HMS Shakespeare was one of HM submarines in the Second World War and had the distinction of scoring kills against all three Axis powers.
The Axis grew out of the Anti-Comintern Pact, an anti-communist treaty signed by Germany and Japan in 1936. Italy joined the Pact in 1937.
The axis of the planet Uranus is nearly parallel to the ecliptic, not largely perpendicular as with the other planets. That makes the length of a Uranus day approximately the same as the length of its year.
Hmm. Not how I remember it. He wanted to protect them and see them grown to adulthood to create a Fourth Reich, didn’t he?
In play:
Luke Skywalker’s friend Biggs, who appeared in a scene cut from the original Star Wars film, was shipping out from Tatooine on the starship Rand Ecliptic.
Ronald Biggs (known as “Ronnie”) was a notorious English thief, known for his part in the Great Train Robbery of 1963. He escaped from gaol and lived a life on the run from authorities in various countries (Australia, Brazil) for 36 years. He died in 2013.
Great Train Robbery (1903) was a milestone in movie making. The film is one of the earliest to use the technique of cross cutting, in which two scenes appear to occur simultaneously but in different locations.
Yes. The confusion was that the Nazis behind the plot were killing the “fathers” of the clones when they were 13, the same age where Hitler’s father died, in order to duplicate environmental influences.
In Play
Edward S. Porter, director of The Great Train Robbery, is often credited with the first closeup in film, a shot of a fire alarm box in The Life of an American Fireman, also in 1903.
A rare example of a charge of murder being tried at first instance in the High Court of Australia was the case of R v Porter (1933) 55 CLR 182.
Hmm. Why’d it start in that court?
In play:
Oddly enough, the top court in New York State is the Court of Appeals; the trial-level courts are the various divisions of the Supreme Court.
Roy Moore, former professional kickboxer (really) and circuit court judge, became the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama due to the publicity he received for refusing to remove a 10 Commandments plaque from his courtroom.
Once in office he installed a much larger granite 10 Commandments monument in the Supreme Court building and refused to remove it, for offenses related to which he was successfully impeached and removed from the Court.
Then in 2012 he was re-elected Chief Justice again, because in Alabama, you can do that.
Roy Rene (1891 - 1954), né Harry van der Sluys, was a famous Australian comedian and vaudevillian. One of his best-known characters was Mo McCackie.
Rene is honoured in the Mo Awards, which are presented annually for excellence in live performance. Winners receive a statuette in the form of Rene in his Mo McCackie persona.
The site of the alleged murder was in the Australian Capital Territory. The ACT Supreme Court was not established until 1934. The nearest “normal” superior criminal court was the NSW Supreme Court, but it did not have jurisdiction, as the ACT was under Commonwealth control. The only superior Commonwealth court available to try the case was the High Court.
Interesting - thanks!
In play:
Diana, Princess of Wales, posed with swimsuited lifeguards during her 1988 visit to Australia.
Slight nitpick: in 1988 she was HRH the Princess of Wales, not Diana, Princess of Wales (her title after the dissolution of the marriage).
In play: the royal visits to Australia in 1988 celebrated the bicentenary of the foundation of the colony of New South Wales in 1788.
Mike Dukakis, the Democratic nominee for President in 1988, carried more states and got a higher percentage of the vote than any Democrat since 1976, although he still lost the election to Vice President George H.W. Bush, the Republican nominee.
The then-president of the MA State Senate, Billy Bulger, brother of gangster Whitey Bulger, joked about the downtown Boston transportation project Dukakis championed that became the famous/infamous Big Dig: “If Mike wants to depress the Central Artery, all he has to do is talk to it.”
While Mike Dukakis was Massachusetts governor, he allowed Willie Horton, a murder convicted to life without parole, to join a weekend work pass program. Horton walked away from the program, and committed a really nasty crime in Maryland. He was sentenced and jailed.
Dukakis never apologized for allowing Horton to run free, and tried to get him back to Massachusetts to serve the rest of his time. Maryland refused, saying they would not take a chance on Horton beging allowed to escape again.
The first movie adaptation of Dr. Seuss’s work was a Warner Brothers cartoon version of “Horton Hatches the Egg” directed by Bob Clampett in 1941.
When the British Army was thrown out of first Greece than Crete in 1941, following the two rather unfortunate withdrawls in 1940, wags in London began to say that the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) stood for “Back Every Fortnight”.
The FFF system of measurements (Furlong/Firkin/Fortnight) inspired the computer term microfortnight, equal to 1.2096 seconds. One furlong per fortnight is a realistic speed for a glacier advance.