The Chevrolet Corvair was produced from 1960 - 69, and featured an air-cooled, rear-mounted engine. It was available in 4-door sedan, 2-door coupe, convertible, 4-door station wagon, passenger van, commercial van, and pickup truck body styles in its first generation (1960–1964), and as a 2-door coupe, convertible or 4-door hardtop in its second (1965–1969). In 1965 it was critiqued by consumer activist Ralph Nader in his book, Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of The American Auto.
Ralph Nader, who recently turned 90, was born in Winsted, Connecticut to Lebanese immigrants. Nader graduated from The Gilbert School and was subsequently offered a scholarship to Princeton. However, his father forced him to decline the scholarship, because the family could afford his tuition and the funds should go to a student who could not afford it.
Not in play:
Each year, there’s a reenactment ride of the Pony Express, which covers the original ride over a 10-day period. It’s a 24x7 event, with the riders carrying a GPS beacon so the ride can be tracked in real time. This year, the ride started on June 17, and the rider is currently near North Platte, Nebraska. Here’s the link to the real-time tracker:
Carry on.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University. She has described her time at Princeton as life-changing; after growing up in housing projects in the Bronx, she felt like “a visitor landing in an alien country,”