The same soundstage at Paramount Studios in Hollywood was used for the Enterprise sets for the first three Star Trek films, as well as for the Enterprise-D in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the Voyager in Star Trek: Voyager.
The Engineering sets for all three ships were built in the same part of the soundstage, centered on a hole in the soundstage floor which had originally been dug for the Enterprise’s “warp core” (for Star Trek: The Motion Picture), to convey the illusion that the warp core extended both up and down from the main deck of Engineering.
(Source: a friend of mine named Al Smutko, who was the construction coordinator on ST:TNG and ST:V, who related the story to me when he took me on a tour of the Voyager set.)
The Enterprise-D’s warp core can be seen in the background of this image:
The Enterprise’s warp engines was a technology that allowed space travel at faster-than-light speeds. It worked by generating warp fields to form a subspace bubble. In the STAR TREK prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise, the warp engines are described as a “Gravimetric Field Displacement Manifold” that uses a matter/anti-matter reaction to create a displacement field.
Warp drive is a fictional concept but today’s conceptual Alcubierre drive could achieve apparent faster-than-light travel by contracting space in front of a space ship and expanding space behind it. It was proposed by theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre in 1994 and is based on a solution of Einstein’s field equations. Since those solutions are metric tensors, the Alcubierre drive is also referred to as Alcubierre metric.
“Time Warp” is a song featured in the 1973 rock musical The Rocky Horror Show, and comes from a dance performed during the chorus of the song. The song is both an example and a parody of the dance song genre, with much of its lyrics consisting of instructions for performing the dance, and has become one of the major audience participation activities during screenings of the film and live performances of the show.
In weaving, warp threads are the vertical threads on the loom frame or rolls, while the weft is the horizontal thread that goes across and through the warp threads. The contrasting colours of the warp and weft threads form the pattern.
British actor Hugo Weaving is known for several signature roles, including Agent Smith in the Matrix films, Elrond in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films, and V in V for Vendetta. He also starred as Tick/Mitzi in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (his breakthrough role), and as Johann Schmidt/The Red Skull in Captain America: The First Avenger.
Hugo Darracott is the protagonist of The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer. A major in the Army who unexpectedly becomes heir to his grandfather, Lord Darracott, he is snubbed by some cousins and patronized by others, but has hidden depths, as his family and a local revenue enforcement officer discover.
In the first season of the TV military comedy MASH, lovers Dr. Frank Burns and Head Nurse Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan, RN, both held the rank of major in the U.S. Army. Drs. Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce and “Trapper” John McIntyre were both captains, Fr. Francis John Patrick Mulcahy, SJ, was a first lieutenant, Walter “Radar” O’Reilly and Max Klinger were both corporals and the 4077th MASH unit’s commanding officer, Dr. Henry Blake, was a lieutenant colonel.
Edward Blake was a prominent Liberal MP in the Canadian House of Commons, notable for playing a major role in bringing down the Conservative government of John A. Macdonald over the Pacific Scandal. He later was a member of the British House of Commons, holding an Irish seat. The Canadian actor Hume Cronyn was a descendent of one of Blake’s relatives.
Johnny “Blue Moon” Odom was a baseball pitcher, primarily with the Kansas City and Oakland A’s in the 1960s and early 1970s; he pitched for the A’s teams which won three consecutive World Series titles in 1972-74. Odom’s nickname was given to him in childhood, by a classmate who thought that his round face looked like a moon.
Damn Yankees was a rock supergroup, which originally formed in 1989. The band consisted of singer/guitarist Tommy Shaw (of Styx), singer/bassist Jack Blades (of Night Ranger), guitarist Ted Nugent, and drummer Michael Cartellone.
They had two top-40 hits in the U.S.: their signature song, “High Enough” (#3), and “Where You Goin’ Now” (#20).
During the first two years of the Tonys (1947 and 1948), there was no official Tony Award. The winners were presented with a scroll and, in addition, a money clip, a cigarette lighter (for the men) or a compact (for the women).
Harry S. Truman, Democrat of Missouri, was elected President of the United States in 1948 in an upset win over Thomas Dewey, Republican of New York. Then-Vice President Truman had become President three years earlier upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democrat of New York. Truman’s running mate, Sen. Alben Barkley, Democrat of Kentucky, is still the oldest person (71) ever elected Vice President.
Barkley had a long career in the Senate, prior to becoming Vice-president. Two years after his term of office as Veep ended, Barkley re-entered politics and won the election for the junior Senate seat from Kentucky in 1954. The senior senator from Kentucky offered to cede his place in the front row of the Senate, but Barkley declined, taking the accustomed back row of a junior senator.
In 1956, Barkley gave a speech at a convention in which he explained his decision. Citing Psalm 84:10, he said: “I’m glad to sit on the back row, for I would rather be a servant in the House of the Lord than to sit in the seats of the mighty”. There was tremendous applause.
Lake Barkley is a reservoir lake in western Kentucky, created in 1966 when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers impounded the Cumberland River with the Barkley Dam, about 38 miles south of where the Cumberland empties into the Ohio River.
Both the lake and the dam are named after Kentucky native, and former U.S. Senator and Vice President, Alben Barkley.
Jimmy Carter, who recently turned 100 years old, is the longest-living President of the United States. The longest-living Vice President was John Garner, who was 98 years and 350 days old when he died in 1967. Garner was FDR’s vice-president for the first two terms of Roosevelt’s presidency.
Garner retired to Texas after politics. On the morning of Garner’s 95th birthday, President Kennedy, who was in town, called to wish him a happy birthday.
