American businessman Malcolm Bricklin founded Subaru of America in 1968, and he also imported and marketed the Fiat X1/9.
On a personal note, a 1979 Fiat X1/9 was my first car; I bought it with my first USMC paychecks and I loved that car!
Here’s me and my blue 1979 Fiat X1/9 in 1983 taking it on a cross-country road trip
Canadian-Amer actor Nathan Fillion has starred in two long-running television series – Castle and The Rookie – but his signature role has been as Captain Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds in the short-lived science-fiction series Firefly.
The CanAm Highway runs from the north end at Southend, Saskatchewan to the south end at El Paso, Texas.
Canadian-American actor Margot Kidder was born in 1948, in Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories along the northern shore of Great Slave Lake and about 250 miles south of the Arctic Circle. She was 27 when she starred in The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, and she was 30 when she starred in Superman. Politically, she supported Jesse Jackson’s bid for the Democratic nomination in the 1984 and 1988, and she also supported Walter Mondale when he became the Democratic nominee in 1984. She died aged 69 by suicide by a “self-inflicted drug and alcohol overdose”.
After the death of Minnesota U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone in a plane crash just 11 days before the Nov. 5, 2002 election, former senator and vice president Walter Mondale agreed to run as the Democratic nominee. To the surprise of many, he was defeated in a close election by Republican candidate Norm Coleman, giving him the unenviable and unique distinction of having lost an election in all fifty states (considering both his 1984 presidential campaign and his 2002 Senate losses).
The deadliest single-aircraft plane crash in history was Japan Air Lines Flight 123 in 1985, which killed 520 people. The deadliest aviation disaster overall was the 9/11 attacks, which resulted in thousands of fatalities on the ground and on the planes. While historically a major concern, the survival rate for plane crashes is high, with reports indicating a 95.7% survival rate for accidents between 1983 and 2000.
The Japan Air Lines Flight 123 crash was a Boeing 747 crash that killed all 15 crew members and 505 of the 509 passengers on board. There were four survivors. The crash was caused by a faulty repair by Boeing technicians following a tailstrike on a landing that occurred seven years before.
The survivors were an off-duty flight attendant, Yumi Ochiai, and three passengers: Hiroko Yoshizaki, her daughter Mikiko, and 12-year-old Keiko Kawakai. All four were seated in the rear of the aircraft, in the last seven rows.
According to Travel Agent Central, Hawaiian Airlines is the longest-operating airline to have never had a fatal accident.
On December 15, 1938, Russian test pilot Valery Chkalov died while piloting a prototype of the Polikarpov I-180 fighter on its maiden test flight. One year earlier, Chkalov made a 63-hour flight from Moscow to Vancouver, WA, by way of the north pole in a Tupalev ANT-25 airplane, traveling 5,475 miles. He was preparing to circumvent the globe prior to his death.
Valery Giscard d’Estaing was a French politician. A longtime member of the National Assembly, and Minister of Finance, he served as President of France from 1974 until 1981.
Circumnavigate?
I’ve been trying to circumvent the globe for years. No luck so far.
In play:
Giscard d’Estaing, an Independent Republican, won the French presidential election of 1974 with 50.8% of the vote against François Mitterrand of the Socialist Party. Mitterrand beat him in a rematch in the election of 1981, however, and went on to become the longest-serving president in French history (1981-1995).
Louis XIV and his great-grandson Louis XV were the two longest-reigning kings of France. They both became king at the age of five. Louis XIV lived to age 76 and his reign is the longest of any world monarch. Louis XV reigned for 58 years.
The city of St. Louis, Missouri, is named for King Louis IX of France, who reigned in the 13th Century, and who was canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church 27 years after his death. Louis IX was the only French monarch to be named a saint, and was considered to be the ideal Christian monarch.
Monarch butterflies bred and raised in captivity before being released, sometimes inadvertently, are referred to as “franken monarchs.”
The monarch butterfly is known for its incredible 3,000-mile, multi-generational migration. It navigates using the sun and the Earth’s magnetic field. A “super generational” monarch completes this migration in a single lifetime. It can possibly travel over 100 miles in a single day, given the right conditions. It often flies at elevations where people on the ground cannot see them, at elevations from 800 to 1,200 feet high. A typical monarch’s life span is from 2 to 6 weeks, but a migrating monarch can live up to 9 months, with its lifetime spent migrating south, enduring the winter there, migrating north again, and finally breeding in the spring.
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Thanks for this! I used to travel to STL MO several times a year for work and it’s good to learn this trivia.
The only reigning world monarch now using the title “Emperor” is Naruhito of Japan, born in Feb. 1960. His father is Emperor Emeritus Akihito (now 91), and his grandfather was Emperor Hirohito (died in 1989).
Hoagy Carmichael’s 1942 song “I’m a Cranky Old Yank” was listed in the 1967 edition of the Guinness Book of Records under the title “I’m a Cranky Old Yank in a Clanky Old Tank on the Streets of Yokohama with My Honolulu Mama Doin’ Those Beat-o, Beat-o Flat-On-My-Seat-o, Hirohito Blues” as the longest song title.
During the original run of the animated television series The Flintstones, several celebrities appeared as in-universe versions of themselves, including Hoagy Carmichael, Ann-Marget (as “Ann Margrock”), Tony Curtis (as “Stony Curtis”), James Darren (as “James Darrock”), disc jockey Jimmy O’Neill (as “Jimmy O’Neillstone”), and the pop band The Beau Brummels (as “The Beau Brummelstones”).
Additionally, the stars of the live-action comedy series Bewitched, Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick York, appeared as their characters, Samantha and Darrin Stephens.
Ian Fleming, creator of the British secret agent James Bond, said early on that he imagined Bond looked like Hoagy Carmichael. Characters in two of Fleming’s 007 novels comment on the resemblance.
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Hoagy Carmichael composed the music to “Heart and Soul” and “Stardust”.
