Kathy Rigby, the Olympic gymnast, became the first female to pose nude for Sports Illustrated. A picture of her, shot in black-and-white and showing her from behind while performing a split on the balance beam, appeared in an article entitled “Suger and Spice – And Iron” in August 1972 . To say that it caused a stir at the time would be a bit of an understatement, although the photograph is almost chaste by today’s standards.
This was one of a series of photographs taken by Jerry Cooke as part of a photo essay he called “Bodies In Motion”, and included nude photos of other athletes of the period such as Micki King (diving), Martha Watson (long jump), Arthur Ashe (tennis), and Bill Toomey (decathlon) in action.
Martha Washington and her husband George (whom she affectionately called “Old Man”) had no children of their own, although he helped raise her two children by her previous marriage (she had been widowed), Patsy and John.
Swiss actress Marthe Keller is best known for her leading roles in the 1970s films Marathon Man and Black Sunday. She is now an opera director, having received awards for her production of Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites in Paris. She has worked with major companies in the US, including at the Washington National Opera and the Metropolitan Opera in NYC, where she directed Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 1787 opera, Don Giovanni, is widely considered to be one of his finest works, as well as being one of the greatest operas ever written.
The opera, which is based on the legendary (but fictional) Spanish libertine Don Juan, was used as a key plot point in the play (and film) Amadeus, in which Mozart is depicted as composing the opera while grieving for his late father.
The Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia, Pa. on Sept. 17, 1787 to sign the final version of the United States Constitution. Howard Chandler Christy depicted the event in 1940 on a giant canvas for display at the Capitol. It was so large (20 x 30 feet) that he painted it in a sail loft at the Washington Navy Yard.
For the most part, the Constitution of the Confederate States of America mirrors the Constitution of the United States of America but there are a few notable exceptions: the President serves a six-year term and cannot be re-elected and that the CSA President can line-item veto appropriations. More obscure is the requirement for calling a Constitutional Convention. In the United States, 2/3 of the states need to petition Congress for an Article V convention while in the Confederate States it was only three states.
A provisional congress made up of representatives of six states approved the Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States on February 8, 1861. A seventh state, Texas, approved it a month later. Shortly thereafter, on March 13, 1861, Alabama became the first state to become part of the Confederate States of America.
Judah Philip Benjamin was a United States Senator from Louisiana, a Cabinet officer of the Confederate States and, after his escape to the United Kingdom at the end of the American Civil War, an English barrister. He was the first US Senator to profess the Jewish faith; Senator David Levy Yulee, elected before Benjamin, was a convert to Christianity.
Benjamin has been called “the only genius in the Confederate cabinet” and was a great success as a QC in England, rising to the top of the profession. However, due to his support of slavery and the Confederate cause, he remains a controversial figure.
Chang and Eng Bunker are best known as “the original Siamese Twins.” Natives of Siam (modern Thailand) and joined at the sternum, they became a popular attraction with traveling museum exhibitions.In 1839, they bought 110 acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina and settled down. They married sisters, built a successful farm (with slave labor) and became naturalized citizens and devoted Confederates. In 1865, Union General George Stoneman raided North Carolina and decided to draft some of the locals, regardless of sympathies; the names of men over 18 were put into a lottery wheel. Eng’s name was drawn, but he resisted the draft. Since Chang’s name was not drawn, there was little General Stoneman could do; the brothers were not only joined at the sternum, their livers were fused. Neither one served in the war, but their eldest sons both enlisted and fought for the Confederacy.
Between them, Chang and Eng Bunker had 21 children. Chand had 10 and Eng had 11. While they shared a liver, each man had separate sensations — it was only at the middle of the ligament where they shared sensation.
They died on January 17, 1874, aged 62. Early in the morning of January 17, one of Eng’s sons checked on the sleeping twins. “Uncle Chang is dead,” the boy reportedly said to Eng, who responded, “Then I am going!” The family doctor was quickly sent for but Eng soon died, reportedly just over two hours after his brother’s death.
Contemporary medical literature strongly suggests that today, the twins could have been easily separated.
During development of the U.S. situation comedy All in the Family, producer Norman Lear considered several actors for the role of Archie Bunker, including Tom Bosley, Jack Warden, Jackie Gleason, and Mickey Rooney, before settling on Carroll O’Connor. Lear even offered Rooney the role, but the veteran actor declined it, feeling that the character and show would be too controversial.
Before she became an actress, Rooney Mara founded the charity Faces Of Kibera, which provides housing, food, and medical care for orphaned children in Kibera, a slum in Nairobi, Kenya. With many children orphaned due to AIDS and HIV-related illnesses, the charity merged with the Uweza Foundation in 2011. She now sits on the board of directors for Uweza.
Kenya is home to The Big Five, the hardest animals to hunt in Africa. They include the African lion, African elephant, Cape buffalo, black and white rhinoceros, and the African leopard. Luckily for them, it is illegal to hunt all of these in most African countries.
There are two subspecies of the white rhinoceros: the northern white rhinoceros, and the southern white rhinoceros.
Populations of the southern white rhinoceros have increased in recent decades (to around 20,000 individuals), thanks to conservation efforts, though they are still at risk from poachers, due to the value of their horns on the black market. However, the northern black rhinoceros subspecies has been believed to be extinct in the wild since 2008, and there are only two living individuals: both of them females, who currently are kept, under heavy guard, at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.
Mount Kenya, which has an elevation of just over 17,000 feet, is the second-highest mountain in Africa, after Mount Kilimanjaro. Mount Kenya, which actually has three separate and distinct peaks, is located just 10 miles south of the equator.
Some of the most sought after coffee in the world is grown on Mount Kenya between 1500 and 2100 ft just below the slopes. It is described as intensely aromatic with a bright acidity and possesses notes of berry and citrus.
The three distinct peaks of Mount Kenya are Batian at 17,057’, Nelion at 17,021’, and Point Lenana at 16,355’. Mount Kilimanjaro is 19,351’ high. Since Kilimanjaro is also 16,100’ above its plateau base, it is the highest free-standing mountain in the world.
The snows of Kilimanjaro are actually glacier ice fields, and they are melting. The observed pattern of their retreat is not anticipated to change, and most if not all the ice on top of Mount Kilimanjaro may be gone by 2040. Mount Kenya currently has 11 small glaciers, which are shrinking rapidly, and may be gone forever by 2050.
The Snows of Kilimanjaro was Ava Gardner’s second film based on an Ernest Hemingway short story after The Killers (1946). Both were short tales that had to be expanded considerably by their screenwriters to become feature-length films. Ava Gardner married Frank Sinatra shortly before production began on the film.
The Killers is the name of an American rock band, formed in Las Vegas in 2001. The band took its name from the name of a fictitious band (also “The Killers”) which appears on a bass drum in the music video for New Order’s song “Crystal,” which was released in that same year.
