U2’s fourth album, The Unforgettable Fire, was inspired by an art exhibit on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Unforgettable… with Love is a 1991 record album by Natalie Cole four years after her return to recording after a much-publicized battle with drug addiction. It was a project she had longed to do for many years. It was her way of paying tribute to her late, legendary father, who died in 1965 when she was 15. The song selections varied from obvious choices like “Mona Lisa,” “Nature Boy,” “Route 66,” and “Straighten Up and Fly Right” — all major hits for her father in the '50s — to more obscure parts of hisrepertoire, such as “Avalon” and “Non Dimenticar.” The crowning glory was a “duet” with her father, electronically created using his original vocal, which helped expand Cole’s audience dramatically and took her career to a new plateau.
The Mona Lisa, known in Italian as Gioconda, is a portrait of a woman painted by Leonardo da Vinci in the early 1500s, and perhaps as late as 1517. Long on display in the Louvre in Paris, stolen in 1911 and not recovered for almost three years, it is now one of the most iconic and valuable paintings in the world. Per Wiki, it holds the Guinness World Record for the highest known insurance valuation in history at US$100 million in 1962 (equivalent to $870 million in 2021).
Consider this part of the previous post, if you please: the Mona Lisa made a U.S. tour in the 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa#/media/File:JFK,_Marie-Madeleine_Lioux,_André_Malraux,_Jackie,_L.B._Johnson,_unveiling_Mona_Lisa_at_National_Gallery_of_Art.png
Leonardo da Vinci, born Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci in 1452, was born about 2 miles northeast of Vinci, Tuscany ITA* and about 25 miles west of Florence.
Here is a map:
https://is.gd/e7t_Leonardo
- — I love using the ISO 3166 country abbreviations.
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) is credited with being the founder of modern nursing. She established the first secular nursing school in the world, which is now part of King’s College London. But she was also noted for her use of statistics and the graphical presentation of information. She has been credited with the creation of the polar area diagram, a form of the pie chart.
Florence Harding was the wife of President Warren G. Harding and had lobbied hard at the Republican convention to give him the nomination. She had a strong influence on the president and often lobbied him to support certain positions, including choosing cabinet members. She also worked to protect his image and ignored his affairs while in office.*
*Harding’s father famously said that if Harding were a woman, she’d be constantly pregnant. How do we know, you ask? Harding told the story himself.
Florence + the Machine is an English indie rock band. The band’s name comes from the first name of its vocalist, Florence Welch, and a nickname which Welch had given to the group’s keyboardist, Isabella Summers: “Isabella Machine.” The two of them performed together for a time as “Florence Robot/Isa Machine,” before deciding to shorten the group’s name.
Isabella Rosselini, daughter of Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman and Italian film director Roberto Rossellini, appeared on a single episode of the NBC sitcom Friends, playing herself (and hit on by Ross Geller, played by David Schwimmer).
The title Duke of Ross has been created twice. Both times the Duke died without heirs and both times the title went extinct.
The 1962 song, “Duke of Earl” is not a reference to any title of royalty. The song originated from warm-up exercises by the Dukays, a vocal group that included song writer Gene Chandler (under his original name, Eugene Dixon) and Earl Edwards and that had already had some success on the R&B chart. The group would regularly warm up by singing “Do do do do…” in different keys. On one occasion, Dixon changed the syllables he was singing to include Earl’s name, and the chant gradually became the nonsense words “Du…du…du…Duke of Earl”.
Jeane Dixon was an astrologer and self-proclaimed psychic, who gained fame for apparently predicting the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and who had a widely-published newspaper astrology column. During the Reagan administration, Dixon was one of several astrologers with whom First Lady Nancy Reagan consulted.
A widely-circulated list of links between Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, U.S. presidents who were both assassinated, is largely incorrect, although some coincidental facts (such as both men having been elected in a year ending in '60 and succeeded upon their deaths by Southern-born Vice Presidents named Johnson) are accurate.
The USS John F Kennedy (CV-67) is the last non-nuclear aircraft carrier built for the US Navy. She was launched in 1967, and decommissioned in 2007. Her keel was laid down in October 1964, less than a year after JFK’s assassination.
At the start of World War II, the Imperial Japanese Navy had 10 aircraft carriers, which was the largest carrier fleet in the world. However, four of those carriers were sunk during the Battle of Midway, which took place just six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The largest warships of the current Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (commonly known as the Japanese Navy) are four so-called “helicopter destroyers” of the Izumo and Hyuga classes, flat-decked vessels capable of deploying both fixed-wing aircraft and (as usually deployed) helicopters. For political reasons in light of Japan’s post-World War II peace-oriented constitution and regional tensions, the vessels are not officially referred to as “carriers,” as they would be in any other navy.
The Japanese battleships, the sister ships Yamato and Musashi, were the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleships ever constructed, displacing 70,527 long tons at full load and armed with nine 18.1-inch main guns, which were the largest guns ever mounted on a warship. The US Navy’s WWII Iowa-class battleships, the Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri, and Wisconsin, the last battleships commissioned by the USN, had three triple 16-inch main guns. They displaced 60,000 long tons. The Yamato and Musashi were almost 20% larger, by displacement.
Two more Iowa-class battleships, the Illinois and Kentucky, were also planned but canceled because WWII was already ending.
Missouri and Tennessee each border 8 other states, the most of any US state. Missouri shares a border with Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Tennessee shares a border with Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Mississippi, Missouri, and Virginia.
Missouri has had two state flags since joining the Union two hundred years ago in August 1821. The first was in use only from 1861-65, during the Civil War; the current flag, designed by Marie Elizabeth Oliver of the Daughters of the American Revolution, was adopted in 1913.
The Chain of Rocks Bridge, on US Route 66 crossing the Mississippi River between Illinois and Missouri, is unique for its sharp, 22-degree angle bend (not a curve) in the middle of the span. It is located just north of St. Louis.
In 1917 the St. Louis Municipal Bridge was opened connecting downtown St. Louis Missouri with East St. Louis Illinois.
In 1929 the Chain of Rocks Bridge was privately built as a toll bridge about 15 miles north of the St. Louis Municipal Bridge. The St. Louis Municipal Bridge then became popularly known as the “Free Bridge” due to its lack of tolls.
In 1932 the St. Louis Municipal Bridge was named for Douglas MacArthur.
In the late 1930s, Bypass US 66 was designated over the Chain of Rocks Bridge and around the northern and western parts of St. Louis to avoid the downtown area. City US 66 continued to cross the Mississippi River over the MacArthur Bridge.
In 1966, the New Chain of Rocks Bridge was built immediately to the bridge’s north for the then-new I-270.
In 1970 the old Chain of Rocks Bridge was closed. It is now a pedestrian and bicycle bridge.
Chain of Rocks Bridge; www.theroadwanderer.net - Album on Imgur >> picture of the old Chain of Rocks Bridge