The number of members which each U.S. state has in the U.S. House of Representatives is based on the state’s population, as a proportion of the nation’s total population, with each state guaranteed at least one Representative.
Currently, the six states with the smallest populations each have only a single Representative; they are Wyoming, Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
Vermont, too, has but one representative.
And Hawaii has two representatives.
Clearly, I flunked my reading-for-comprehension test.
California has forty-one telephone area codes as of now. Vermont has long had just one, which is 802; likewise Hawaii, which is 808.
Originally area codes had to follow these rules: first and third digit could not be 0 or 1 and the middle digit had to be a 0 or 1. Since area codes came out during the era of rotary phones, they were based on population so that the dial had the least amount of travel for the most people, so New York City got 212, Los Angeles got 213, Chicago got 312, Detroit got 313, &c.
ETA: the longest area code in terms of clicks is 909 which serves the Southern California desert area which goes to show how long ago area codes came out with that population being so small at the time.
Kindle County, the setting of Presumed Innocent (1987) and many of Scott Turow’s subsequent law-related novels, is in an unnamed Midwestern state. The 1990 movie based on the novel, starring Harrison Ford, Raul Julia, Bonnie Bedalia and Paul Winfield, was filmed in Detroit. If you look very carefully in one scene, you can see that Michigan appears as the name of the state on a key character’s indictment.
Dave Winfield was a two-sport star at the University of Minnesota, starting on the baseball team (as a pitcher and outfielder) and the basketball team (as a forward). When he graduated in 1973, he was drafted by four professional different teams, in three different sports:
Winfield chose baseball, signing with the Padres, and went on to a Hall of Fame career.
The Vikings were trading with the Byzantine Empire by the late 800s. Their name for Constantinople was Miklagard, meaning the great city. Jewellery, silver, silk, wine and spices were just a few of the goods sought by Viking traders. In exchange, they could provide enslaved people, wood, iron, honey and furs from the North.
The How to Train Your Dragon franchise of movies, books, and television series tells the story of the Vikings of Berk, who had long been at war with dragons, and befriend them, start riding them, and get into adventures.
The Lockheed U-2 Dragon Lady first flew in 1959 and remains in service today. It outlasted the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird (1964 to 1999) but not the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress (1952 to still in service today). The U-2 Dragon Lady was manufactured by the Lockheed Skunk Works which also designed the P-38 Lockheed Lightning, the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, the SR-71, and the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk “Stealth Fighter”.
The Lockheed P-38 Lightning was a twin-engine fighter, originally developed for the U.S. Army Air Corps. The P-38 had a distinctive design, with a central nacelle (containing the cockpit and armaments) and twin “booms’ containing the engines. Despite its designation as a fighter, the P-38 excelled in a range of other combat roles, including fighter-bomber, escort fighter, and aerial reconnaissance.
The US’s two top aces during World War II – Richard Bong (40 victories) and Thomas McGuire (38) –both flew P-38s.
Although Williams Jennings is often credited with the first photograph of lightning in the 1880’s, it was first achieved Martin Easterly did it with a daguerrotype on June 18, 1847.
Ball lightning is a rare form of lightning that is a luminous, spherical lightning that sometimes appears during thunderstorms. It has been seen in several colors, including red, orange, and yellow to white, blue, and even green. It often appears near the ground, and is sometimes associated with cloud-to-ground lightning strikes. It usually lasts for a few seconds, but can sometimes persist for longer. One hypothesis suggests that ball lightning is a form of plasma, an ionized gas, formed by a lightning strike.
Florida is the most recent state to be declared the deadliest state for lightning strikes in the US.
In the contiguous United States, Florida has the longest coastline (1,197 statute miles) with also 825 miles of accessible beaches.
Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela is the region with the most lightning in the world, with 233 lightning strikes per km2 per year, more than in Florida.
Lake Maracaibo is the largest inland waterbody in South America. Lightning is seen up to 260 nights a year, especially at the spot where the Río Catatumbo flows into the lake. With up to 60 flashes per minute, or almost 1,176,000 flashes a year, this phenomenon is in the Guinness Book of Records.
The original superhero Flash was Jay Garrick, and was created in 1940. In 1956, a new Flash, Barry Allen, was created.
In 1968 the Rolling Stones released the non-album single, Jumpin’ Jack Flash. The song was inspired by guitarist Keith Richards’s gardener early one morning when Richards and lead singer Mick Jagger were startled by the gardener’s stomping footsteps walking outside the house. When Jagger asked what that sound was, Richards responded: “Oh, that’s Jack – that’s jumpin’ Jack.” The gardener’s name was Jack Dyer.
The song’s lyrics evolved from there. In 2021 Jumpin’ Jack Flash was ranked number 144 on Rolling Stone Magazine’s “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”
Jumpin’ Jack Flash, it’s a gas…
Jumpin’ Jack Flash, it’s a gas…
Jumpin’ Jack Flash, it’s a gas…
The Jack LaLanne Show was the longest-running nationally syndicated television program, running from 1951 to 1985.