Don’t look now… Last night at Wrigley Field the Chicago Cubs had a 3-pitcher combined no-hitter. The pitchers were Shota Imanaga (7 innings), Nate Pearson (8th), and Porter Hodge (9th), and it was the first no-hitter by the Cubs at Wrigley Field since 1972. The last Cubs no-hitter was in 2021 at the Los Angeles Dodgers, and that was a 4-pitcher combined no-hitter.
According to the Elias Sports Bureau, since 1893 when the mound was moved to its current distance, there have been 35 instances of a pitcher throwing at least seven hitless innings in a game but not completing the game.
Lafayette, California is about 25 miles northeast of San Francisco. The city was named after the Marquis de Lafayette. The spelling of the city used to be La Fayette, but in 1932 it was changed to Lafayette. One of the most historic events that occurred there was in the early 1860s when the Pony Express rode through town stopping to get a fresh horse at what is now the intersection of Moraga Road and Mt. Diablo Blvd (approx DD coordinates ▲ 37.892, -122.1187).
The town of LaGrange, Ohio (pop. 2,595 in the 2020 Census) is more indirectly named after the Marquis de Lafayette. It is named after the Château de la Grange-Bléneau, the ancestral Courpalay castle of the family of Lafayette’s wife, Marie Adrienne Françoise de Noailles, Marquise de La Fayette.
“La Grange” is a song by the American rock group ZZ Top. In 1992, music publisher Bernard Besman, who worked with musician John Lee Hooker and was co-credited as songwriter, filed a lawsuit against the band, alleging that “La Grange” infringed on Hooker’s “Boogie Chillen’”. A federal judge dismissed the case in 1995, declaring “Boogie Chillen’” was part of the public domain.
The ZZ Top song “La Grange” is about a real-life brothel outside of La Grange, Texas, known as “The Chicken Ranch.”
The Ranch had operated as a brothel from 1905 until 1973 (the same year that the ZZ Top song was released), when it was finally shut down by county authorities, on the heels of an investigation by a Houston television reporter. The story of the Chicken Ranch, and its closing, was the basis for the Broadway musical, and subsequent film, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
The premise of the movie Still Smokin was that Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong fly to Amsterdam and get mistaken for Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton there to promote The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
Although John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton have all been depicted on The Simpsons, none has been voiced by the actual person.
On April 17, 1976, President Gerald Ford appeared on television screens across the country uttering the famous line: “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!” Pre-recorded in the Oval Office, the sketch appeared at the end of the SNL cold opening which included Ford’s press secretary, Ron Nessman, and Chevy Chase. Nessman had been instrumental in this historic cameo, recalling how Richard Nixon’s pre-recorded appearance on NBC’s Laugh-In preceded his 1968 presidential victory. Unfortunately for Ford, he lost to Jimmy Carter, but he became the first sitting president to appear on a variety show.
Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States, and already the longest-lived American President in history, is just 3 weeks shy of his 100th birthday. Carter, who was born in the same facility where his mother was a nurse, was the first US President to be born in a hospital.
Carter’s Little Pills (originally “Carter’s Little Liver Pills”) were originally a patent medicine, developed by Samuel J. Carter in 1858.
Initially, the pills were advertised as being a treatment for a range of ailments, including headache, constipation, upset stomach, and “biliousness.” In the 1950s, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission forced the manufacturer to remove the word “Liver” from the name, as it was ruled as being deceptive. The current formulation of Carter’s Little Pills has the active ingredient bisacodyl, and it is marketed for constipation relief.
Liverwurst, or liver sausage, is a type of sausage made from liver and/or other organ meat, mixed with spices and cooked before served, either sliced or as a spread. It offers high concentrations of vitamin A, B12, and selenium.
The city of Bismarck, North Dakota was founded by European-American settlers in 1872, at a location which was originally called Missouri Crossing (as it was where Lewis and Clark had crossed the Missouri River during their 1804-06 expedition).
After briefly being named Edwinton (after Edwin Ferry Johnston, the engineer-in-chief of the Northern Pacific Railway), in 1873, the Northern Pacific renamed the settlement Bismarck, in honor of German chancellor Otto von Bismarck. The railway made the name change in an effort to attract German settlers to the region, as well as to attract German investment in the railroad.
Otto I, the Great, who lived in the 900s, was the East Frankish (German) king from 936 and Holy Roman Emperor from 962 until his death in 973. He unified all German tribes into a single kingdom. A 12th-century stained glass depiction of him is in the Cathedral in Strasbourg, France.
The word Ottoman is a historical anglicization of the name of Osman I, the founder of the Empire and of the ruling House of Osman (also known as the Ottoman dynasty).
Shortly after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a committee made up of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin were charged to select a design for an official national seal. They couldn’t come up with a design that pleased the Continental Congress, so William Barton, an artist from Philadelphia, was asked to submit a new design. His offering included a golden eagle, but it was later changed to a bald eagle, a bird native to North America. Franklin was displeased with the choice, and stated that the bird should have been another American native, the turkey. Nevertheless, Barton’s design was finally adopted in 1782.
The story about Benjamin Franklin wanting the National Bird to be a turkey is just a myth. This false story began due to a letter Franklin wrote to his daughter criticizing the original eagle design for the Great Seal, saying that it looked more like a turkey.
In play: The Great Seal actually has two sides. I obverse we commonly see and the reverse with an incomplete pyramid topped by the all-seeing eye and the mottos Annuit cœptis or He has approved our undertakings and Novus ordo seclorum or A new order of the ages.
This reverse of the seal is on the left side of the back of the $1 bill.
