John Browning (1855-1926) was born in Ogden, in Utah Territory. He made his first firearm at the age of 13. He is regarded as one of the most successful firearms designers of the 19th and 20th centuries, and pioneered the development of modern automatic and semi-automatic firearms. His Colt M1911 went on to serve as the US’s standard military side arm until 1986; and a variant is still used by special operations units of the US Marine Corps. The design remains very popular amongst civilian shooters and some police departments.
Utah Territory was originally formed in 1850. Eleven years later, its size was greatly reduced by separating most of Nevada and western Colorado, and the shape of present Utah with the upper corner going to Wyoming. John Browning was born in the expanded version, but Ogden is still in Utah.
Utah’s official state nickname is The Beehive State because of the word “Deseret”. Deseret was the name of the area and territory that Brigham Young, with his expansionist view of the territory, and his Mormon pioneers were settling. According to the Book of Mormon, Deseret was an ancient word for “honeybee”. The territory was given the name Utah after the Ute tribe of Native Americans.
Beeive-shaped homes are found in many places around the world; they are conical with no windows and named for their likeness to a straw beehive. Swaziland has straw beehive houses, including a group where tourists can stay. Turkey and Ireland have stone beehive huts; the ancient Clochán huts of Kerry were featured in episodes 7 and 8 of the Star Wars Saga.
The Beehive House in Salt Lake City was one of the official residences of Brigham Young. Built in 1854, Young lived there until his death in 1877. The house gets its name from the beehive sculpture atop it.
Lake City, Florida, is the unofficial capital of “The Real Florida”, the northern part of the state still surrounded be swamps and alligators, not theme parks and mobile homes. Only 12,000 people, near the Georgia line and the Okeefenokee, Lake City is the home town of seven ex-NFL players, including announcer Pat Summerall.
Pat Summerall died seven years ago. He now rests in Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery. He was a Private who served during the Korean War with the US Army.
Pat Summerall was primarily a placekicker during his NFL career, though he also played both defensive end and tight end.
However, Summerall was born with a deformed right foot (the foot with which he would eventually kick footballs) – the foot was pointed backwards. When Summerall was still an infant, a doctor broke bones in his leg, and reset it with the foot pointed in the correct direction.
Ben Agajanian was another NFL kicker with a deformed kicking foot. He lost the toes of his foot in an industrial accident, and kicked with a square boot.
Glenn Cunningham lost all the toes on his left foot when he was badly burned in an accident in February of 1916 when he was eight years old (he also lost all the flesh on his knees and shins). Doctors at the time predicted he would never walk again and recommended amputation of both legs, but he became so distressed and upset that his parents decided against it.Through intense personal drive and countless hours of therapy, he not only was able to walk again but went on to become a prominent athlete, eventually qualifying for and competing in the 1500-meter event at the 1932 and 1936 Summer Olympics, where he finished fourth and second, respectively.
-“BB”-
Dallas pathologist Dr. Beck Weathers, ascending towards the summit of Mt. Everest, could only make it as high as what is called the South Summit. He had to turn around, and then got caught in a blizzard on the South Col. Unable to move, he lay down in the snow while other climbers from his party and another party, those able to move on their own, found a break in the storm and struggled back to Camp IV. Fortunately for Weathers, he came to and summoned the strength to make it back to Camp IV.
He eventually lost parts of both feet to frostbite, as well as parts of his nose, all five fingers of his left hand, and his right lower forearm.
ETA: this was in mid-May of 1996.
Over 300 people have died attempting to climb Mt. Everest. But it is not the most dangerous peak. The two most dangerous mountains are Annapurna I and K2, the second highest mountain. The two mountains have a 32% and 29% fatality rate, respectively, according to NASA.
Everest, Kansas, is the only populated place in the US named Everest. It was a railroad town whose population reached 500 in 1900, but now it is barely half of that. There is a myth that it is the only town in Kansas with a unique mane, but it’s obviously not. There was an Everest, North Dakota, which disappeared without a trace in the 1940s. Everest was named after the founding executive of the railroad, not the mountarn.
Mount Everest was named after the Surveyor General at the time the mountain was determined to be the tallest in the world, Sir George Everest. Sir George Everest pronounced his last name “EEV-rest”, and not the “EVer-rest” as the mountain’s name is usually said.
In 1845 George Everest was a passenger on the first voyage of the SS Great Britain, which was the first crossing of any ocean on the world by a screw propelled steamship. She sailed from Dover to New York in 14 days.
Each of the five boroughs of New York City also represents a separate county within New York State. Manhattan is coextensive with the County of New York, Brooklyn with Kings County, Queens with Queens County, the Bronx with Bronx County, and Staten Island with Richmond County.
The County of Richmond predates the borough of Staten Island by more than 200 years. In 1683, the New York colony was organized into ten counties, one of which was named Richmond, with its present boundaries. New York wasn’t organized into boroughs until 1898.
Built in 1870, the Atlantic City Boardwalk on New Jersey’s Abescon Island was intended to be a temporary structure. It was America’s first boardwalk. The Boardwalk isn’t named after its wooden planks. Its namesake actually comes from its inventor, Alexander Boardman, who developed the walkway.
The 4th-longest boardwalk in the world (according to Wiki, anyway), is the 2.5-mile FDR Boardwalk on the east shore of Staten Island.
Under the Boardwalk, a song written by Kenny Young and Arthur Resnick, was recorded and released by The Drifters in 1964. It rose as high as number four on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song ranked #489 on Rolling Stone’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
High Plains Drifter is a 1973 Western film, directed by, and starring, Clint Eastwood. The script was written by Ernest Tidyman, who was inspired, in part, by the infamous murder of Kitty Genovese (in which bystanders had allegedly watched without intervening) as he wrote the story.