Three Sikorsky helicopters used by the U.S. military were nicknamed the “Jolly Green Giant”: the S-61R (1959), the CH-53 Sea Stallion (1966) and the MH-53 (1967). Sikorsky Aircraft was founded in 1923 by the expatriate Russian inventor and engineer Igor Sikorsky, and is based in Stratford, Conn.
The Starjammers are a space-faring superhero group in Marvel Comics, led by an Earth human nicknamed Corsair, but whose real name is Christopher Summers, the father of Cyclops and Havok of the X-Men.
The Starjammers’ medic is a member of a small insectoid species, the Chr’yllites; due to the medic’s resemblance to a helicopter, Corsair nicknamed him “Sikorsky,” after the Earth manufacturer of helicopters.
The Los Angeles City and County Fire Departments operate the Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane helicopters.
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Igor Sikorksy was born in Kiev in 1889 and emigrated to the US in 1919, fleeing the Russian Revolution. Best known for his success in the aviation field, he was also deeply devout and published two books about religion and philosophy.
In 1919 my grandfather, a White Russian, was jailed in Siberia during the Russian Revolution. His girlfriend brought him a loaf of bread, with a file that she had baked inside. He used the file to cut through the bars on his window. As he did so, he figured his progress would enable him to break out on New Year’s Eve, an ideal time to make a run for it while the guards were drunk. Which is what he did. He ran zig-zagged across the snow while the drunk guards fired at him. He escaped on foot east across Siberia, then south through Manchuria and China. When he reached Shanghai he boarded a ship headed for the US — his objective. The ship made a several-day stop in Manila Harbor. As he explored the area, after his imprisonment in the freezing cold of Siberia, he saw the Philippines as an island paradise. He decided to stay and catch a later ship to the US. He ended up staying there and marrying my grandmother, and they had two children, my uncle and my mother. He never made it to the US, but my mother did after she married my father and gave birth to me there.
What an amazing story! Thank you for sharing.
In play:
The White Russian cocktail was first introduced in “The Diner’s Club Drink Book” in 1961. It was a variation of a Black Russian cocktail, with cream added. The name came from the inclusion of vodka, which was pretty much unknown to Americans prior to a 1950s campaign blitz and associated with Russia.
Yes, great story, @Bullitt!
While it is widely assumed that vodka is distilled from potatoes, it is more commonly made from grains like wheat, corn, or rye. This is because grains are easier and more efficient to ferment. Vodka, however, can be made from anything that is fermentable, including grapes and other fruits, rice, and (yuck) sugar beets.
Thanks guys. Yes it is quite a story. I’m proud of my Filipino-Russian-American heritage.
Human nature is amazingly consistent. No matter where people have lived, they’ve (we’ve!) found something, almost anything, to ferment for a better partying experience. While alcoholic beverages generally fall into the 3 categories of beer, wine, and spirits or hard liquor, it’s the spirits and hard liquor that’s the focus of my post.
Basic examples include vodka (from Poland and Russia and commonly from grains and potatoes), rum (from the Caribbean and commonly from molasses and sugarcane), gin (from England and the Netherlands and commonly from barley or other grains) and tequila (from Mexico and commonly from blue agave). Discovery of late Stone Age jugs suggests that intentionally fermented drinks existed from circa 10,000 BC.
Hey, we’ve been partying for around 12,000 years!
Whisky/whiskey is a hard alcohol, which is made from a fermented grain mash. Various types of grain are used, depending on the type of whiskey in question: “malt whiskey,” which is common in Scotland, Ireland, and Canada, is typically made using malted barley. Bourbon, a style of American whiskey, is made using a mash which is primarily, if not exclusively, corn (maize).
Tango, Uniform, and Victor, and X-Ray, Yankee, and Zulu are the neighbors of Whiskey, the letter W in the NATO phonetic alphabet.
A pangram is a sentence that contains all the letters of the English alphabet. For example: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
As a pangram, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” was a classic typing drill. Another drill, invented by a teacher named Charles E. Weller, was “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country”, because it exactly fills out a 70-space line if you put a period at the end.
(I remembered the phrase from 50 years ago and googled the origin. A column by Cecil Adams provided the information.)
In what I assume to be a remarkable coincidence, the Peanuts strip in the Washington Post today has Snoopy typing this sentence: “the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” He says it was the only thing he ever learned to type.
Note that his sentence is slightly different from yours. And that it is not a true pangram.
Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled trivia dominoes.
There’s no S there.
Make it “dogs,” and you’re in bidness!
In play:
President Benjamin Harrison was present for the first performance of John Philip Sousa’s “The Washington Post” march on June 15, 1889. The tune, which remains one of Sousa’s most popular, was recorded on a Graphophone cylinder the following year.
John Philip Sousa was a veteran of both the US Marine Corps (1868–1875, and 1880–1892) where he reached the rank of SgtMaj (Sergeant Major), and of the US Navy (1917–1918) where he reached the rank of LCdr (Lieutenant Commander).
He created the US Marine Band in 1798. Known by its nickname of “The President’s Own”, it is the oldest of the US military bands and the oldest professional musical organization in the country. Today, the Marine Band includes the Marine Chamber Orchestra and Marine Chamber Ensembles.
Known as “The March King” or “The American March King”, Sousa’s most famous marches include The Stars and Stripes Forever (composed in 1896; in 1987 it became the National March of the US), and Semper Fidelis (composed in 1888, it is the official march of the US Marine Corps).
Semper Fidelis, SgtMaj Sousa!
I’ll include YouTube links for both marches. Both are played by the the US Marine Band:
➜ https://youtu.be/a-7XWhyvIpEp0I ■ ← The Stars and Stripes Forever
➜ https://youtu.be/qgABUZ4i9co ■ ← Semper Fidelis
Clifton Webb played Sousa in the 1952 biopic Stars and Stripes Forever, which co-starred Robert Wagner and Debra Paget.
Jimmy Webb is an American singer-songwriter. Though Webb has released over a dozen albums as a solo artist, his greatest acclaim has been as a songwriter; many of his compositions have been hits for other artists, including “Up Up and Away” and “Worst That Could Happen” (The 5th Dimension), “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Galveston,” and “Wichita Lineman” (Glen Campbell), and “Macarthur Park” (Richard Harris, and Donna Summer).
Tha actual pangram iis “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”
-“BB”-
Jimmy Thudpucker is a minor character in the comic strip Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau. Introduced in 1975, he is an amalgam of music artists Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, John Denver and Loudon Wainwright III.