I was going to play off of Nashville above, but now I will play off of 10.
Phoenix AZ is the most populous US state capital city.
Nashville TN is the 7th most populous.
At #10 is Atlanta GA.
Phoenix, AZ is the only state capital with a population over one-million people (about 1,635,000).
The least populous is Montpelier, VT with about 7450 people.
This mean Phoenix is just under 220X as big as Montpelier.
Juneau is the capital of Alaska. Its population is 31,275.
Austin, the capital of Texas, has a population of 978,000, making it the second-most populous state capital city. Austin, however, is just the fourth-most populous city in the state of Texas, behind Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas.
Steve Austin was a U.S. Air Force colonel and test pilot before becoming a cyborg secret operative and the title character of the TV action/adventure show The Six Million Dollar Man (played by actor Lee Majors). When shown in uniform on the show, his medals reveal that he was a Vietnam War veteran.
In late 1979, free agent baseball pitcher Nolan Ryan left the California Angels, and signed a four-year contract with the Houston Astros. The Astros paid Ryan $1 million per year, quadrupling what the Angels had paid him, and making Ryan the major leagues’ first “million dollar man.”
Nolan Ryan is the all-time leader in no-hitters with seven, three more than any other pitcher. He is tied with Bob Feller for the most one-hitters, with 12. Ryan also pitched 18 two-hitters. Despite this, he has never pitched a perfect game, and he has never won a Cy Young Award.
Nolan Ryan’s last pitch was a home run to Dann Howitt of the Seattle Mariners.
I was at that game.
Philip Nolan was the antihero of Edward Everett Hale’s 1863 short story “The Man Without a Country,” a young Army officer caught up in Aaron Burr’s conspiracy against the United States. Court-martialed and convicted, he was condemned to spend the rest of his life in exile aboard U.S. Navy ships at sea, never again returning home. Cliff Robertson played Nolan in a 1973 TV movie based on the story.
The cinematic career of Cliff Robertson began in 1955, when he landed the role of William Holden’s best friend in the movie Picnic. He went on to star in roles in such films as Days of Wine and Roses, Gidget, and PT 109. He won the 1968 Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of a mentally-challenged man in Charly.
Robertson died on September 10, 2011, one day after his 88th birthday.
Eric Johnson is a rock guitarist, from Austin, Texas. He is best-known for his 1990 instrumental song, “Cliffs of Dover,” which won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Rock Performance; the song also appeared in the video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock.
Back to Nolan Ryan…
The San Francisco Giants’ Will Clark‘s first major league hit was against Nolan Ryan and the Houston Astros. Not only was it a hit, it was a home run and the Giants won the game 8-3 at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas.
Henry Grattan Nolan was the first Albertan appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada, on March 1, 1956. He served for just over a year before dying in office on July 8, 1957.
Alberta and Saskatchewan are the only land-locked provinces of Canada, while the United States has 25 land-locked states: ID NV MT WY CO NM ND SD NE KS OK MN IA MO AR WI IL MI IN KY TN OH PA WV and VT.
Saskatchewan is the only Canadian province whose boundaries are defined entirely by survey, with no geological features serving as a boundary.
Four Corners is the only place in the US where the boundaries of four states meet. However, there are 61 locations where three states meet. These are known as ‘tripoints’, 38 of which are on land. The remainder are in the middle of rivers, streams, or lakes.
The Ford Trimotor was an all-metal passenger airplane, introduced by the Stout Metal Airplane Division of the Ford Motor Company in 1926. Compared to other airplanes of that era, the Ford Trimotor was known for its reliability and affordability; Ford sold 199 Trimotors from 1926 through 1933. There are eighteen surviving examples of the Trimotor, of which eight are currently certified as flightworthy by the FAA.
The Ford Tri-Motor actually was inspired by a earlier Dutch/German design, the Fokker F.VII. While similar both visually and in design to the Fokker F.VII, to the point that the Tri-Motor even used the same airfoil cross section at the wing root, the chief difference is that the Ford product was made entirely of metal. The Fokker used a fabric-covered steel-tube fuselage, and plywood-skinned wooden wings.
-“BB”-
Once in the Eighties, for several nights in the row, when the Fokker aircraft company was in the news, David Letterman made it a point to include a reference to the company in his late-night talk show’s opening monologue, pronouncing the name with great relish.
John S. Hall quote: “I’ve done bad things with relish, and good things with pickles.”