Celebrated every 25 March since 1991, after George HW Bush signed Public Law 101-564.
The first six Medals of Honor were awarded on 25 March 1863 to honor the Andrews Raiders who, on 12 April 1862, set a train car on fire to try to ignite a covered railway bridge and thwart Confederate pursuit during the Civil War.
The medals were awarded by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. Again, this was 1863.
After the award ceremony the six raiders were taken to the White House to meet President Abraham Lincoln, which then became a tradition for all Medal of Honor recipients.
Buster Keaton’s The General is a silent comedy inspired by the Andrews Raiders from the point of view of a southern train engineer. Later, Disney produced a dramatic version, The Great Locomotive Chase.
In 2008, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill which would retroactively award the Medal of Honor to two of the three remaining Andrews Raiders, Charles Perry Shadrack and George Davenport Wilson. On July 3, 2024, President Joe Biden posthumously presented the medal to descendants of both Shadrack and Wilson. All the Medals of Honor presented to the Andrews Raiders used identical text.
Citation:
One of the 19 of 22 men (including 2 civilians) who, by direction of Gen. Mitchell (or Buell) penetrated nearly 200 miles south into enemy territory and captured a railroad train at Big Shanty, Ga., in an attempt to destroy the bridges and tracks between Chattanooga and Atlanta.
In 1906, a young man named Ed Johnson was lynched by a mob after being accused of assaulting a white woman in Chattanooga. At the time, the woman who accused Johnson had lost consciousness during the attack and could not recall much about what happened. Several witnesses said Johnson was in another part of town at the time. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay of execution, but a mob took Johnson from the Hamilton County Jail and marched him to the Walnut Street Bridge, where they lynched him. This led to one of the first times the U.S. Supreme Court held individuals in contempt of court, including the sheriff at the time. In 2000, Johnson’s conviction was officially overturned in Hamilton County.
Ninja’d by @knoodler! I was going to play off of Buell, but now I’ll play off of county.
Buell Motorcycles was founded in 1983 by ex-Harley-Davidson engineer Erik Buell. Buell bikes typically use Harley engines incorporated into a more sporty and racing-oriented motorcycle, whereas Harley develops cruiser bikes for a more relaxed riding experience. By 2003 Buell had become a wholly owned subsidiary of Harley, but in 2009 Harley discontinued the Buell products to focus on their brand. Buell continues today, and by 2024 they had 10 bikes in their lineup.
Buell is HQ’d in Grand Rapids, Michigan which is the county seat of Kent County.
Harley Quinn is a character in DC Comics. She was originally created as a one-shot henchwoman character for the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series in 1993. The character’s real name is Dr. Harleen Quinzel; she was a psychologist at Arkham Asylum, who was manipulated by the Joker into pursuing a life of crime.
Quinn immediately became a breakout character, and continued to appear in animated DC cartoons as the Joker’s accomplice and love interest. She was introduced into DC’s printed comic book canon in 1999, and has become one of DC’s most popular characters; over the course of time, she moved on from her relationship with the Joker, and has transitioned from being a villain to an anti-hero. Harley Quinn has been primarily played in DC animated series and films by voice actors Arleen Sorkin (who served as the original inspiration for the character) and Tara Strong; she has also been portrayed by Margot Robbie and Lady Gaga in live-action feature films, and by Mia Sara in the live-action television series Birds of Prey.
“Quinn the Eskimo (the Mighty Quinn)” was written and recorded by Bob Dylan as part of the Basement tapes. It was not immediately released, so Manfred Mann did a version of it that went to #1 in the UK.
“Lord of Mann” is the title of the British monarch in ruling over the Isle of Man (one “n”), even when the monarch is female. The island of 222 square miles is in the Irish Sea, between Great Britain and Ireland. The 2024 census showed its population as being 84,523.
In the 9th century, Norsemen founded the Kingdom of the Isles, which included Mann and the Hebrides. For most of this period, Mann was ruled by the Crovan dynasty and the island was a dependency of Norway. Norwegian King Magnus III reigned as King of Mann and the Isles between 1099 and 1103.
‘Kalfr’ is an Old Norse word for a small island that is near to a larger island. The Calf of Eday in Orkney, Scotland is a small island near Eday, the Calf of Flotta, also in Orkney, is next to Flotta, and the Calf of Man is a small island near the Isle of Man.
The flag of the Isle of Man depicts a triskelion — a symbol consisting of three armored legs, bent at the knee and joined at the thigh, featuring golden spurs.— on a red field. The same device is prominent on the coat of arms of the Isle of Man as well, being set on a red shield, usually shown with a peregrine falcon and a raven as supporters.
Manx cats, which originated on the Isle of Man, are known for having no tail at all or just a small stump. A legend says the tail was lost when Noah shut the Ark’s door on it.
The Meyers Manx was a “kit car,” originally developed and marketed by Bruce Meyers. Built on a Volkswagen Beetle chassis (as were many kit cars from the 1960s and 1970s), the Manx became the archetypical California “dune buggy,” with roughly 6,000 sold from 1964 through 1971.
1964 was the only full calendar year of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s first term, which began on Nov. 22, 1963, with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. Johnson, who had been Kennedy’s Vice President, was elected President in his own right on Nov. 3, 1964. Per Wiki, “Johnson won 61.1% of the popular vote which, to date, remains the highest popular vote percentage of any candidate since the advent of widespread popular elections in 1824.”
On election night in 1980, President Jimmy Carter conceded to Ronald Reagan before 10 p.m. Eastern time, while polls were still open on the West Coast. It was widely reported that Carter’s early concession led voters to leave polling places rather than stay in line to vote. This may have made the difference in some closely contested congressional races in the Pacific time zone.
As a result, the TV networks made a gentlemen’s agreement not to call a national election until all the polls had closed nationwide, no matter what the trend indicated. And presidential candidates agreed not to make concession statements before 10 p.m. Eastern time.
Carter was the first elected President to be refused a second term since 1932.
Disney’s John Carter of Mars was one of the company’s biggest flops, costing the House of Mouse an estimated $200 million. This happened not long after another Disney project with the word Mars in the title (Mars Needs Moms) also tanked at the box office. In fact, the disaster that was Mars Needs Moms was what compelled Disney to make the (possibly fatal) decision to cut the title down to John Carter, believing that the “of Mars” portion was poison. No, a hundred-year-old IP that no one asked to be turned into a movie was the problem. The flop cost at least one Disney exec, Rich Ross, his job. Despite the fact that it tanked at the box office, it holds a 6.6 rating - viz, not bad, but not great - on IMDB(dot)com, and its dedicated fans say it’s not as bad as its boring marketing and anemic box office would suggest.
In the 1984 science-fiction film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Earth becomes the focal point of an ongoing conflict between two alien factions: the peaceful Black Lectroids and the violent Red Lectroids.
Both groups of Lectroids emit pheromones which allow them to appear as human, and adopt human names, which always start with the given name “John.” While some Lectroids adopt normal-sounding surnames (e.g., Gomez, O’Connor), others use strange or silly surnames (e.g., Bigbooté, Small Berries, Many Jars, Ya Ya).
The arrival of the Red Lectroids was concealed by the supposedly fictional nature of Orson Welles’s “The War of the Worlds” radio broadcast of Oct. 30, 1938. Buckaroo Banzai later learned that all of the Red Lectroids, employed by Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems (“The Future Begins Tomorrow”), had been issued sequential Social Security numbers.
Side note: I once made a restaurant reservation in the name of John Ya Ya.
Sir Brian May, the guitarist of the rock band Queen, is sometimes compared to the fictional Buckaroo Banzai character, as both of them are polymaths, with a surprising range of talents. Both May and Banzai are rock guitarists and singers; May is also an astrophysicist (holding a PhD), an accomplished stereographic photographer and researcher on stereoscopy, and an animal welfare spokesperson, while Banzai was also a physicist, test pilot, and neurosurgeon.
A Banzai Skydive is a stunt where a skydiver throws their parachute out of the airplane then jumps after it (without a chute, of course) and tries to catch it. According to the wiki page for it, there is no known, credible evidence that a banzai skydive has ever really occurred.
But watchMojo.com reports that a ‘Yasuhiro Kubo holds the record with a 50 second delay (between pushing his chute out and jumping after it). Guinness Book of World Records editor Craig Glenday has called it “the most dangerous record category,” stating that it’s only allowed in the books since it’s an example of a record where you put your own life at risk, but no one else’s.’
