Petersburg is a rare example of a town with tha same name in both Virginia and West Virginia, owing to it all being the same state before 1860. Petersburg WV was a settlement of little account then, but has since grown to over 2,000. In 1830, it was the population center of the USA – a point that has mow moved to central Missouri.
There are about 200 miles between the Petersburg in VA and the Petersburg in WV (map >> Google Maps). And then there are about 3,400 more miles to Petersburg AK (map >> https://goo.gl/maps/Nv1ymmJR5yimFYRo9).
Petersburg VA was named after Peter Jones, a settler from the 1600s.
Petersburg WV was named after Jacob Peterson, a businessman from the 1700s.
Petersburg AK was named after Peter Buschmann, a Norwegian immigrant from the 1800s.
Petersburg NY was named after Peter Simmons, an early settler. It is in Rensselaer County.
Petersburg CA was named after Peter Gardett, a businessman from the 1800s. It is in Kern County, or at least it was.
Petersburg GA was named after Petersburg VA.
The two Petersburgs in the USA that are farthest apart are Petersburg GA and Petersburg AK: they are 3,660 miles apart (map >> https://goo.gl/maps/zN9hGuncfUMHrBk7A).
There is another Petersburg CA, or at least there was. It was the former name of Greasertown CA. That is in Calaveras County, up in gold country, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.
There is no Petersburg NV. But there is a St. Petersburg Drive in eastern Las Vegas NV.
There is also a Petersburg ON CAN.
Peter the Great was chosen as Tsar in 1682 at the age of 10, after his father’s death. Because of political disputes, he jointly ruled for a time with his half-brother Ivan V. During this time, Ivan’s sister Sophia acted as regent. A special two-seated throne was designed for the brothers, with a large hole cut in the back, so Sophia could listen to the goings-on and feed the brothers information and answers to questions and problems.
This throne can be seen in the Kremlin Armoury in Moscow.
Peter the Great is commonly considered one of the enlightened despots of Europe in the 17th and 18th century, along with Frederick the Great of Prussia, Charles III of Spain, Frederick VI of Denmark, Catherine the Great of Russia, and Joseph II of Austria (who characterized his governance as “Everything for the people, nothing by the people”), among others.
The 1986 fantasy-adventure film Highlander starred Christopher Lambert as a Scotsman named Connor MacLeod, who discovers that he is an immortal. The film also starred Sean Connery as Juan Ramirez, a fellow immortal who mentors MacLeod, and teaches him that the immortals can only be killed by decapitation, and that they are fated to fight and kill one another until only one remains, who will claim “the Prize” of knowledge and power.
When Ramirez first meets MacLeod, he introduces himself as, “Juan Sánchez Villalobos Ramírez, chief metallurgist to King Charles V of Spain.”
(34 years later, I still wonder about the casting of a Frenchman as a Scottish Highlander, and a Scotsman as a Spaniard. 
)
In 1987; Sao Paulo Brazil began the creation of Villa-Lobos State Park, on an urban wasteland used for a garbage dump, demolition rubble and dredging material. Now the park has 37,000 trees, and hosts 5,000 visitors on week-daays to 30;000 on weekends. It is a music-themed park, named for composer Heito Villla-Lobos.
Sailor’s Creek Battlefield State Park is one of the newest Virginia state parks, having opened in 1985. It preserves the site of one of the last battles fought by Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia as it retreated west from Petersburg and Richmond in April 1865, in the last days of the American Civil War.
The 1985 film* White Nights*, starring Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gregory Hines, Helen Mirren and Isabella Rossellini, was also notable for having captured genuine street scenes of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) at a time when filming in the Soviet Union by Western production companies was difficult.
Gregory Hines had been a successful tap dancer and entertainer from childhood, but did not begin his career as a film actor until 1980, when he was in his mid 30s.
Just days before filming of Mel Brooks’ History of the World: Part 1 was to start, one of the film’s stars, Richard Pryor, suffered severe burns after lighting himself on fire while freebasing cocaine and drinking rum. With Pryor hospitalized and unable to continue with the movie, one of the film’s other stars, Madeline Kahn, suggested to Brooks that he consider Hines for the role.
Despite the baking mixes using his name, Duncan Hines was not a chef or even a cook. He was an author who wrote about restaurants worth visiting while traveling across the country.
Famous child actor and adult director Ron Howard was the son of two actors. His father, Rance Howard, appeared in dozens of well-known anf highly rated pictures. His mother appeared in over 30 sitcoms. Despite his film-connected family, Ron Howard was born in Duncan, Oklahoma, while his father was serving in the armed forces.
The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., includes six major league players who were born in Oklahoma: Johnny Bench, Mickey Mantle, Joe Rogan, Willie Stargell, Lloyd Waner and Paul Waner.
Joe Rogan played the handyman at WNYX on the TV show NewsRadio.
With the withdrawal of US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) from the race for the Democratic Party presidential race, former Vice President Joe Biden (D-Dela.) is now a virtual lock for the nomination. Biden is 77, four years older than the incumbent, President Donald Trump (R-Fla.). In November, they will be the two oldest major-party candidates to face off in US history.
George Thorogood is a blues-rock musician, originally from Wilmington, Delaware. Thorogood formed a band in the early 1970s, the Delaware Destroyers, though the band’s name was soon shortened to simply “the Destroyers,” the “Delaware Destroyers” name is still sometimes used.
Thorogood and the Destroyers continue to perform and tour, nearly fifty years after the band’s founding.
Delaware was named after the Delaware River, which was named in honor of Sir Thomas West (Lord De La Warr), who was the ruling governor of the colony of Virginia when Europeans first explored the river.
The first European exploration of the Delaware River was a Dutch East India Company expedition led by Henry Hudson, an English navigator who had been hired to find a western route to China.
Today, the Delaware River forms part of the boundary between Pennsylvania and New York, the entire boundary between New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and most of the boundary between Delaware and New Jersey.
Jersey in the Channel Islands is the home of the Jersey Zoo, formerly known as the Durrell Wildlife Park, founded by the naturalist, zookeeper and author Gerald Durrell, who wrote around forty books about his life as an animal collector and enthusiast, the most famous being* My Family and Other Animals* (1956). His memoirs of his family’s years living in Greece were adapted into two television series (My Family and Other Animals, 1987, and The Durrells, 2016–2019) and one television film (My Family and Other Animals, 2005).
Gerald was the youngest brother of novelist Lawrence Durrell. In 2012, when the Nobel Records were opened after 50 years, it was revealed that Lawrence Durrell had been on a shortlist of authors considered for the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, along with American John Steinbeck (winner), British poet Robert Graves, French writer Jean Anouilh, and the Danish Karen Blixen.
The word “jersey” used as a garment, was used mainly in Britain, to mean “pullover knit long-sleeved sweater”, but since 1970, became widely used in America as the upper part of a sports uniform. Sleeveless for basketball and buttoned for baseball, the sports jersey bears no resemblance at all to the British jersey.
In hockey, the jersey is called a sweater.