The 2009 Star Trek reboot film begins with James Kirk’s birth, in the midst of a battle between the Federation starship Kelvin and a Romulan ship. During the battle, James’s father, George Kirk, sacrifices himself and the ship to allow his crewmates, and his son, to escape.
In the film, George Kirk was played by a young Australian television actor, Chris Hemsworth, who was relatively unknown outside of Australia, and appearing in his first film role. Two years later, Hemsworth would have his career breakthrough, when he appeared as the title character in the Marvel film Thor.
The Romulan language was created by Diane Duane for use in her 1987 novel The Romulan Way.
The Romulan alphabet was developed from an alphabet called Kzhad created in about 1988 by Monte Thrasher. Monte based Kzhad on the shapes of LED displays.
George H.W. Bush, elected President of the United States in 1988, was left-handed. Four years later, when he ran for reelection, both of his major opponents, Democrat Bill Clinton of Arkansas and independent Ross Perot of Texas, were also southpaws.
The term “southpaw,” referring to a left-handed person, is widely (but apparently inaccurately) believed to have come from baseball, in which many ballparks are oriented with home plate to the west; such an orientation would mean that a left-handed pitcher’s arm would be to the south as he faced home plate.
However, the term appears to have actually originated in the 1840s, in boxing, to describe a left-handed punch or blow (though the reason for “south” meaning “left” is unclear).
Southpaws are considered to be at a disadvantage, as most hitters are right-handed, and a pitch from a lefty breaks into the batter. That wasn’t always the case – around 1900; most batters learned to bat left-handed, and Rogers Hornsby was considered the only great RH hitter of his era’ First base was a step closer to a LH batter, important in the dead-ball era.
Warren Spahn was the winningest lefty ever, and a few of were lucky enough to see him. I saw him lose, when his opponent, Robin Roberts pitched a one-hit shutout…
“Rockin’ Robin” is a song composed by Leon René, under the pseudonym Jimmie Thomas. It was first recorded by Bobby Day in 1958, and released under the name “Rock-in Robin.” The single went as high as #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent one week as the number one song in R&B sales.
In 1972, Michael Jackson recorded and released his own version, which had far greater success.
The “Billboard Hot 100” chart was introduced on August 4, 1958. It replaced several separate charts that Billboard Magazine had been maintaining measuring song popularity by such metrics as sales of physical records in store, airplay by disc jockeys and radio stations, and jukebox play.
The first “Billboard Hot 100” listing was released on August 4, 1958. The first ever #1 song on the Hot 100 was “Poor Little Fool” by Ricky Nelson.
There are some who will argue that the Billboard Hot 100 was merely a renaming of an existing listing, also created by Billboard in 1955, called “The Top 100”; however, both rankings ran concurrently during the latter part of 1958 before the Top 100 chart was quietly retired.
In the widely-acclaimed Napoleonic sea adventure stories by Patrick O’Brian, Royal Navy Capt. Jack Aubrey cherishes memories of a dinner with his hero, Admiral Lord Nelson, and several other officers. The most significant thing Nelson said to Aubrey during the meal was, “May I trouble you, sir, for the salt?”
Patrick O’Brian dedicated many of his books to his wife Mary. However, he dedicated The Mauritius Command, the fourth novel in his Aubrey-Maturin series, to fellow historical novelist Mary Renault, who admired his work.
Renault lived in South Africa for decades, and when writing The Mauritius Command, O’Brian asked for her help on details of the area especially as seen from a ship. She sent him picture postcards with her own impressions.
Renault is a French automobile manufacturing company which was established in 1899. It was started by three Renault brothers: Louis, Marcel, and Ferdnand. They sold their first car to a friend of their father, and within 10 years the company was the country’s largest car manufacturer.
Garret Hobart, Vice President of the United States, died of heart disease in November 1899. The office remained vacant until March 1901, when Theodore Roosevelt, elected the previous November, was sworn in. Roosevelt would not serve as Vice President for long, just over six months, as he succeeded William McKinley as President upon the latter’s assassination in Buffalo, N.Y. in September 1901. The Vice Presidency then remained vacant for more than another three years.
The bear on California’s state flag, which is flown at the capital building in Sacramento, features a grizzly bear. That grizzly bear’s name is Monarch, and that bear lived in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Back in 1889, Monarch was one of the very last of the subspecies Ursus arctos californicus. That subspecies is now extinct.
The Bear Flag Building was made famous as a brothel on Monterey’s Cannery Row, the center of activity in John Steinbeck’s novel. Now a bustling tourist night spot, in 1960 the Bear Flag Building was the only business frontage on a dying street of shut-down canneries, and I worked on the second floor.
In the majority of European countries, Australia and India, the ground floor is the floor literally at ground level, usually having no number, and identified sometimes as “G” or “0”. The next floor up is assigned the number 1 and is the first floor, and so on. In the United States and Canada, Russia, China and Japan, the bottom floor is counted as the first floor, the next floor up as the second floor, and so on.
(Several years ago, while reading a Dungeons & Dragons adventure, I came across a passage in which the author mentioned that, while escaping a building, a character had leaped out of a “first floor window,” and broken his leg. I thought to myself, “What a klutz! He fell four feet and broke a leg?” Then, I remembered that “first floor” in Europe is “second floor” in America, and discovered that the author was, in fact, English, and that the character’s fall had been from a substantially greater height. )
In play:
A “garden-level” apartment is typically one that is lower than ground level, though not as deep as a true basement (in essence, a half-floor beneath ground level). The windows in a garden-level apartment are often at street level. Garden-level apartments are commonly found in New York-style brownstones, and similar building designs.
Brownstone is a brown sandstone that was once a popular building material. It was popular because it is unusually easy to carve and quarry, but these qualities also made houses clad in it susceptible to weathering and damage over time. Quarries in northern New Jersey once supplied most of the brownstone used in New York City.
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