The Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland covers just over 8 per cent of the country’s area.
Since Confederation in 1867, Canada has been composed of 4 provinces, 5 provinces, 6 provinces, 7 provinces, 9 provinces, and now 10 provinces, but has never had exactly 8 provinces.
U.S. Presidents 1, 3,4, and 5 were from Virginia, and 2 & 6 were from Massachusetts. President 7, Andrew Jackson, the first son of immigrants to become president, was the first from neither, but South Carolina and North Carolina still argue over which one he was born in as it was in a disputed area on the border.
One of the most famous radio show openings – “Faster than a speeding bullet, et. al.” was spoken by announcer Jackson Beck, who years later narrated Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run.
The official name for Sydney Harbour is Port Jackson. It was named for Sir George Jackson, Judge Advocate of the Fleet.
The French word “avocat” can mean either an advocate or an avocado, depending on context.
In the HBO miniseries John Adams, President George Washington explains U.S. neutrality in the latest British-French war to Citizen Genet, a young and headstrong French dipomat. Genet angrily storms out after threatening to go over Washington’s head and take his case directly to the American people.
Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton then dryly says, “The celebrated French diplomacy!”
The Genêt Affair, in which the celebrated diplomat of the pre-Jacobin Revolution did what he promised and eventually forced him to seek asylum from President Washington to avoid the guillotine, endangered US neutrality between France and both Britain and Spain. Genêt raised militias and privateering ships, largely in South Carolina, to support Revolutionary French forces.
When George Washington ordered U.S. neutrality between royal Britain and republican France by proclamation, it was the first time the infant republic had declared neutrality in an armed conflict elsewhere, and an important milestone in establishing the President of the United States’s primacy in foreign affairs.
The Royal Flying Doctor Service provides medical support to isolated communities in outback Australia. It was established in 1928 by the Rev John Flynn, a Presbyterian minister.
Ohio Congressman John Scott Harrison was the only man in United States history to be the son of one President (William Henry Harrison) and father of another (Benjamin Harrison). He was also the only son or father of any US president whose dead naked corpse was ever found suspended from a meat hook by police investigating a body theft ring. (Yes, really… you can Google it.)
Now that’s good trivia!
Ohio is one of sixteen states the governors of which have a flag different from that of the state itself.
According to that link there are fifteen states, not sixteen - see the gallery where the last state, Vermont, as of 1923 no longer has a separate governor’s flag.
In play: the 15th state of the Union is Kentucky, which seceded from Virginia and became its own state in 1792.
On 8 April 1933 Western Australia voted at a referendum to secede from the Commonwealth of Australia. The proposal did not proceed as it didn’t have the approval of the Commonwealth government. Pressure for the idea of secession soon fell away because the WA voters elected the anti-secessionist Labor party to office at the simultaneous state election.
They’re a contrary mob out west.
Fernando Wood, the Lincoln hating secessionist mayor of and later congressional rep from New York City, is portrayed by The Hobbit actor Lee Pace in Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film Lincoln.
Famously conservative actor James Woods, despite being a vocal supporter of George W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani, is still a registered Democrat.
Ronald Reagan was first a Democrat who aligned with FDR and the New Deal program, but in the 1950s he started changing his views because the Democratic Party was concentrating more on individual rights rather than on a collective philosophy. Reagan endorsed Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, and then Nixon in 1960 even though he was still a Democrat.
Reagan officially became a Republican in 1962. The reason that Reagan gave was that his views and the party’s views were no longer aligned. Reagan always maintained that he did not leave the Democratic Party, the party left him.
Ah. My bad. The second paragraph says there are sixteen.
In play:
Ronald Reagan’s televised speech in support of GOP standard-bearer Barry Goldwater in 1964 is often credited with bringing him to the attention of Republican Party elders, laying the groundwork for his Presidential runs in 1976, 1980 and 1984.
1964 was the year of the dragon according to the Chinese zodiac.
The Zodiac serial killer who killed several people in California in the late 60’s has never been identified.