Dawson City is a town in the Canadian territory of Yukon. Its population was 1,375 as of the 2016 census, making it the second-largest town in Yukon. The largest city is Whitehorse, with a population of about 25,000, which is approximately 70% of all the people living in the Yukon Territory. The territory has an area between the size of California and Texas.
Dawson City lies at the confluence of two rivers, the Klondike River and Yukon River. The Klondike River is 99 miles long and has its source in the Yukon’s Ogilvie Mountains to the east. The Yukon River is 1,980 miles long and has its source at the Llewellyn Glacier at Atlin Lake in British Columbia, in the Juneau Icefield to the north of Juneau AK.
Paul Shaffer, David Letterman’s longtime band leader and sidekick, is Canadian. He was born in Toronto and raised in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Per Wiki, “His father was a jazz aficionado while his mother loved show tunes. When Shaffer was 12, his parents took him on a trip to Las Vegas where they took in Nat King Cole and other shows; this was an experience Shaffer described later as ‘life changing’ and led to his decision to become a performer.”
ETA: Ninja’d! Paul Shaffer has never drunk more than eight gallons of the Yukon River at a time to the best of my knowledge.
The Alaska Highway crosses the Yukon River at Mile 839. Mile 0 is in Dawson Creek BC. In the Yukon Territory, the Alaska Highway does not pass through Dawson City which was the capital of the Yukon Territory. When the Alaska Highway was completed in 1942 it instead passed through Whitehorse, far to the south. The population of Dawson City shrank, while that of Whitehorse grew. By 1953, Whitehorse had become the capital of the Yukon.
The reason Yukon Cornelius of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer tastes his pick after digging was that he was looking for a peppermint mine. The explanation was cut before the original airing, giving the impression he’s prospecting gold with his tongue.
The Straight Dope thread on the loved-and-hated Christmas special Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was begun by poohpah_chalupa in November 2000, and will soon hit the 21-year mark: "Rudolph" T.V. Special. And ye gods, I see I’ve posted in it 43 times over the years!
Rankin/Bass Productions was a film production company, which created a number of animated films and television shows, both in traditional cel animation and stop-motion animation. The company was best known for its holiday-themed made-for-television films, beginning with the stop-motion Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which first aired in 1964.
Good trivia!
Just that. No play here. Good trivia!
In play — Dick Bass (1929 – 2015) was an American businessman, rancher and mountaineer. He was the owner of Snowbird Ski Resort in Utah and the first man to climb the “Seven Summits”, the tallest mountain on each continent.
Herbert Hoover and Richard “Dick” Nixon were the only Presidents of the United States from Quaker families. Both Republicans elected in years ending in an “8” (1928 and 1968), both had what might fairly be called disastrous presidencies - Hoover due to the Great Depression, and Nixon due to the Watergate Scandal.
Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States, was raised in the Anglican religion. However, he later rejected some of the Christian beliefs, including the Virgin Birth and the divinity of Jesus. Like some of the other Founding Fathers, he became a deist, valuing reason over revelation.
Thomas Jefferson declined to act as godfather for his friends’ children, saying that since he didn’t understand the doctrine of the Trinity himself, he could hardly call upon others to accept it as Christian dogma. He edited a Bible which today bears his name, focusing on the New Testament and on Jesus’s moral teachings.
Three leading colleges are called Trinity College.
Members of Trinity College, Cambridge (founded in 1546) have won 34 Nobel Prizes out of the 121 won by members of Cambridge University, the highest number of any college at either Oxford or Cambridge.
Trinity College Oxford has produced three British prime ministers, placing it third after Oxford colleges Christ Church and Balliol in terms of former students who have held the office. It also produced Cardinal John Henry Newman, who was canonized in 2019.
Trinity College in Dublin (founded 1592) is the top college in Ireland and one of Europe’s elite universities, an international center for research and a world leader in Nanotechnology, Information Technology, Immunology, Mathematics, Engineering, Psychology, Politics, English.
The Trinity Dam, at Trinity Lake on the Trinity River in Trinity County in California, when completed in 1960, stood as the highest earthfill dam in the world until it was eclipsed by the Oroville Dam, also in California, in 1968.
The Oroville Dam remains the tallest dam in the United States.
The Oahe Dam, completed in 1962, is located on the Missouri River just north of Pierre, South Dakota. The dam, which creates the fourth-largest artificial reservoir in the United States, is one of the world’s largest earth-rolled dams.
President Harry S Truman, Democrat of Missouri, kept the battleship USS Missouri in commission longer than the Navy Department wanted it to be. The Empire of Japan surrendered on her deck in Tokyo Bay in September 1945, ending World War II. The battleship is now permanently moored as a museum ship in Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
All four Iowa-class Battleships completed are currently still afloat and serving as museums in various parts of the United States. The USS Missouri is at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; The USS New Jersey is at Camden, New Jersey; The USS Wisconsin is in Norfolk, Virginia, and the USS Iowa is located in Los Angeles, California.
Not in play: I’ve been aboard the New Jersey and Wisconsin, the Iowa and Missouri are on my to-do list.
Singer / songwriter Amy Winehouse was strongly associated with the London neighborhood Camden Town, where she lived for several years. Her last home was on Camden Square, where she was found dead in July 2011.
Since her death, Winehouse has been titled “The Queen of Camden”, and a bronze statue of her was placed in the Camden Stables Market on what would have been her 31st birthday, 14 September 2014.
The USS New Jersey in Camden NJ claims she is our nation’s most decorated battleship. She earned more battle stars for combat actions than the other three completed Iowa-class battleships, and was the only US battleship to provide gunfire support during the Vietnam War.
The too-soon-cancelled comedy My Name Is Earl took place in the fictional Camden County; its state was never specified. The show followed Earl Hickey (Jason Lee) as he tried to make amends to all the people he had stolen from, exploited, bothered or offended in his life; one critic suggested an alternative title for the show might have been Touched By A Redneck.