Ken Burns’s new documentary, The American Revolution, is a 6-part, 12-hour series premiering on PBS on November 16. It is coming out just a little over 250 years after the Revolution began at Lexington and Concord, Mass.
On April 19th, 1775, the first action of the war, commonly referred to as “the shot heard 'round the world”, was a brief skirmish at Lexington, followed by the full-scale Battles of Lexington and Concord. British troops suffered around 300 casualties before withdrawing to Boston, which was then besieged by the militia.
Evacuation Day is a state holiday in Massachusetts, and is on the same day as St. Patrick’s Day. The holiday marks the forced evacuation of British troops from Boston on March 17, 1776, George Washington’s first victory of the American Revolution. The fact that the Boston and the Bay State have so many Irish-American people is completely unrelated to the timing of the holiday.
St Patrick has been the patron saint of Nigeria since 1961.
The San Patricio (Saint Patrick) Brigade was a group of mostly Irish immigrants who fought on the side of Mexico in the Mexican-American War. Thirty of them were captured and executed as deserters after the Battle of Churubusco in 1847. Today, the San Patricio Brigade are regarded as national heroes in Mexico and Ireland.
Saint Patrick and Saint Brigid were friends, and he may have been the one who baptized her.
Historical information about the Irish Saint Brigid, who is said to have lived during the fifth and sixth centuries CE, is limited, and much of it consists of anecodotal hagiographies which were written during the medieval era.
Due to this, some historians theorize that St. Brigid was not an real person, but was an adaptation of the stories of the pagan Irish goddess Brigid (the saint and the goddess share many qualities), used in an effort to convert pagan Irish to Christianity.
Very cool. I will tape that.
Today is the 250th birthday of the Marine Corps, founded in a bar in Philadelphia. This documentary will tie that in nicely.
Comment only. Not in play.
In play → The license plate code for vehicles in County Clare, Ireland is CE.
(Not in play) I’d like to take a moment to thank @Bullitt and all veterans for their service. I am grateful for those who step up to defend this country from all threats, whether from inside or outside our borders.
Back in play: CE is the abbreviation of Common Era (sometimes referred to as “Christian Era”), which is the non-religious connotation for establishing a base year from which to assign historical dates. CE is equal to AD (anno domini – “In the Year of Our Lord”), with BCE (“Before Common Era”) as its opposite.
There is no year 0 in our calendar. 1BCE goes directly into 1CE. So the first 100 years in the common era would be 1CE - 100CE. That is why centuries end on years ending in 00 and not 99.
Thank you for your support, @knoodler .
In play — Jim Otto played Center for the Oakland Raiders. His jersey number was 00, double-zero.
Jim Otto was the first player in pro football history to have ten First-team All-Pro selections, a mark achieved only once since, by Jerry Rice. Otto and Rice are the only players with 10 selections.
Players with 9 selections: Ron Mix, Anthony Muñoz
Players with 8 selections: Joe Schmidt, Reggie White, Lawrence Taylor, Bruce Smith, Jim Parker, Don Hutson, Bill George, Aaron Donald, Jim Brown
In 1973, the National Football League standardized the usage of uniform numbers, with ranges of numbers being exclusively assigned to different player positions: for example, numbers 1 through 19 were reserved for quarterbacks, kickers, and punters, while numbers 80 through 89 were reserved for wide receivers and tight ends.
Players who had been wearing a particular number prior to 1973 were “grandfathered” in, and allowed to continue to wear their original numbers, even if they violated the new rule. As part of the 1973 rule, numbers 0 and 00 were barred from further use. Two players – center Jim Otto of the Oakland Raiders, and wide receiver Ken Burrough of the Houston Oilers – were wearing 00 when the new rules were instituted, and were permitted to continue to wear it for the remainder of their careers. After Burrough’s retirement following the 1981 season (Otto had retired in 1974), no NFL player has worn 00 again.
Many thanks and best wishes to all Doper veterans, with gratitude for your service to this great republic.
In play:
The 00 or “double-O” numbers were reserved for a handful of agents of the Secret Intelligence Service or MI6 who had a “license to kill” (that is, government permission to use deadly force if necessary) in the works of Ian Fleming. The best-known of them all was, of course, 007, James Bond, who first appeared in print in 1953, in the novel Casino Royale.
Argentina’s government bonds will give you over a 40% yield per annum if you are willing to take the risk.
Did you ever play Risk? I played this a lot.
Risk, the board game, was created in France in 1957 by a French film director originally as La Conquête du Monde, The Conquest of the World. Parker Brothers bought it in 1959 and released it as Risk: The Continental Game, and then later as Risk: The Game of Global Domination. The game’s first editions had wooden pieces in six colors: red, blue, yellow, green, black, and pink.
Risk has become one of the most popular board games in history. In 2021, Risk was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame, in Rochester NY.
(Not in play: when I was in college, my D&D group would play “Risk for Drinks” on Saturday nights. To play, you had to bring your ante: a 12-pack of beer. The rules were the normal rules for Risk, but with these following additions: (1) Lose an army, take a drink. (2) Lose a country, take a drink. (3) Lose a continent, finish your beer.)
In play:
French film director François Truffaut was one of the founders and leading members of the French New Wave filmmaking movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s, which rejected traditional filmmaking techniques, and was known for experimentation, realism, and the filmmaker becoming an auteur.
In the U.S., Truffaut won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1973, for Day for Night, but one of his most visible works to the general public in the U.S. was an acting role, as French scientist Claude Lacombe, in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).
(Not in play) Risk is one of my favorite board games. Twenty years ago I played an online version, and during the 70s I joined with neighborhood kids to play sweeping Risk tournaments. (Best I could muster was 3rd place, but I had oodles of fun.)
On December 27, 1973, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s novel The Gulag Archipelago is first published. It was originally written between 1958–1968 and published from a typescript smuggled out of the Soviet Union.
Earthsea, a fictional world created by Ursula Le Guin, was an archipelago.
Nutopia (new-utopia) is a conceptual country, sometimes referred to as a micronation, founded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1973 when President Richard Nixon was trying to deport them.
Nutopia is a portmanteau of “new” and “utopia” which suggests Nutopia is a new, utopian society. There is also the word play with “nut” (or, insane person) and “utopia”.
Lennon and Ono declared themselves ambassadors of the country and sought diplomatic immunity to end Lennon’s ongoing immigration troubles as he and Ono tried to remain in the US. (Lennon had been denied permanent residence status.)