Buttes and mesas are similar to plateaus, but buttes are smaller than mesas. In differentiating mesas and buttes, geographers use the rule of thumb that a mesa has a top that is wider than its height, while a butte has a top that is narrower than its height. Buttes, mesas, and plateaus are examples of landforms called tables, as are tepuis (Venezuela), potreros, tuyas, chapadas (Brazil), and terraces.
Twenty-six-year-old British climber David Knowles died on the Eiger during the production of The Eiger Sanction (1975). Trevanian, the author of the 1972 novel which was adapted for the film, bemoaned this fact in a footnote in his 1979 novel Shibumi, dismissing the film as “vapid”.
The Eiger is one of a trio of mountain peaks which form a ridge in the Bernese Alps in southern Switzerland. Its sister peaks are Jungfrau (“The Virgin”) and Mönch (“The Monk”); Eiger is sometimes referred to as “The Ogre,” though the standard German word for “ogre” is “Oger”.
At 15,771 feet, Mont Blanc is the highest peak in the Alps. The mountain is located on the French-Italian border; the summit itself is in French territory.
Mont Blanc is a luxury brand of fountain pens, that have a few styles priced at under $200, but some over $1,000l The brand has added other luxury product lines, sold worldwide in boutiques. A genuine Mont Blanc pen will appear reddish in strong light, owing to the resin from which the barrel is made.
Methuselah, a Great Basin bristlecone pine tree, located in Inyo County, California, has been verified as being 4,851 years old, making it the oldest known non-clonal tree in the world.
The Great Basin spans nearly all of Nevada, much of Oregon and Utah, and portions of California, Idaho, and Wyoming. It contains both the lowest point in North America (Badwater Basin in Death Valley), as well as the highest point in the contiguous United States (Mount Whitney). These two locations are less than 100 miles apart.
Great Basin National Park, in eastern Nevada, was established in 1986. Its visitors center is in Baker NV, about 5 miles west of the Utah state line and a 600 mile drive from San Francisco (map >> Google Maps).
GBNP is far from major cities:
— 230 miles from Salt Lake City UT
— 300 miles from Las Vegas NV
— 325 miles from Twin Falls ID
— 375 miles from Reno NV
— 380 miles form Pocatello ID
— 440 miles from Boise ID
— 560 miles from Los Angeles
— 600 miles from Phoenix AZ
— 600 miles from San Francisco CA
Wow. The Roman Aqueducts which can be found across Europe pale in comparison to this one!
In play:
Boise, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City are three of the 17 state capitals in the US that are also the largest city in the state. The others are Little Rock, Denver, Atlanta, Honolulu, Indianapolis, Des Moines, Boston, Jackson, Columbus, Oklahoma City, Providence, Columbia, Charleston, and Cheyenne.
In terms of area, Juneau is the largest capital city in Alaska, and the 3rd largest municipality in the USA. At 3255 square miles, it dwarfs Anchorage at 1944 square miles, even though Anchorage is by far the most populous city in the state.
Robert Louis Stevenson spent several months in Honolulu, and also visited Kona, and Molokai, where he was very impressed with the work of Father Damien among the exiled lepers. When a letter by a Congregationalist missionary, Rev. C.M. Hyde, circulated, calling Fr. Damien “a coarse, dirty man, headstrong and bigoted” and saying “the leprosy of which he died should be attributed to his vices and carelessness”, Stevenson was outraged and wrote a scathing condemnation of Hyde in a pamphlet, “Open Letter to Reverend Doctor Hyde of Honolulu”.
In the pamphlet Stevenson predicted, correctly, that Damien would be remembered as a saint while Hyde would be remembered only for his error-filled and scandal-mongering letter.
Che Guevara, at the start of his “Motorcycle Diaries” has the goal of working at a leper colony. They eventually do, spending three weeks at the San Pablo leper colony in Peru.
The first bacterium to ever be identified as causing disease in humans was found in 1873 and is Mycobacterium leprae, the bacterium that causes leprosy, also known as “Hansen’s disease” or HD. It was identified by the Norwegian doctor Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen.
In one of America’s first “me too” cases, in 1942, actor Errol Flynn was charged with statuatory rape by Betty Hansen and Peggy Satterlee, within a few days of each other, although the two alleged crimes took place a year apart. There were huge protests against the accusations, and at trial, Flynn was acquitted of both.
In the 1950s the sland phrase “In like Flynn” meant one had it made and was likely to succeed. Both Betty Hansen and Peggy Satterlee were 17 years old (and some reports say 16) when the alleged events occurred. If this happened, it was statutory rape.
Errol Flynn (yes, that’s his real name) was born in Tasmania, Australia, in 1909. He traveled to England in 1933 to further his career and then went to the US the following year. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1942. He died in 1959 at the age of 50 while on a business trip to Vancouver, British Columbia.
The 1982 comedy film My Favorite Year is loosely based on an actual guest appearance by movie actor Errol Flynn on Sid Caesar’s television variety program Your Show of Shows.
In My Favorite Year, the Flynn-like character is named Alan Swann, and is played by Peter O’Toole. The “narrator” character of Benjy Stone (played by Mark Linn-Baker) is based on both Mel Brooks and Woody Allen, both of whom had been writers on the Caesar show.
