Per Wiki, Toshiba is responsible for a number of Japanese firsts, including radar (1912), the TAC digital computer (1954), transistor television, color CRTs and microwave oven (1959), color videophone (1971), word processor (1978), MRI system (1982) and DVD (1995).
The Japanese company Olympus is best known to consumers for its cameras. However, most of its profits come from medical and scientific equipment. Its first products when it was established in 1919 were microscopes and thermometers. Currently it is the leading manufacturer of endoscopes, with 70% of the world’s market share.
Mount Olympus, located on the border between the Greek regions of Thessaly and Macedonia, is the highest mountain in Greece. Mount Olympus has 52 peaks, the highest of which, named Mytikas, rises to 9,570 feet. Mytikas means ‘nose’ in the Greek language.
American entertainer Jimmy Durante was nicknamed “The Schnoz” and “The Great Schnozzola,” due to his prominent nose – the word “schnoz” is American Yiddish slang for “nose.”
Jimmy Carter, Democrat of Georgia, is the only President to have graduated from the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
According to the Treaty of Beaufort as interpreted by SCOTUS in 1922, the border between Georgia and South Carolina is the middle of the Savannah River but Georgia owns all of the islands in the river no matter which side they are on. A later court case holds that new islands created through dredging or deposition on the South Carolina side belong to South Carolina.
The Duke of Beaufort is a title in the peerage of England. They claim descent from John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, but DNA analysis of the bones of Richard III have suggested that there may have been a break in the line of paternity at some point.
Aside from the Royal family, there are 24 Dukes in England today. Together they own over a million acres of land. The largest landowner, the Duke of Buccleuch, owns 270,700 acres, which is about half the size of Greater London.
John Wayne’s nickname, “Duke” (or “The Duke”) was given to him during childhood. As a boy, he was inseparable from his Airedale dog, which was named Duke, and a local firefighter nicknamed the boy “Little Duke.” Wayne, whose birth name was Marion Morrison, liked “Duke” better than “Marion,” and the name stuck.
Marion Cotillard won an astonishing 27 awards for her portrayal of Edith Piaf in “La Vie En Rose”. They included a US Golden Globe, a French Cesar Award and a Czech Lion Prize.
For much of her childhood, Edith Piaf was raised by her paternal grandmother, as her mother had left her and her father was at war. After the 1920’s, her father raised her, and the two traveled around France together, as he was a traveling street performer who specializes in acrobatics. She was 4’8".
On 10 November 1920 a partial solar eclipse was centered southern Greenland. This was also the 145th Birthday of the US Marine Corps.
The Marine Corps and the Coast Guard are the only branches of the US armed forces in which the senior uniformed officer holds the title of “Commandant.”
Next month, Admiral Linda Fagan will become the first woman to serve as USCG Commandant, as well as first woman chief of any branch of the armed services.
From from 2016 to June 2017, Diana Holland served as the first woman Commandant of Cadets at West Point.
The Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, better known as the Dutch Republic, was a federal state that existed from 1588 to 1795. The largest and most dominant of the seven provinces was the County of Holland, which was a former state of the Holy Roman Empire. Today, the territory of the County of Holland corresponds roughly with the current provinces of North Holland and South Holland in the Netherlands.
The Dutch Republic was, at the time of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the largest republic in the world, and was cited by several of the Framers gathered that year in Philadelphia to support to proposition that republics can only last for long periods in small geographical areas.
Knights of the Old Republic, and its sequel, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords were a pair of computer role-playing games, set in the Star Wars universe, roughly 4000 years before the events depicted in the movie.
A planned third game in the series was cancelled during its development phase, but a later “massively multi-player online role-playing game” (MMORPG), Star Wars: The Old Republic, was set roughly 300 years after the events of the first two games, and built on some of those earlier games’ storylines and characters.
“Republic” comes originally from the Latin meaning “thing of the people” or “thing of public concern.” Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy each from time to time referred to the United States as “the great republic.”
Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and John F. Kennedy share a connection with regard to ships.
- Kennedy was the commander of PT 109 during WWII;
- Churchill was appointed to the post of First Lord of the Admiralty (the civilian head of the British Royal Navy) in 1911;
- and Lincoln was granted a patent in 1849 for a device to reduce the draft of boats so they could pass over shoal water without off-loading part of their cargo
(there is no record of said device ever being constructed or implemented, however)
-“BB”-
Lincoln, Churchill, and Kennedy, together with Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher, are subjects given in Will Peters’ book, Leadership Lessons: Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, (c) 2017.
Peters has another book, Leadership Lessons: Warren Buffett, Want Disney, Thomas Edison, Katharine Graham, Steve Jobs, Ray Kroc, (c) (also) 2017.