New Zealand is not named after a place in Europe that was noted for its excessive Christian zeal (as I mistakenly thought in my youth), but for the low-lying Dutch province of Zeeland , or “Sea-land”, the inhabitants of which have fought a constant battle against the sea.
The technologically advanced, telepathic race in John Wyndham’s post-apocalyptic science fiction novel The Chrysalids live in a place called Zealand. It is described as “having two parts…with lots of sea all around” and where it is daylight at the same time as it is the middle of the night in the location where the story takes place (Labrador).
The Principality of Sealand consists of what was HM Fort Roughs, a former Second World War Maunsell Sea Fort, off the coast of England. It is not recognized by any other country, although it claims the UK and Germany have done so.
The 2014 FIFA World Cup finals pits Germany against Argentina on Sunday, while on Saturday Brazil faces the Netherlands for third place.
Germany and Argentina are the home countries of the current and previous Popes of the Roman Catholic Church, following a native of Poland, and centuries of nothing but Italians before that.
Papal resignations are not clear because the Catholic church records are not completely accurate. However Pope Pontian (230-235) was the first pope to resign and his case is clear. Pontian had the misfortune of being caught up in the severe persecution of Christians under emperor Maximinus Thrax and was sent to the mines on Sardina, a place from which few evidently managed to return alive. Pontian knew that he would almost certainly die on Sardina and didn’t want there to be a long-term power vacuum in the church, so he decided that abdication would be the best course of action. Pontian’s abdication also gives us the first certain date in the history of papacy: September 28, 235.
By legend, it is impossible to resign membership in the Mafia. Tommaso Buscetta, the first in America to turn informant, described his initiation ceremony as including pricking his trigger finger and dripping blood on a picture of a saint, which was then burned along with the oath (versions vary) “As burns this saint, so will burn my soul if I ever speak of this. I enter La Cosa Nostra alive and will leave it dead.”
Hence the saying, ‘blood in, blood out.’
Colonel Thomas Blood attempted to steal the Crown jewels of England in 1671. The attempt failed. He was captured and taken before Charles II, who inexplicably pardoned Blood and granted him valuable land in Ireland.
One explanation for the pardon is that Charles had a fondness for audacious rogues.
Another speculation is that Blood had actually been acting on Charles’ instructions, because Charles was short of money and planned to take the profits of the theft, while Parliament would pay for a new set of Crown Jewels.
The Prince of Wales was educated, in part, at Timbertop, the rural campus of Geelong Grammar in Victoria.
Earlier this year the US’s Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, made an obscene reference to the European Union in her phone conversation with Geoffrey Pyatt, the US’s ambassador to Ukraine. Apparently unbeknownst to her the conversation was recorded. It was later to YouTube. She was forced to apologize for her remarks.
In an apparent reference to the EU’s handling of the crisis in Ukraine, Nuland said:
“That would be great I think to help glue this thing and have the UN glue it and you know, f**k the EU.”
Newland Archer is the protagonist of Edith Wharton’s novel The Age of Innocence.
In the song written and performed by Don Henley, The End of the Innocence, the lyrics include the line,
The “Tired old man that we elected king.”
This is a reference to US president Ronald Reagan. There are a lot of political overtones in the song, as Henley strongly opposed Reagan’s agenda.
The line about “Beating plowshares into swords” is a distortion of Isaiah 2:4 in which Isaiah describes the end times:
“And he shall judge among the nations,
and shall rebuke many people:
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruninghooks:
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.”
Bruce Hornsby played piano on this and wrote this with Henley.
Exteriors of Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence were shot in Troy, NY, though Albany, NY, locations stood in for Boston.
St Martin cut his cloak in half to share with a poor beggar man.
The period around St, Martin’s Day (Nov. 11, aka Martinmas) is generally the time when the last warm weather of the year occurs. This is sometimes called Martin’s Summer accordingly.
The Academy of St Martin in the Fields is an English Chamber Orchestra founded by Sir Neville Marriner. It gave its first performance in 1958 and has continued to grow in popularity since. The Academy now has one of the largest discographies of any chamber orchestra worldwide, and its partnership with Sir Neville is the most recorded of any orchestra and conductor.
In 1987 Neville Wran, the then Premier of NSW, stopped a run on the St George Building Society by standing on the front steps of its head office and personally guaranteeing all of its members’ savings.
Winston Churchill was not a big fan of his predecessor, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, a former lord mayor of Birmingham who, he said, “looked at foreign affairs through the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe.”
Actor Richard Chamberlain’s live-in partner for several years during the 1970s was Wesley Eure, who played Will Marshall on the cult classic children’s show Land of the Lost. For professional reasons both men were closeted at the time, but both have since come out as gay and discussed their former relationship; they remain friends.