The Allen wrench is named after William G. Allen. He didn’t invent it, but he did patent a means of manufacturing them and hexagonal socket screws in 1910. His company popularized them.
The crescent wrench, an adjustable wrench, is called by that name in the USA because it was patented in the early 1900s by the Crescent Tool Company. Elsewhere the tool is known as an ‘adjustable spanner’ or a ‘shifting spanner’.
The adjustable wrench dates from at least 1892 in Sweden, with the Enköping Mekaniska Verkstad company in Enköping, Sweden. Their inventions include other hand tools like the pipe wrench (or plumber’s wrench).
In the Star Wars films, a hydrospanner is a particular variety of tool, used in the repair of starships. The exact nature of a hydrospanner was not ever divulged in the films, but in other licensed media (particularly books), the hydrospanner has been described as a hydraulically-boosted socket wrench and bit driver.
George Lucas has said that he loosely based the evil Emperor Palpatine on President Richard Nixon, whose yearslong fall from political grace in the Watergate Scandal was taking place as Lucas wrote the screenplay for what became Star Wars.
Doonesbury was one of the first comic strips to depict and satirize real-life political figures. The strip often featured Nixon and his aides, highlighting the paranoia and cover-up efforts of the administration.
in his cartoon strip Doonesbury, Garry Trudeau depicted the White House in the latter days of the Watergate Scandal as being surrounded by a fortified wall, symbolizing President Richard Nixon’s hunkering down and refusal to come clean with the American people. After Gerald Ford became President in August 1974, the wall in the strip was shown being torn down and taken away.
Cartoonist Garry Trudeau is the great-grandson of Edward Livingston Trudeau, a physician who was a public health pioneer, particularly in the treatment of tuberculosis. Trudeau’s work in the late 19th century was instrumental in establishing modern principles for disease prevention and control.
“The Four Marys” (Mary Beaton, Mary Seton, Mary Livingston, and Mary Fleming) were ladies-in-waiting to Mary Queen of Scots.
Actress Mary McCormack appeared seven times as a guest on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. On her fourth visit in 2009, she gave the host, Craig Ferguson, a novelty coffee mug in the shape of a rattlesnake from the gift shop of the American International Rattlesnake Museum in Albuquerque, NM. After his last show, Ferguson donated the mug back to the museum.
In Plain Sight was a cable television drama series, airing from 2008-2012. It starred Mary McCormack as Mary Shannon, a deputy U.S. Marshal assigned to the Federal Witness Protection Program in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The series also starred Fred Weller and Paul Ben-Victor as Mary’s colleagues in the Marshals Service, and Lesley Ann Warren as Mary’s eccentric mother.
U.S. Marshals is a crime action film starring Tommy Lee Jones, Wesley Snipes, and Robert Downey, Jr. Released in 1998, the movie centers on the attempt by Jones and his team of Marshals to capture Snipes, a fugitive on the run for allegedly stealing top-secret US Government files.
Tommy Lee Jones won an Oscar for his performance in The Fugitive. That year he beat out
Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List
Leonardo DiCaprio in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
Denzel Washington in Philadelphia (not nominated)
Val Kilmer in Tombstone (not nominated)
Denzel Washington earned his first Oscar playing Trip, an escaped slave and rebellious soldier in the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, in the 1989 Civil War movie Glory.
The 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment was the second African-American regiment. The first one was the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment. It was initially organized in 1862 at Fort Scott, KS. It was the first African-American regiment to see combat during the Civil War, in the skirmish at Island Mound, in Bates County, Missouri, in October 1862. The Union Army’s victory here is notable as the first known event in which an African-American regiment engaged in combat against Confederate forces during the war.
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Added — The Battle of Island Mound State Historic Site, at DD coordinates ▲ 38.236, -94.439, preserves the site.
The Boston Celtics, who play in Boston, Massachusetts, have won a record 18 National Basketball Association championships, most recently in 2024.
It is illegal to take a lion to the movies in Boston, MA. It is also illegal for a gorilla to ride in the back seat of a car, and to chase or otherwise scare pigeons.
In 1969 John Rendall and Anthony Bourke of London, England bought a lion cub from a department store. They raised him in their London apartment and they would drive him around London in their convertible Mercedes-Benz car.
In England, the nickname “Merc” is frequently used in reference to automobiles made by Mercedes-Benz. In the United States, however, “Merc” has been traditionally a nickname for automobiles made by Mercury, a now-defunct marque owned by Ford.
In the US, Merc is also for Mercury motor boat engines, `https://www.mercurymarine.com`.