Although Napoleon Bonaparte was referred to as the ‘Little Corporal’, and he supposedly had the ‘Napoleon Complex’ because of his short stature, he was actually about 5 feet, 7 inches tall, which was about the average height for men at that time.
The Emperor Napoleon I was sometimes derisively referred to by British Royal Navy officers and men as “Boney,” as may often be read in the acclaimed sea adventures of Patrick O’Brian.
The Emperor Norton Bridge spans the bay between San Francisco and Oakland. Typically called the Bay Bridge, the name Emperor Norton Bridge is unofficial and has been tied to the SF Bay Bridge since before its original opening in 1936.
Joshua Abraham Norton was born in England, and grew up primarily in South Africa. He emigrated to the U.S. around 1849, after the deaths of his parents, and was a successful businessman in San Francisco for a time, before losing his fortune on a speculative rice contract. Soon after, he proclaimed himself “Norton I, Emperor of the United States,” and became a well-known and well-loved eccentric of the city.
Author J.R.R. Tolkien was born in South Africa in 1892, to English parents who had moved there a few years before; his father, Arthur, was manager of the Bloemfontein branch of the Bank of Africa. Mabel Tolkien felt the English climate would be better for her children’s health and returned to England with them in 1895. Arthur remained in South Africa, where he died of a hemorrhage following rheumatic fever in 1896, before he had the opportunity to rejoin his family in England.
Before she assumed the throne, Queen Elizabeth II accompanied her parents on a southern Africa tour in 1947. Much of the trip was aboard Britain’s last great battleship, HMS Vanguard , and the tour took in Bechuanaland, Basutoland, the Rhodesias and South Africa. On her 21st birthday, Elizabeth made a memorable debut broadcast from Cape Town to the empire. The South African government made it the highlight of the visit, declaring a national holiday.
Bechunaland and Basutolannd, upon independence, respelled their names Botswana and Lesotho. Lesotho is the only country in Africa where it snows in the capital, and
i was there once when it did.
King George VI privately told aides he was horrified by the Apartheid system of the South African government of the day, and considered the country’s police little better than Nazi thugs.
George V ruled the British empire from 1910 until his death in 1936. His eldest son, Edward VIII, ruled for just 326 days before abdicating the throne. Edward’s younger brother, George VI, ruled from 1936 until his death from lung cancer in 1952. His daughter, Queen Elizabeth II, set another record today as the longest-reigning monarch in English history.
1936 was one of two years in UK history where three kings rules. The other was 1488, when Edward IV, Edward V, and Richard III were king.
1553 could be counted, (Henry VIII, Lady Jane Grey, Mary I) though the nine-day rule of Lady Jane Grey was not always considered in the list of monarch.
There have been two years when the United States had three Presidents in a single year, first due to a death by natural causes, and the second time due to an assassination. In 1841, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison and John Tyler all served as chief magistrate, and in 1881, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield and Chester Arthur did.
Chester Arthur ran as the vice-presidential candidate in the 1880 election on the Republican ticket with James Garfield. Garfield won the election, but died just six months later after being shot by an assassin. Arthur served out the remainder of the term, but declined to run again for the presidency and retired from politics. He died 18 months later in November of 1886 at the age of 57.
Czeslaw “Chester” Marcol was a placekicker for the NFL’s Green Bay Packers from 1972 through 1980. Marcol was born in Poland, and emigrated to the United States as a teenager. He was named to the All-Pro team twice in his first three years in the NFL, but injuries and drug addiction prematurely ended his career.
Marcol is best remembered for one of his final games as a Packer – a 1980 game against the Chicago Bears, in which his attempt at a game-winning field goal was blocked directly back to him, and he ran it in for a game-winning touchdown. Marcol later admitted that he was high on cocaine during the second half of that game.
(I was at that game. 
)
Despite playing for only eight seasons, with a total of 521 points scored — 155 extra points, 120 successful field goals, and the afore-mentioned touchdown — Chester Marcol still ranks seventh on the Green Bay Packers’ all-time scoring list. In fact, kickers occupy five (six if you count Paul Hornung, who also served as a place-kicker during his nine-year tenure with the team) of the top ten spots on that list.
-“BB”-
Paul the alien, in the 2011 film of that name, is played by Seth Rogen.
The biggest news story in the United States in 2011 probably occurred on May 1, when Osama Bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces during an American military operation in Pakistan.
Jessica Chastain’s character in the movie Zero Dark Thirty, about the 2011 military and intelligence operation ordered by President Barack Obama which led to Osama bin Laden’s death at the hands of US Navy SEALS, was a CIA analyst. Although a composite character, she was based on one CIA employee in particular, whose identity was not revealed at the time of the film’s release.
The San Francisco Seals were a minor-league baseball team, which played in the Pacific Coast League from 1903 through 1957. A number of future major league stars played for the Seals, including the DiMaggio brothers (Joe, Vince, and Dom, who were from the nearby East Bay city of Martinez), Paul Waner, Earl Averill, and Lefty Gomez.
When the New York Giants of the National League moved to San Francisco in late 1957, the Seals were forced to relocate to Phoenix, where they became a farm team to the Giants.
The Phoenix Giants lasted only two years in the desert. For the 1960 season, the Giants transferred their affiliate to Washington state, as the Tacoma Giants.
The Tacoma Giants played for six years in the Pacific Coast League. After the 1965 season, the team switched affiliation to the Chicago Cubs and became known as the Tacoma Cubs. That lasted through the 1971 season, when the team switched affiliation to the Minnesota Twins and became known as the Tacoma Twins. The next switch occurred after the 1977 season, when the team became the Tacoma Yankees. Two years later, the parent team became the Cleveland Indians, and the new team name was the Tacoma Tugs. Then the team name changed to the Tacoma Tigers, and the affiliation later changed to the Oakland A’s. Finally, after the 1994 season, the club became affiliated with the Seattle Mariners and team name changed to the current Tacoma Rainiers.