The Boston Celtics get their name from the Original Celtics, which played out of New York until disbanding in 1930. The Original Celtics were the first to use screens, pick-and-rolls, and give-and-go plays, and were a successful and profitable team before the Great Depression.
The Great Depression began in the first year of the administration of U.S. President Herbert Hoover. Calvin Coolidge, whom he succeeded, was unimpressed by his fellow Republican despite the great press he got (before the stock market crash in Oct. 1929, at least), and privately called Hoover “Wonder Boy.”
Stanford University officially opened in 1891. The graduating class of 1895, which consisted of 51 students, is often referred to as the ‘Pioneer Class’, because they were the first to graduate after spending all four years at Stanford.
Herbert Hoover was a member of this class.
Like Hoover, two later presidents were hampered by events in their first year in office:
- John F. Kennedy, with the disastrous Bay of Pigs incident.
- George W. Bush, with 9/11.
The famous “Area 51” call on the Art Bell show occurred on 9/11/1998
The Las Vegas Aviators are a minor league (AAA) baseball team, and are a farm team for the (formerly Oakland) Athletics. The Aviators were known as the “Las Vegas 51s” from 2001 to 2018, a reference to the nearby Area 51.
Alienstock was a music festival that took place September 17–21, 2019, near Rachel, NV. A sister event took place at the same time outside of Hiko, NV, called Storm Area 51 Basecamp. Both festivals were created around the Internet event “Storm Area 51”, which promoted a mass incursion of the USAF military base with the purpose of gaining access to Area 51 and “exposing the secret existence of aliens and UFOs.” Roughly 30,000 people attended both festivals, but less than 150 showed up to storm the gates, and no one gained access. The USAF and FBI were aware of the attendees purpose and were out in full force to restrict unauthorized access.
Rachel, NV is a tiny town with a population of 48 people. It is the closest settlement to Area 51 and is on highway NV-375 which was designated as the Extraterrestrial Highway by Nevada in 1996.
Nevada’s tourism commission hoped that this designation would “draw travelers to the austere and remote reaches of south-central Nevada, where old atomic bomb test sites, secret Defense Department airstrips and huge, sequestered tracts of military land create a marketable mystique”.
For the 1996 film, Independence Day, Twentieth Century Fox used the highway’s designation to promote the release of the film. Independence Day was partly shot in Nevada but that was closer to West Wendover, about 300 miles away by car.
The Tonopah Test Range Airport is a military installation in Nellis Air Force Range and approximately 50 miles southeast of the town of Tonopah, NV.
Tonopah is one of the four towns mentioned in the song “Willin’” by Little Feat. The other towns are Tucson (AZ), Tucumcari (NM), and Tehachapi (CA).
The Tehachapi Loop is a section of the Union Pacific Railroad main line approximately 12 miles northwest of Tehachapi, CA.
The single-tracked right-of-way (and a parallel siding) forms a helical spiral loop approximately 3800 feet in circumference in order to gain 77 feet of elevation. Over fifty freight trains per day pass through this loop (passenger service stopped using this route in 1970 with the advent of Amtrak), making it the busiest single-track line in the US.
-“BB”-
The Tehachapi Loop was constructed under the leadership of Southern Pacific’s civil engineers, James R. Strobridge and William Hood, using a predominantly Chinese labor force. Between 1875 and 1876, about 3,000 Chinese workers equipped with little more than hand tools, picks, shovels, horse-drawn carts and blasting powder cut through solid and decomposed granite.
“The Loop” is a circuit of elevated train tracks in downtown Chicago, upon which five of the Chicago Transit Authority’s “L” train lines run as they service downtown stations. Its tracks runs seven blocks north-to-south (running above Wells Street and Wabash Avenue), and five blocks east-to-west (running above Lake Street and Van Buren Street).
The term “the Loop” has also come to be the name for the city’s downtown / central business district.
The flag of Chicago, first adopted in 1917 and consisting of four red six-pointed stars on a white field between two horizontal light-blue stripes, is generally considered one of the best American city flags.
On the Chicago city flag, the points are 30 degrees and the angles between the rays are 90 degrees.
The city motto of Albany, New York is Assiduity which means sticking to the business at hand, or also the quality of acting with constant and careful attention. It is on the Albany Coast of Arms, on the Albany Seal, and on the Albany City Flag. The Albany City Flag has orange, white and blue stripes, and the white stripe bears the city’s 1789 coat of arms which has a farmer and an Indian standing on either side of a shield containing wheat sheaves and a beaver chewing a tree, topped by a Dutch sailing sloop. Beneath that is a scroll containing the city motto: “Assiduity.”
The Erie Canal, which runs for some 363 miles in upstate New York, connects the Hudson River near Albany to the Niagara River near Buffalo. Construction of the canal began in 1817 and was completed in 1825. The canal was an immediate financial success, as tolls from its first year of operation completely covered the construction debt incurred by the state.
John Darling was an American entertainer who built up his legacy to include accomplishing feats, such as single-handedly digging the Eric Canal. He has been compared to other folk heroes, such as Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed, and Pecos Bill.
Per Wiki, a “24-foot Paul Bunyan statue was built for the film [Fargo] (and subsequently dismantled) on Pembina County Highway 1, four miles west of Bathgate, North Dakota, near the Canadian border.”
Paul Bunyan’s logging camp employed a chief clerk named Johnny Inkslinger.
Camp Fire is a co-ed youth development and service organization. Originally founded in 1910, as Camp Fire Girls of America, it was created as a sister organization to the Boy Scouts of America. The Camp Fire Girls began to allow boys as members in 1975, and rebranded at that time as Camp Fire Boys and Girls.