The *1812 Overture *(festival overture in E♭ major, Op. 49) was written in 1880 by the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It commemorated the defence of Russia against the invasion of Napoleon’s Grande Armée in 1812.
Personally, I’d credit the screenwriters, since none of those lines were improvised IIRC.
In play:
Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony will be performed by the Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall in the coming season (and I hope to be there to hear it!).
Walter Murphy’s “A Fifth of Beethoven” was originally released under the fictional name “Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band”, because the record label believed it would sell better if credited to a band instead of an individual. But the name created problems when it was discovered, two days later, that another “Big Apple Band” already existed.
The Granny Smith green apple originated in Australia in 1868. It takes its name from Maria Ann ‘Granny’ Smith, who propagated the cultivar from a chance seedling at her orchard in Eastwood (now a Sydney suburb).
Granny White Pike, one of the most important roads in Nashville, is named after Lucille
“Granny” White, a widow who walked 800 miles to Tennessee, and supported her children by selling cakes to travelers along a road that became known as Granny White Pike.
A widow’s walk is a railed platform found on the rooves of 18th century North American coastal houses. Often a domed cupola is incorporated in the structure.
Popular legend has it that the walks were used by anxious wives, gazing out over the ocean, awaiting the return of their seafaring husbands.
The word “cupola” has declined in use in American English, since safety rules were reduced on American railroads, as trains are no longer (since the 1980s) required to have a caboose, one of the last practical applications for the cupola, which enabled rail workers to observe the train from a protected work station. Many younger Americans have never seen a caboose, nor, therefore, a cupola.
In Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Starlight Express, the original production only had the box cars Rocky 1, 2 and 3, as there were only three Rocky movies at the time. who carry goods and supplies freight. Rocky 4 was added in 1986 to the Broadway, Bochum Germany & the Japan/Australia tour. In the US/UK tours and new Bochum production, all the Rockys have been replaced by the “Hip Hoppers”
Box cars replaced by hoppers? Is that an intentional word play?
In the USA, train lengths can be approximated at about 88 cars per mile, with box cars, hoppers, and most other rolling stock meeting a standard of 60 feet in length. Mile long trains are rare.
On 21 June 2001 the BHP mining company ran a train to Port Hedland, WA that consisted of 8 locomotives and 682 wagons. Its total length was 7.353 km, with a weight of 99,734 tons.
The Dytallix Mining Company is one of the few companies mentioned by name in all of the various incarnations of Star Trek. It was mentioned in just a single 1988 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Conspiracy.”
The Dylex Corp. was the holding company for various men’s clothing stores in Canada in the 70’s and 80’s. Dylex had two principal shareholders, who came up with the name after being frustrated by inefficient supply chains: Damn Your Lousy EXcuses.
In maths, the curve formed by an idealised cable or chain supported at two ends and hanging under its own weight is known as a catenary, from catena, the Latin word for ‘chain’.
The first Cable TV in the US was built in 1948 by Ed Parsons, who wanted to watch Seattle TV in his house in Astoria, Oregon. He put an antenna on top of a tall building and ran a cable to his house, then let his neighbors hook up to his cable.
The USS Hornet in Alameda, CA is 1 of 5 aircraft carrier museums. All are Essex-class except one, the Midway.
CV-10 Yorktown
Commissioned 1943
Essex-class
Decommissioned: 27 June 1970.
Preserved, Patriot’s Point Naval & Maritime Museum—Mount Pleasant, SC
CV-11 Intrepid
Commissioned 1943
Essex-class
Decommissioned: 15 March 1974.
Preserved, Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum—New York, NY
CV-12 Hornet
Commissioned 1943
Essex-class
Decommissioned: 26 June 1970.
Preserved, USS Hornet Museum—Alameda, CA
CV-16 Lexington
Commissioned 1943
Essex-class
Decommissioned: 8 November 1991.
Preserved, USS Lexington Museum On the Bay— Corpus Christi, TX
CVB-41 Midway
Commissioned 1945
Midway-class, lead ship
Decommissioned: 11 April 1992.
Preserved, USS Midway Museum—San Diego, California, USA
USS Voyager, Capt. Kathryn Janeway’s starship in the Star Trek series of the same name, was an Intrepid-class light cruiser. Only one other ship of the class was ever mentioned by name, USS Bellerophon.
P. F. Kluge, who wrote the novel “Eddie and the Cruisers” (upon which the Tom Berenger movie was based), served in the Peace Corps in Micronesia, in the South Pacific.
Tom Berenger was never in the military, but he has played roles as a US Marine. In Born on the 4th of July he played a recruiter who recruited Tom Cruise’s character, Ron Kovic. He also played Master Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Beckett, a scout sniper, in (suprise, surprise) Sniper.
Semper Fidelis!
Gottfried Semper designed and built the Dresden Opera House. A decade later, he and his friend Richard Wagner, setting up barricades in the streets, were forced to flee into exile during the rebellion in 1849.
The “Marines’ Hymn” is the official hymn of the United States Marine Corps. It is the oldest official song in the United States Armed Forces. The music is from the Gendarmes’ Duet (the “bold gendarmes”) from the 1867 revision of the 1859 opera Geneviève de Brabant by Jacques Offenbach, which debuted in Paris in 1859.
John Philip Sousa, USMC, 1868–1875, 1880–1892, wrote:
“The melody of the ‘Halls of Montezuma’ is taken from Offenbach’s comic opera, ‘Genevieve de Brabant’ and is sung by two gendarmes.
Semper Fidelis