On March 6, 1857, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Supreme Court upheld slavery, and this decision was regarded as a key cause of the American Civil War.
Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis, who was the first Supreme Court justice to have a formal legal degree and one of two dissenting votes in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), resigned later that year, allegedly “in dismay and disgust” over the decision.
In late 1851, President Millard Fillmore was persuaded by Daniel Webster (senator from Massachusetts) to nominate Benjamin Robbins Curtis to the Supreme Court. Curtis was the first and only Whig justice of the Supreme Court. Curtis, who resigned as septimus points out, is the only justice ever to resign on a matter of principle.
Fillmore, Utah, is the county seat of Millard County. It is the only county in the US which is so named for the first and last name of the same president.
The “Loneliest Road in America” was designated by Life magazine in July 1986. The designation was intended as a slight, but the state of Nevada embraced the designation and used it as a marketing slogan - this Loneliest Road in America is the portion of US Highway 50 that crosses Nevada. It is also part of the Lincoln Highway, and the Lincoln Highway is similar to the Victory Highway in that they are both cross-country routes designated in the 1910s and 1920s. The east end of the Loneliest Road in America is near Fillmore, Utah.
President Abraham Lincoln appointed David Davis, an Illinois state judge before whom he had often appeared as a lawyer, to the U.S. Supreme Court. Davis wrote the majority decision in Ex Parte Milligan, a post-Civil War case often cited since 9-11. A key excerpt: “The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times and under all circumstances. No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism, but the theory of necessity on which it is based is false, for the government, within the Constitution, has all the powers granted to it which are necessary to preserve its existence, as has been happily proved by the result of the [recent] great effort to throw off its just authority.”
The USS Constitution earned its nickname Old Ironsides during the War of 1812 off the coast of Nova Scotia in an engagement against the British frigate Guerrière. Witnesses claimed that the British canon shots merely bounced off the Constitution’s sides, as if the ship were made of iron rather than wood. The success of the USS Constitution against the supposedly invincible Royal Navy provided a tremendous boost in morale for the young American republic.
Among Star Trek fans, anything that appeared onscreen in either a TV show or movie is generally considered canon, with the exception of (among some) the animated TV series and the William Shatner-directed Star Trek V, which gave Spock a half-brother, Sybok.
Edgar Allan Poe was a major inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle; A Study in Scarlet even mentions Poe directly.
Molly Haskell, author of "Frankly, My Dear: “Gone with the Wind” Revisited is a direct descendant of Wade Hampton, the head of the Confederate army troop joined by Scarlett O’Hara’s first husband Charles Hamilton. Scarlett names their son “Wade Hampton Hamilton.”
Yeah.
In play:
In Gone With the Wind, several scenes showing the cottonfields of Tara were filmed in California, including Chico, Lasky Mesa (in the Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve (formerly known as Ahmanson Ranch)), Simi Valley, and in the area bounded by Canoga Park and Woodland Hills.
In Gone With The Wind in over 1,000 pages Ashley Wilkes and Scarlett O’Hara only have seven private conversations:
- In Twelve Oak’s library, where she tells him that she loves him and he tells her that he’s going to marry his cousin Melanie (overheard by Rhett Butler)
- When he says good-bye to her after his Christmas leave from the army, and kisses her good-bye
- When she asks him about getting the tax money for Tara, and he tells her he is going to stay with Melanie.
- After her father’s funeral at Tara, when Melanie persuades him to go to Atlanta and work for Scarlett.
- After Bonnie’s birth, when she decides to remain true to him and have no more physical relations with Rhett.
- When they are together in the office and she starts cry8ing while talking about old times, and he comforts her in his arms like a friend.
- At Melanie’s deathbed, when she realizes they don’t love each other at all.
Actress Bonnie Franklin (January 6, 1944 – March 1, 2013), best known for the sitcom One Day at a Time (1975–1984), died at 69 of pancreatic cancer. She first appeared on TV at the age of 9.
When Franklin died, she was survived by her 101-year old mother, Claire.
Helen Doss Reid, best known for her book The Family Nobody Wanted, about she and her minister husband’s adventures in adopting twelve children, dies last year at the age of 97. She was preceded in death by three sons, Greg Doss in 1996, Richard Doss in 1997 and Alex Doss in 2009 but survived by nine children, 32 grandchildren; 47 great-grandchildren and three great-great grandchildren.
Nevada Senator Harry Reid’s father committed suicide 42 years ago.
Nevada is a village in the municipality of Kuršumlija, Serbia, with a population of 30.
In World of Warcraft, Shatterspear Vale is a village inhabited by trolls.
Trolls appear in both Tolkien’s Middle-earth and Rowling’s Wizarding world. They are very large, strong and brutish in each.
JK Rowling is the 12th richest woman in England, and she is richer than the Queen.
The Queen is a 2006 biopic of Queen Elizabeth II and her decisions during the week following the death of Princess Diana, starring Helen Mirren in the title role. The previous year, Mirren had starred in the British TV miniseries Elizabeth I, making her the only actress to have portrayed both Queen Elizabeths on screen.