Choosing three points independently on any parallelogram with area of 144 acres produces a triangle. If the points are chosen randomly with the unform distribution, the triangle’s area has an expectation of exactly 11 acres.
An acre is defined as 1/640 of a square mile. Therefore, 1 square mile equals 640 acres. An acre is roughly 90% the size of an NFL football field (excluding end zones). During the Middle Ages, an acre was the amount of land that could be ploughed in one day with a yoke of oxen, a rectangle measuring four rods by one furlong, yielding 4,840 square yards. The word acre is derived from the Old English æcer originally meaning “open field”, and the word “furlong” itself derives from the fact that it is one furrow long.
Man o’ War was one of the greatest racehorses ever, but did not compete in the 1920 Kentucky Derby – the horse’s owner disapproved of asking young horses to run a 10-furlong race so early in the season – but won the other two Triple Crown races that year, setting a new record in the 11-furlong Belmont Stakes.
Man o’ War won 20 of 21 races. Reading accounts of Man o’ War’s one loss, in the 1919 Sanford Memorial Stakes, it seems even that race was a testament to his greatness. The defeat came in the era before the use of starting gates. Man o’ War suffered a terrible start and fell back almost four lengths at the outset, but still managed to close most of the gap. The aptly named Upset won by a half-length.
In the last stretch of the 1973 Belmont Stakes, Secretariat averaged a speed of 37.5 for the entire performance, and won by 31 lengths, running the fastest 1 1/2 miles on dirt in history, earning the ninth Triple Crown winner in history, and the first in 25 years.
Secretariat’s jockey, Ron Turcotte, had his racing career end tragically five years later, when he was thrown from a horse and left a paraplegic.
The Commonwealth Secretariat is one of the organs of the Commonwealth of Nations, dedicated to providing support and assistance to member states, particularly smaller members.
http://thecommonwealth.org/organisation/commonwealth-secretariat
In the 1973 All in the Family episode: “Everybody Tells the Truth,” Archie tells the story of the militant black who came to fix the Bunker’s refrigerator. Mike then tells his version of the story, with the guy being a weak, apologetic subservient black “boy”. Edith then tells the true story, with the guy being a regular guy.
All three characters were played by Ron Glass, later to achieve fame as Ron Harris on Barney Miller.
In 1903, Barney Oldfield became the first person ever to drive a car on a circular track at a mile a minute, at the Indiana State Fairgrounds.
The state flag of Indiana appears in the Mayor of Gotham’s office in the 1992 superhero movie Batman Returns.
Indiana is one of the few places in the world where the officially-recognized demonym is not a derivative of the name of the place. Nobody knows how the official demonym (Hoosier) originated, but there are dozens of competing theories ranging from, the plausible to the fanciful. Bay Stater is also officially designated as what Massachusetts residents call themselves. “Masshole” is discouraged.
During the filming of Hoosiers, Actor Steve Holler played one of Hickory’s basketball players. At the time of filming, he was in college and played basketball at DePauw University.
His case was dismissed, yet he was punished anyway? Under what system of government does THAT ever happen?!?
In play:
Future president Andrew Jackson earned his nickname “Old Hickory” as a general during the War of 1812, from his troops who said he was “tough as old hickory wood” on the battlefield.
(The NCAA is its own government, and not one that easily admits being wrong.)
The opening line of the nursery rhyme “Hickory Dickory Dock” may derive from a counting rhyme once used by Westmoreland shepherdss in the nineteenth century, using the numbers Hevera (8), Devera (9) and Dick (10). Some reports claim that the rhyme was written by Oliver Goldsmith, author of She Stoops to Conquer.
There are still a number of living languages in the world that do not use a decimal system of counting. The Yuki language in California and the Pamean languages in Mexico have octal (base-8) systems because the speakers count using the spaces between their fingers rather than the fingers themselves.
(Back to Hoosiers…)
Bobby Plump is best known for 18 seconds of his life (that’s a 10 and an 8). In 1954, he hit the last shot in the 1954 Indiana High School Athletic Association championship to win the game for his Milan, IN basketball team. Milan is pronounced MY-linn. Milan High’s story is depicted in Hoosiers (1986).
“The only factual thing in that movie is the last 18 seconds when the ball is thrown,” said Plump. Plump consulted with the film’s directors, demonstrating exactly how he made his legendary shot. Filmmakers reproduced it perfectly, he said, but the rest of the script needed conflict.
Plump owns a bar in Indianapolis, in the Broad Ripple district, called Plump’s Last Shot.
Bobby McGee, a singer of blues, and his (her?) lover traveled from Kentucky to California via New Orleans, sharing the secrets of their souls. But somewhere near Salinas, Bobby McGee slipped away.
In the three seasons coached by Mike Ditka, the New Orleans Saints won only 15 games. They were 6-10 in 1997 and 1998, and 3-13 in 1999. The year after Ditka left, the Saints won their first-ever playoff game in franchise history when cosch Jim Haslett took the Saints to a 10-6 record and a division title.
With essentially the same team.
In 1971, Roy Campanella became the first American player (and the 13th overall) to be inducted into the Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame. Campanella played for the Monterrey Sultans. a professional team in the Mexican League, for two years before the color bar was broken in the USA. The largest crowd ever to attend a baseball game was the Campanella benefit exhibition game in the Los Angeles Coliseum.
In 1955, Roy Campanella won his third of three National League MVP awards. That same season, Campanella and his Brooklyn Dodgers won their first World Series championship. It was the first championship in Dodgers franchise history.