King Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor, was an accomplished knitter and crocheter.
Edward is the only Saxon name which has continued to be used as a regnal name in Britain. Classic Saxon names like Harold, Ethelred, Cedric and Alfred stopped being used after the Conquest. It is thought that “Edward” came back into vogue because Henry III, the father of Edward I, had a personal interest in his Saxon ancestors.
Harold Holt, the Prime Minister of Australia, disappeared on 17 December 1967 while he was swimming at Cheviot Beach near Portsea in Victoria. His body was never recovered and he was presumed drowned.
Amongst the memorials to him was a swimming pool, under construction at his death, in the Melbourne suburb of Glen Iris (which was within his seat). It was named the Harold Holt Swim Centre.
Herald Square in New York City is formed by the intersection of Broadway, Sixth Avenue (officially, Avenue of the Americas) and 34th Street. The intersection is a typical Manhattan bow-tie square that consists of two named sections: Herald Square to the north (uptown) and Greeley Square to the south (downtown).
A square is defined geometrically as a regular quadrilateral, meaning that it has four equal sides and four equal, right angles.
Squares form the basis of the three dimensional cube, one of the five Platonic solids. The other four are the tetrahedron (or pyramid), octahedron, dodecahedron and icosahedron.
The Platonic solids are better known as the dice used in Dungeons & Dragons: four-sided, six-sided, eight-sided, twelve-sided and twenty-sided.
When two standard six-sided dice are thrown the most likely total outcome is seven, which should occur, on average, one sixth of the time.
The numbers on the opposite sides of standard six-sided dice always add to seven.
The integers 6 and 7 can be used to generate the Pythagorean triad 13, 84 and 85.
Euclid’s formula can be used to generate a Pythagorean Triple for any integers, m and n, where m > n:
a = m^2 - n^2
b = 2mn
c = m^2 + n^2
For Cunctator’s example above, m = 7 and n = 6.
Both Frankie Yankovic (no relation to fellow polka accordionist Weird Al Yankovic, surprisingly, although they were friends) and Walter Ostanek had polka hits with the “Euclid Vets Polka”, named for a lodge in the Cleveland suburb of that name. Euclid is at the end of a long, straight street whose name comes from the father of geometry.
Weird Al performed at the Emmy award show and has a new album out titled Mandatory Fun.
Poet Emily (Emmy?) Dickinson was only 55 years old when she died in 1886 of Bright’s Disease. She suffered with the affliction for the last 2½ of her life. She is buried in her family’s plot in Amherst, Massachusetts, the same city where she was born in 1830.
We’ve come full circle: Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky, about twice as ***bright ***as Canopus, which is the second brightest, but restricted to the southern sky.
Ancient Egyptians timed the annual flooding of the Nile by the rising of Sirius.
Keanu Reeves was the bassist with the former rock band Dogstar. Russell Crowe’s band is 30 Odd Foot of Grunts.
A group of crows is called a murder. ‘A murder of crows.’
A group of Wrens is called a Herd. Luckily, wrens are quite solitary, and seldom form herds. A group of Ravens is called an Unkindness.
Really? Wow. I didn’t know that. Now that’s good trivia!
In play:
A Starfleet battle group tried to intercept and stop a Borg cube heading for Earth in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1,” but was badly defeated at Wolf 359.
The US Navy’s Aircraft Carrier Battle Groups are now referred to as Carrier Strike Groups (CSGs). These current CSGs are centered around the following aircraft carriers:
USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70)
USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77)
USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74)
USS George Washington (CVN-73)
USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69)
USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76)
USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75)
USS Nimitz (CVN-68)
USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71)