Pope Leo XIV is the 267th pope since St. Peter. His father was a WWII US Navy veteran who commanded an infantry landing craft on D-Day.
Pope Leo XIV, of course, is the first pope from the United States. There has also been just one pope from England, Adrian IV, who held the office from 1154-1159.
Popes are given regnal numbers while antipopes are not. Hippolytus of Rome, a theologian and a bishop of Rome who lived around 200 AD, was one of the first antipopes. Rogelio del Rosario Martinez, ordained in 2003 and who goes by Pope Michael II, is a recent one.
The first Pope to have a regnal number other than I (the first) was St. Sixtus II who became Pope in AD 257.
Sixto Lezcano was a major league baseball player, primarily for the Milwaukee Brewers. Lezcano was the Brewers’ starting right fielder for six seasons (1975-1980); his best season was 1979, when he had his career bests in batting average (.321) and home runs (28), while also winning a Gold Glove award.
Lezcano was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals after the 1980 season, and also played for the San Diego Padres, Philadelphia Phillies, and Pittsburgh Pirates, as well as the Yokohama Taiyo Whales of the Japanese Central League.
The month of August used to be called Sextilis, until Julius Caesar added the months of June and July to the calendar year. This moved Sextilis to be the eighth month of the year, instead of the sixth, and required a different name. Because Sextilis was previously the sixth month.
Sextilis was renamed to Augustus in honor of Augustus Caesar, who accomplished many great things in the month of Sextilis.
Eventually, the month of Augustus was shortened to August.
Michael Böllner, a German child actor who played Augustus Gloop in the 1971 kids’ film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, became a tax accountant in later life. He appears with the rest of the now-grown child cast for public events from time to time: Michael Böllner - Wikipedia
GAAP, or “Generally Accepted Accounting Principles,” is a set of accounting rules and standards for U.S.-based companies, and which are maintained by the Federal Accounting Standards Board. GAAP sets the standardized rules for preparing and presenting financial reports, allowing for consistency and comparability across companies.
Publicly-traded companies in the U.S. are required to follow GAAP for their financial statements; many privately-held companies do so, as well, particularly those which are seeking financing or investors.
Because they use many of the same skill sets, and work with the same data, accountants and auditors are often grouped together when discussing employment. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2024 there were almost 1.6 million people employed in these positions, with a median salary of over $81k per year.
“Nesting” is a tern for women near the end of their pregnancy and refers to cleaning and organizing the house. Because it occurs so close to labor many times, it is thought to be an indicator that the woman is about to go into labor within a couple of days but that is not true.
I had no idea birds could be assigned to or hired by expectant mothers! I would have expected storks, though…
A crow’s nest is a structure at the top of a sailing ship’s main mast, which is used as a lookout point. Due to its high placement, unobscured by the rest of the ship’s structure, it gives a wide, clear field of vision.
Though similar structures were used by ancient cultures which employed sailing ships, the modern version, and the term, appear to date from the early 19th century.
A bald eagle’s nest is called an aerie, pronounced like airy. When bald eagles migrate they travel to the same aeries they previously built. For example, in winters some bald eagles return south to the area near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, and also nearby to the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers — this area is near St. Louis MO. In summers these bald eagles are up north, in Canada.
The bald eagles continue reinforcing the aeries they’ve built, and over time these aeries get to weigh up to several hundreds of pounds.
I used to travel to St. Louis several times a year for work. I frequently would do some sight seeing on my visits. One of the best ever activities I did was during one winter when I visited Pere Marquette State Park in Grafton, IL for their Bald Eagle Viewing Days. My visit was led by State Park Ranger Scott Isringhausen.
I asked him, and he is the brother of former MLB pitcher Jason Isringhausen, who today is 53 years old.
My visit was approx the winter of 2014-2015, and Scott Isringhausen might still be there.
Scott Isringhausen can be seen at this YouTube:
Eagle Watching at Pere Marquette State Park
➜ https://youtu.be/aLCx5CH3rGE ■
If you’re a nature lover this is an absolutely fabulous experience. Highly recommended!
A guide to eagle watching near St. Louis
➜ A guide to eagle watching near St. Louis | St. Louis Magazine ■
Jacques Marquette was a French Jesuit missionary and explorer, who founded the first European settlement in Michigan (Sault Sainte Marie), and, while partnering with French-Canadian explorer Louis Jolliet, was the first European to explore and map the upper Mississippi River.
Numerous cities. towns, and schools throughout the Midwest are named for Marquette, including Marquette University in Milwaukee; the now-defunct Pere Marquette Railway, which operated in the upper Midwest, was also named for him.
Jacques Marquette was born in Laon, France, in 1637. He joined the Jesuit order and became a missionary priest, arriving in New France (Canada) in 1666. He was a gifted linguist, learning multiple Native American dialects, and founded missions in places like Sault Ste. Marie and St. Ignace. He died in 1675 in what is now Ludington, Michigan, after a final expedition to establish a mission among the Illinois tribes.
The Marquis de Lafayette bought his own ship, Victoire, to cross the Atlantic in March 1777, join the Continental Army and support the American cause. He briefly delayed his departure when he was informed, erroneously, that Louis XVI, the King of France, opposed his plans and might even order his arrest to keep him from leaving.
Louis XVI was given the title Duke of Berry at his birth.
When it opened in 1975 the Pontiac Silverdome, in Pontiac, Michigan held the largest number of seats, 82,666, of any NFL stadium until it was surpassed in 2000 by FedExField in Landover, Maryland. The site where the Pontiac Silverdome once stood is now an Amazon fulfillment center. The Silverdome featured a fiberglass fabric roof held up by air pressure, the first use of this architectural technique in a major athletic facility.
The largest crowd to ever gather at the Silverdome was on 18 September 1987 for Mass with Pope John Paul II, with a reported attendance of 93,682 — just shading the record of 93,173 set at the Silverdome on 29 March 1987 for WrestleMania III. Another notable audience attendance record had earlier been broken on 30 April 1977, when Led Zeppelin played in front of 76,229 fans at the Silverdome. This was, at the time, a new world record attendance for a solo indoor attraction, beating the 75,962 that The Who attracted there on 06 December 1975.
The Silverdome hosted one and only one Super Bowl, Super Bowl XVI on 24 January 1982. That was the first time the Super Bowl was ever played in a cold-weather city.
The King County Stadium, known better as The Kingdome, was a multi-purpose stadium which served as home to the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks, MLB’s Seattle Mariners, and briefly, NBA’s Seattle Supersonics. Situated in the Industrial District of South Seattle, it was built in 1976 and had seating capacity of 66,000 (football), 59,166 (baseball), and 40,000 (basketball). The Kingdome hosted the 1977 Pro Bowl, the 1979 MLB All-Star Game, the 1987 NBA All-Star Game, and several NCAA Final Fours. In 1994 pieces of ceiling tile fell into the seating area before a scheduled Mariners game, precipitating the relocation of the host teams and funding for a new public stadium. The Mariners moved to what is now T-Mobile Park in 1999, and the Seahawks moved temporarily to University of Washington’s Husky Stadium in 1999 as well. (The Seahawks had already relocated to the Seattle Coliseum in 1985.) The Kingdome was demolished by implosion on March 26, 2000, and Lumen Field was built on the site in 2002, where the Seahawks currently play.