The actor Errol Flynn was born in 1909 in Hobart, where his father was a lecturer in biology at the University of Tasmania. For a period of his schooling he attended Sydney Church of England Grammar School (“Shore” - my near neighbour), where one of his classmates was the future Prime Minister John Gorton.
Leon Errol was an Australian-born vaudevillian and comedian who had a long career in Hollywood, including a series of short subjects. His biggest success was in the “Mexican Spitfire” series of films with Lupe Velez.
There is currently a 1945 Vickers Supermarine Spitfire F.18 for sale, SM969 / N969SM (which I think are serial numbers or registration numbers).
Asking price: only £1.65M
The name ‘spitfire’ is given to the larvae of a common Australian caterpillar, Doratifera vulnerans. Brushing against one produces a skin rash that stings intensely.
The list of Australian poisonous, venomous, or just plain nasty fauna is quite extensive, with two of the most deadly being the stonefish and the blue-ringed octupus. The venom of the stonefish is so painful that some people have died from the pain, going into fatal shock.
The tradition of a spectator throwing an octopus on the ice at a Detroit Red Wings hockey game began in 1952, during the playoffs. A total of eight wins were then necessary in the post season, in order to win the Stanley Cup championship.
At the 1940 Academy Awards Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to be nominated for and win an Oscar giving Gone With the Wind, A total of eight wins
There are only two surviving credited cast members from the film Gone with the Wind: Olivia de Havilland, who played Melanie Wilkes, and Mickey Kuhn, who played her son Beau Wilkes.
The de Havilland Mosquito was a light fighter bomber of the WWII RAF. Nicknamed “Mossie”, it was made almost entirely of wood and was also nicknamed “The Wooden Wonder.”
The list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is ascribed to the Greek historian Herodotus.
The only one of the seven still surviving is the Great Pyramid at Giza.
The final remains of the Lighthouse of Alexandria (Wonder #4 out of 7) disappeared in 1480, when the then-Sultan of Egypt, Qaitbay, built a medieval fort on the larger platform of the lighthouse site using some of the fallen stone.
Michigan has at least 115*** lightnouses***, the most of any state in the USA.
“Lightnouses”, also known as Rudolph’s Syndrome, is a rare genetic condition which causes people’s noses to spontaneously glow.
Oops, wrong thread…
The Mackinac Bridge, opened in 1957, connects Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with the lower part of the state. It is the third longest suspension bridge in the Western Hemisphere.
The British seizure of Fort Mackinack at the beginning of the War of 1812 was a complete surprise to the American garrison, who did not know that war had been declared. They surrendered without a battle, since they were outnumbered and feared that if they fought, they would be massacred by the Indian allies of the British forces.
The British seizure of the Fort ensured British control of the upper Great Lakes during the War.
The*** Great Lakes*** are not the five largest lakes in North America. Lake Ontario is the 8th largest lake, smaller than Great Slave Lake, Great Bear Lake and Lake Winnipeg.
Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, is on the north shore of Great Slave Lake, about 400 km south of the Arctic Circle. Yellowknife only recently obtained year-round road access to northern Alberta, by virtue of the completion of the Deh Cho Bridge over the Mackenzie River in 2012. Before that, there was a seasonal ferry in the summer, and ice roads over the Mackenzie in the winter, but road access was interrupted in both the spring and the fall when neither the ferry nor the ice roads were available.
There have been three Canadian Prime Ministers named Mackenzie. As a surname, Alexander Mackenzie, as a maternal family middle name, William Lyon Mackenzie King, and as a first name, Mackenzie Bowell. The ***Mackenzie River ***was not named after any of them, but for an earlier Scottish explorer also named Alexander Mackenzie.
King O’Malley was a colourful and controversial colonial and early federal Australian politician. He is remembered for his role in the establishment of the Commonwealth Bank. He was also instrumental in the selection of Canberra as the site of the national capital. A teetotaller, he was responsible for the highly unpopular ban on alcohol in the ACT.
His place of birth is uncertain. He claimed to have been born in Quebec, making him a British subject. However recent scholarship suggests that he is more likely to have been born in Valley Falls, Kansas.
He lived to the age of 99. At his death in 1953 he was the last surviving member of the first Australian Commonwealth parliament.
The Humanx Commonwealth (an alliance between the mammalian Humans and the insectoid Thranx) is the backdrop of several of Alan Dean Foster’s distant-future sf books and short stories.
The NATO nickname for the Tupolev Tu-22M swing-wing bomber is the Backfire. Another Tupolev bomber, the Tu-4, nicknamed the Bull, is essentially a copy of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress.