In Ancient Greece, the city that founded a colony was called a metropolis, in contrast to a metropolitan state, which was a state that owned a colony.
The pallium, a narrow band of white lamb’s wool, is bestowed by the Pope on a metropolitan archbishop who is the head of an ecclesiastical province.
Eastern Orthodox bishops (and Eastern Catholic bishops of the Byzantine Rite) have an equivalent called an omophor, similar but larger (and obviously not bestowed by the Pope!).
The Rev. Alan M. Gates, rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, was elected in April to become the next Episcopal Bishop of Massachusetts. He will be consecrated as bishop on Sept. 13 in Boston.
Billy Bishop was Canada’s top air ace in World War I despite being in combat for only six months.
The World War I top flying ace Red Baron’s full name was Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen (and doesn’t that sound like it belongs in the “made up, false trivia” thread?)
Spitfire pilot and squadron commander Adolph “Sailor” Malan, a former merchant seaman, was RAF Fighter Command’s leading ace in the Battle of Britain, with 27 kills. After returning to his native South Africa after the war, he became one of its leading white opponents of apartheid, as a member of the Springbok Legion, many of whose leaders eventually joined the African National Congress.
The “white” community that most opposed apartheid in South Africa was the Jewish community, and Mandela was arrested (on a CIA tipoff) at a farm of a Jewish South African whose driver he was posing as. All the non black defendants at the resulting trial were Jews.
Unfortunately the most famous Jewish South African, Dr Ali Bacher, the former Springbok cricket captain was for many people the face apartheid as the head of the (all white) South African Cricket Union.
In the history of test cricket, there have been only two tied (as opposed to drawn) matches:
- in 1960, the West Indies (453 & 284) tied with Australia (505 & 232);
- in 1986, Australia (574-7d & 170-5d) tied with India (397 & 347).
Cricket somewhat closely resembles baseball, and the MLB Chicago Cubs play their home games at Wrigley Field which was built in 1914 at an approximate cost of $250,000. Wrigley seats 41,118 and the distances from home playe to left, center and right fields are 355’, 400’, and 353’ respectively.
There are over 900 species of cricket. The scientific name for the chirping sound that they make is stridulation.
Hawaiian Eye was one of a series of Warner Brothers produced TV series for ABC, all concentrating on detectives in a particular “exotic” American city. This one featured Honolulu – the first such series set in Hawaii – and starred Robert Conrad, Anthony Eisley, Grant Williams, and (later) Troy Donahue. Poncie Ponce was there to provide an exotic Hawaiian and Connie Stevens appeard as “Cricket” Blake, a singer and love interest.
Troy Donahue was briefly married to Suzanne Plesnette when they were young. In her final years she married fellow Bob Newhart co-star Tom Poston.
Homer’s epic poem the *Iliad *covers only a short period of fighting towards the end of the tenth year of the siege of Troy, ending with the death and burial of Hector, the son of Priam, King of Troy.
The Hohenzollern dynasty used the title “The King in Prussia” for most of the 18th century to get around an Imperial prohibition on non-imperial dynasties adopting the title “King of.”
Queen Victoria assumed the additional title of Empress of India under the *Royal Titles Act *1876. Her great-grandson King George VI was the last monarch to hold the imperial title.
Also in 1876, on the 7th March to be precise, Alexander Graham Bell was granted a United States patent for an invention he called the ***telephone ***(patent #174,466).
Alexander Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, (my current home) and the family home in South Charlotte Street has a stone inscription marking it out as his birthplace.
The name of the city of Dunedin in New Zealand is based on the Scots Gaelic form of Edinburgh.
Dunedin, Florida has been the spring-training home of the Toronto Blue Jays since the franchise’s founding.
The suburb of Toronto is located on the shores of Lake Macquarie in NSW. It is part of the greater Newcastle region.