Hudson Bay is the second-largest body of water in the world that uses the word ‘bay’; only the Bay of Bengal is larger.
Rupert’s Land surrounded Hudson’s Bay, and most of it was in present day Canada. But some of it was in present day United States.
For Canada, Rupert’s Land was in Alberta, Manitoba, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Ontario, Quebec, and Saskatchewan.
For the United States, Rupert’s Land was in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana.
While attending Worcester College in Oxford, England, Rupert Murdoch kept a bust of Lenin in his dorm room. Fellow students referred to him as “Red Rupert.”
Worcestershire sauce was commercialized in 1837. In 1838, the first bottles of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce were released to the general public. Worcestershire sauce was named for the town of Worcester, England, in the Shire (county) of Worcester.
Worcestershire has been the subject of a Middle-earth-themed punning, if not cunning, meme for the past several years.
An Internet meme, or simply meme, is a cultural item (idea, behavior, or style) spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. Internet memes can take various forms, such as images, videos, GIFs, and various other viral sensations. The name is from the concept of memes proposed by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in 1972.
American attorney and author Mike Godwin coined the term Internet meme in 1993 when he discussed memes as spreading via messageboards, Usenet groups, and email, and more recently through social media platforms.
Darryl Dawkins was a basketball center, who played for several NBA teams during his career. Dawkins, who entered the NBA directly after high school, was known for his powerful “slam dunks;” in 1979, he shattered glass backboards via dunks twice in a span of three weeks, which led to the league adopting “breakaway” rims.
Dawkins had a number of nicknames, though the one by which he was best known was “Chocolate Thunder,” which was coined by musician Stevie Wonder.
Darryl Dawkins played 15 NBA seasons, to 1989. In that last season, 1989, he played only 14 games for the Detroit Pistons but it was enough to earn him his sole NBA Championship. The Pistons swept the Lakers that year, 4-0. Dawkins did not play in that series.
That’s some A-1 punning there.
In play:
Near the end of the fourth quarter in Game Six of the 1977 NBA Finals, both Darryl Dawkins and Maurice Lucas threw punches at each other. It would elicit an automatic suspension for at least one game today; back then, it was a common sight in professional basketball games. Sports writers look back on that moment and credit it with being a turning point for the Portland Tralblazers, who were trailing (and definitely not blazing) 0-2 to the favored Philadelphia 76ers; Portland would go on to win the next four games and become the next champions of the NBA.
EDIT: Forgot to add that the Blazers swept the Lakers 4-0 to get to the finals.
In the opening of his Jan. 20, 1977 inaugural address at the U.S. Capitol, President Jimmy Carter acknowledged his predecessor, Gerald Ford, saying, “For myself and for our nation, I want to thank my predecessor for all he has done to heal our land” after the upheaval of Watergate. Carter narrowly beat Ford in the 1976 election; the two later became good friends.
The Watergate scandal, which brought down Richard Nixon, was so named for the initial crime which precipitated the broader scandal: the wiretapping of the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in the “Watergate Complex” of buildings in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington D.C.
The name has spawned many nicknames for other scandals and conspiracies, with the appended suffix of “-gate,” including: “Emailgate,” “Irangate” (or “Contragate”), “Climategate”, and “Deflategate.”
In Marvel’s Daredevil universe, Matt Murdock’s law partner is nicknamed “Foggy” Nelson, because, according to Matt, who roomed with him in law school, he snored like a foghorn. Foggy’s real first name is Franklin.
Benjamin Franklin and George Washington were the first two people featured on U.S. postage stamps. Franklin was appointed the first U.S. Postmaster General by the Continental Congress in 1775, and Washington was, of course, the first President of the United States, taking office in 1789.
On 10 November 1775, the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia passed a resolution to establish the Continental Marines, which would later become the US Marine Corps. The resolution called for the enlistment and commissioning of two battalions of Marines to serve as landing forces with the fleet for the duration of the Revolutionary War.
Captain Samuel Nicholas established the first Marine Corps recruiting headquarters at the Tun Tavern on Water Street in Philadelphia, which is considered the birthplace of the Marines. The tavern’s manager, Robert Mullan, was the “chief Marine Recruiter”.
Yes, we were born in a bar.
The Continental Hotel that appears in the John Wick movie franchise is located at One Wall Street, at the intersection of Beaver St and S Williams St in the Financial District of New York City. The building is home to Delmonico’s Restaurant, in what is called the “small flatiron building.” It is one of several unique buildings in New York that were modeled after the iconic Flatiron Building.
“The Continental Hotel”
“The Small Flatiron Building”
Delmonico’s restaurant is featured prominently in Caleb Carr’s 1994 crime thriller The Alienist, about an ad hoc team of crimefighters assembled by Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt to catch a serial killer in 1896 New York City.
A “Delmonico steak” is a term that is most accurately used to describe a thickly-cut ribeye steak, taken from the first three inches of the “chuck eye,” as originally popularized by New York’s Delmonico’s restaurant in the 19th century.
However, the term has come to be used more broadly by many restaurants, for any thickly-cut steak.
The State Drink of New York State is… milk. New York is the third-largest milk producer in the US.
The consumption of milk between species is not unique to humans. Seagulls, sheathbills, skuas, western gulls and feral cats have been reported to directly pilfer milk from the elephant seals’ teats.
The island of Skúvoy, in the central Faroe Islands, is about 4 square miles in size. Skúvoy is named after the large number of great skua present on the island.