Good trivia. I was actually wondering about her and if she was abusing laudanum.
Comment only. Play on!
NASA astronauts Neil Armstrong and Jim Lovell were both Ohio-born Eagle Scouts and former US Navy jet fighter pilots.
Eagle Snacks was a line of salty snack foods, which was originally introduced by the brewing company Anheuser-Busch in 1979. Anheuser-Busch was seeking to diversify their product offerings, as well as offer products which complemented their beers, so they introduced a line of “bar snacks,” which included pretzels, potato chips, snack mixes, and honey-roasted peanuts.
The line was launched with an ad campaign that featured actors Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, largely reprising their roles from The Odd Couple. Eagle Snacks was never profitable for Anheuser-Busch, and the company sold it off to Procter & Gamble in 1996; the brand changed hands several additional times, and appears to now be defunct.
The Secret Service code name for Bill Clinton was “eagle.”
”L’Aiglon” (“The Eaglet”) is a play by Edmond Rostand (author of “Cyrano de Bergerac”) about Napoleon II. Sarah Bernhardt originated the title role.
A Napoleon is a dessert traditionally made of three layers of puff pastry, alternating with two layers of pastry cream. It is sometimes topped with whipped cream. The dessert originated in France, where it’s called mille-feuille. In England, it’s known as vanilla slice or custard slice.
Sailor Jack is a molasses raisin spice cake, baked in a muffin tin and served upside down, with a sweet or lemony glaze drizzled over it. Their history is a bit of a mystery; according to locals it has been a staple in many bakeries on the Pacific Northwest coast since the 1940s. (I invite others to help me flesh out the origins.)
When sugar cane is harvested before maturity, it is treated with sulfur dioxide to preserve it. When it is boiled down and the sugar extracted, you now have sulphured molasses
Sulfur is the third most abundant mineral in the human body, behind calcium and phosphorus. The body uses sulfur to build and repair DNA, and to protect cells from damage that can lead to cancers.
Stand by Me was a 1986 dramatic film directed by Rob Reiner and based on Stephen King’s 1982 novella The Body. The film starred Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Kiefer Sutherland and Jerry O’Connell, who all went on to at least some degree of success in Hollywood.
TableTop was a web series, created by actor/gamers Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day, and hosted by Wheaton. In the series, Wheaton and a rotating group of actors and celebrities explained and demonstrated various tabletop games, including board games, card games, and roleplaying games. Games which were featured on the series frequently saw large upticks in sales after being shown on an episode, which became known as “the Wheaton Effect.”
Wheaton College is a private Evangelical Christian liberal arts college in Wheaton, Illinois. It was founded by evangelical abolitionists in 1860.
Cairo, Illinois, is the southernmost city in Illinois, and is located near the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Fort Defiance, a Civil War base, was located near Cairo by General Grant to control access to the rivers. Once a busy river port, the population peaked at over 15k in the 1920 census, but the 2020 census revealed a population of just 1,523.
Norman K. Brown is known as “Mr. Census” for having worked as an enumerator on every census from 1960 to 2020. Brown began working for the United States Census Bureau as a temporary employee in 1960 at age 24, returning every ten years thereafter for a few weeks to months through to the 24th United States Census of 2020, by which time he was 84 years of age.
After the Norman Conquest of England, many dispossessed Anglo-Saxon nobles, landowners and warriors fled to the Byzantine Empire; the biggest group was a fleet of 235 ships in the 1070s. In Constantinople, a number of them joined the Imperial Varangian Guard.
According to unverified sources, some of them were granted land on the shore of the Black Sea, and formed a settlement named Nova Anglia, New England.
England is represented in the British monarch’s coat of arms by two sets of three golden lions (technically leopards, in traditional European heraldry) on red fields. Scotland is represented by a red lion in a golden frame, and Northern Ireland by a golden harp on a blue field. Wales is not represented at all, although there have been periodic proposals to add it.
Professional wrestling’s NXT United Kingdom Championship (which debuted as the WWE United Kingdom Championship) had a center plate modeled on the UK coat of arms, and is considered by this wrestling fan to be one of the most beautiful title belts in history.
Walter was the longest-reigning UK Champion, holding the belt for a little over two years. He later moved to the main roster and became known as Gunther, setting the record for longest-reigning Intercontinental Champion, and he has also held the World Heavyweight Title twice.
Walter was the real first name of the character Radar O’Reilly in the TV series MASH. He was played by Gary Burghoff.
Gary, Indiana, was founded in 1906 by the U.S. Steel corporation as the home for its new plant, Gary Works. The city was named after lawyer Elbert Henry Gary, who was the founding chairman of the United States Steel Corporation.
“Gary, Indiana” is one of 24 songs performed in the 1957 Broadway musical The Music Man. Written by Meredith Wilson, the show was a smash hit, winning five Tony Awards and running for 1,375 performances. The cast album spent 245 weeks on the Billboard charts.