At the Siege of Maastricht in the 1670’s a young John Churchill served alongside Louis XIV, a man whose armies he would later whip across Europe. And when I say served alongside, I mean in the assault team through the breach.
King Louis IX of France was canonised in 1297 by Pope Boniface VIII.
Frenchman Louis Braille, inventor of the worldwide system of reading and writing of the blind and visually impaired, was himself blind from a childhood accident. He was born in 1809. He died in Paris at only 43 years of age.
We have a doper with that user name, Maastricht.
Still in play:
Frenchman Louis Braille, inventor of the worldwide system of reading and writing of the blind and visually impaired, was himself blind from a childhood accident. He was born in 1809. He died in Paris at only 43 years of age.
John Wyndham’s best known science fiction novel is The Day of the Triffids. It depicts the collapse of society that occurs when almost the whole of mankind is struck blind after viewing a comet storm.
José de Sousa Saramago, a Portuguese writer living in Spain, won the 1998 Literature Nobel Prize largely on the strength of his novel Blindness (Ensaio sobre a Cegueira), about an epidemic of blindness in an unnamed city with unnamed inhabitants, and the complete breakdown of social order that follows. Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore starred in the film adaptation.
El beso de la mujer araña, translated as “Kiss of the Spider-Woman,” the most successful novel by the Argentine writer Manuel Puig, has no traditional narrative voice, but is mostly written as dialogue, without any indication as to who is speaking. There are also parts of stream of consciousness and a long series of footnotes on the psychoanalytic theory of homosexuality. The footnotes act largely as a representation of Puig’s political intention in writing the novel: to present an objective view of homosexuality.
The Argentine light cruiser General Belgrano, sunk by a British submarine during the 1982 Falklands War, had been present but was undamaged during the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, when she was the USS Phoenix.
Jimmy Webb’s song “By the Time I Get to Phoenix”, inspired by his divorce from Susan Horton (their stormy marriage inspired his song “MacArthur Park”), recorded most notably by Glen Campbell, was called by Frank Sinatra “the greatest torch song ever written”.
Some other famous or popular torch songs include:
[ul]
Crying, Roy Orbison
Yesterday, Paul McCartney
I Don’t Know How to Love Him, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice
Un-Break My Heart, Diane Warren
Killing Me Softly, Charles Fox, Norman Gimbel
Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now), Phil Collins
Wedding Bell Blues, Laura Nyro
Rhythm of the Rain, John Claude Gummoe
The Name of the Game, Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, Stig Anderson
Heartbreak Hotel, Mae Boren Axton, Thomas Durden
Hungry Eyes, Frank Previte, John De Nicola
One Less Bell to Answer, Hal David
[/ul]
‘Torch’ is the Australian/New Zealand/British English term for the article which American English describes as a ‘flashlight’.
The invasion of North Africa in World War II was given the code word “Operation Torch.”
“Operation Torch” was the code-name for the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa in the autumn of 1942, which eventually led to the Allies gaining complete control of North Africa.
Pliny the Elder was quoting an older, Greek saying when he wrote “ex Africa semper aliquid novi”…“there’s always something new coming out of Africa”.
Semper Fidelis distinguishes the United States Marine Corps from any other branch of service. It goes beyond teamwork—it is a brotherhood that can always be counted on. Latin for “always faithful,” Semper Fidelis became the Marine Corps motto in 1883. It guides Marines to remain faithful to the mission at hand, to each other, to the Corps and to country, no matter what. Becoming a Marine is a transformation that cannot be undone, and Semper Fidelis is a permanent reminder of that. Once made, a Marine will forever live by the ethics and values of the Corps.
SEMPER FI. DO OR DIE.
The feast of Saint Fidelis of Sigmaringen is celebrated on 24 April.
Following the success of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., NBC added a spinoff The Girl from U.N.C.L.E starring Stephanie Powers as April Dancer. In a crossover episode, Napoleon Solo teamed up with April to stop Mother Muffin – played by Boris Karloff in drag.
The remains of Napoleon II, son of the Emperor Napoleon I, were transferred in 1940 from Vienna to the dome of Les Invalides in Paris, as a gift of Adolf Hitler to France.
Ira Levin’s The Boys From Brazil’s main plot is that Joseph Mengele created 94 Hitler clones, and now wants them all killed.
The Richard Rodgers / Lorenz Hart musical The Boys from Syracuse was adapted from Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, which in turn was based on Plautus’ The Menaechmi, or The Twin Brothers. The story is light fare about identical twins separated at birth being mistaken for each other later in life, and eventually reunited.