The 1955 Le Mans disaster was the most catastrophic crash in motorsport history. Driver Pierre Levegh’s magnesium Mercedes Benz rear-ended a swerving car and skipped over a protective earthen berm at 200 km/h (125 mph); he was ejected and died instantly. The car disintegrated, and large pieces of flying and burning debris killed 83 spectators and injured over a hundred more.
The ‘24 Hours of Le Mans’ is the world’s oldest sports car endurance race. It was first held in 1923 and is generally run in June. (This year it has been postponed until September.) It was not held in 1936 due to a labor strike, and was not held from 1940-1948 because of World War II and its aftermath.
The 1966 running of Le Mans was the climax of the 2019 film Ford v Ferrari, costarring Christian Bale and Matt Damon. For the movie, a new version of Tony Joe White’s “Polk Salad Annie” was recorded by American guitarist James Burton: James Burton - Polk Salad Annie (Ford V Ferrari Remix) | Ford v Ferrari OST - YouTube
Cool trivia, and an impressive feat.
In play:
Graham Hill ran the 24 hours of Le Mans ten times. He got a DNF six times, including his first five times. Finally, in his tenth and final attempt he won it, in 1972.
Graham Hill ran the Indy 500 three times. He won it in his first attempt, in 1966.
Graham Hill ran Monaco eighteen times. He won it five times, in 1963, 1964, 1965, 1968, and 1969.
Two pairs of fathers and sons have won the Formula One World Championship auto racing title:
- Graham Hill (1962, 1968) and his son Damon Hill (1996)
- Keke Rosberg (1982) and his son Nico Rosberg (2016)
To date, Mario Andretti is the only driver to win the Daytona 500 (in 1967), the Indy 500 (in 1969), and the Formula One Championship (in 1978).
Mario Brothers is a video game originally developed for arcades by Nintendo in 1983. The principal characters are Mario and Luigi, two plumbers who are investigating the sewers of New York. Mario originally appeared in the game Donkey Kong; the chief developers of Mario Brothers also worked on the development team of Donkey Kong.
In the game “Donkey Kong”, the hero character wasn’t originally given a name but was called “Jumpman” in the game’s English instructions … and he was a construction worker/carpenter, not a plumber.
The damsel he was trying to rescue was known only as “the Lady”.
-“BB”-
St. George, a Christian knight who legendarily slew a dragon, is the patron saint of England. His feast day is typically celebrated on April 23. His banner, a red cross on a white field, is also the English flag, and of course part of the Union Flag or Union Jack.
St. George is one of the best-known saints and martyrs of the early Christian Church. It’s generally believed that he was a Roman soldier, of Greek descent (from the Cappdocian region), and that he was martyred in the year 303 for refusing to recant his faith. The story of George slaying a dragon appears to have been added much later (perhaps in the 11th century).
St. George is the patron saint of a number of countries, regions, and cities, including England, Ethiopia, the nation of Georgia, and the regions of Catalonia and Aragon in Spain.
St. George, Utah, is located in the extreme southwestern part of the state, just 118 miles from Las Vegas. With a population of about 90,000, it is Utah’s seventh-largest city, and the state’s most populous city south of the Wasatch Front, where 80% of the state’s population reside.
George Washington did indeed grow hemp on his Mount Vernon estate, as many pro-marijuana-legalization bumper stickers and T-shirts will tell you these days, but it was not the same kind of hemp as that which can be smoked recreationally.
Prince George, with a population over 85,000 located about 500 miles north of Seattle, is the largest city in northern British Columbia. It is named in honor of King George III who lived from 1738-1820.
Author Lynda Williams (The Courtesan Prince, Righteous Anger, Pretenders, Throne Price) hails from Prince George.
Cartoonist and author Lynda Barry was first published in 1977, when two friends of hers, Matt Groening (who later created Life in Hell and The Simpsons) and John Keister, published some of her comic strips in their college student newspapers, without her knowledge, under the title Ernie Pook’s Comeek.
Barry became a full-time cartoonist around 1979, when the alternative weekly newspaper The Chicago Reader (coincentally, also the original home of The Straight Dope) began to run Ernie Pook’s Comeek. In the years since, Barry has been inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame and received a MacArthur Fellowship, and she is now on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Lynda Carter appeared in 1972 as one of the first super-heroines on TV. She was known at the time as the USA contestant in the Miss World pageant. Wonder Woman was introduced to DC Comics in 1941
Carfentanil is known as ‘Super Heroin’. It is an extremely powerful opoid, and sometimes used by vets on very large animals like elephants.
Occasionally, some humans have tried it on themselves, with … interesting results.
Three warships named HMS Elephant have served in the British Royal Navy, the last of which was a 74-gun sailing ship launched in 1786 and broken up in 1830.
It is estimated that African elephants live a median of 56 years in the wild, while Asian elephants live a median of about 41 years. In captivity, however, elephants only live an average of 17 years. One reason for this shortened lifespan is believed to be obesity.
I will turn 56 on September 1. I share a birthday with Dopers Zoid, Cervaise and Spoons. Confederate forces evacuated Atlanta, Ga. on Sept. 1, 1864; Nazi Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II, on Sept. 1, 1939; and a team led by Dr. Robert Ballard discovered the wreck of the RMS Titanic on Sept. 1, 1985.
Spoons as a musical instrument have fallen into disrepute, owing to their association with minstrelsy, bur remain popular in the folk music of Greece, Turkey and Russia, where president Boris Yeltsin was quite proficient. In the US, spooons are often played as an accompaniment to other household articles such a washboard and jug.