The classic 1949 British black comedy film *Kind Hearts and Coronets *ends ambiguously. The murderous Duke of Chalfont has been reprieved from execution at the last moment. But as he walks through the gates of the gaol he realises that he has left his memoirs, outlining his various murders, in his cell.
The Dodge Coronet Super Bee muscle car was manufactured during four model years, from 1968 through 1971. The Super Bee was later resurrected as the Dodge Charger Super Bee in 2007.
Bumble bees are now considered an endangered species.
According to the WWF, there are seventeen species that are Critically Endangered. Of these seventeen, there are three rhino species: the Black Rhino, the Javan Rhino, and the Sumatran Rhino.
Seventeen Seventy is a small town in Queensland, built on the site of the landing by James Cook and the crew of HM Bark *Endeavour *in May 1770. The town’s original name was Round Hill, but this was changed in 1970 to commemorate the bicentennial of Cook’s visit.
In 1970, the Bay department store celebrated the tricentennial of its founding, as the Hudson Bay Company, by royal charter granted by Charles II.
The Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron was founded in 1862 and is located in Kirribilli, on the north shore of Sydney Harbour. The squadron’s present patron is HRH the Duke of Edinburgh.
A notable feature in the squadron’s garden is a set of whale’s jawbones, forming an archway over a pathway. The bones originally came from a whaling station at Twofold Bay, on the far south coast of NSW.
Although their styles and dates were very different, the names William Sydney Porter (“O Henry”) and Edgar Allan Poe are sometimes linked. Both were American geniuses who made important advances in the craft of short stories. Both did much of their writing as “bohemians” in New York’s Greenwich Village.
GMT, Greenwich Mean Time, is the mean solar time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. The international civil time standard is no longer GMT, it is UTC, Coordinated Universal Time.
It was the International Meridian Conference of 1884, held in Washington DC at the request of US President Chester Arthur, that determined Greenwich to be the International Prime Meridian of zero degrees longitude.
The International Date Line is an imaginary line on the surface of the Earth that runs from the north to the south pole and demarcates the change of one calendar day to the next. It passes through the middle of the Pacific Ocean, roughly following the 180° longitude line, which is the antimeridian of the Prime Meridian at Greenwich. The Date Line deviates to pass around some territories and island groups.
The islands of Kiribati are clustered around the point where the International Date Line and the Equator intersect. Kiribati is the only country to have land in all four hemispheres.
Before the 1884 Meridian Conference, longitude zero was considered by many Frenchmen to pass through Paris; François Arago set bronze medallions through the city to define the Prime Meridian. (One of the medallions is near the present Louvre Pyramid; this was a plot element in Dan Brown’s Davinci Code.)
The alternate meridian is also a plot element in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, published a decade and a half before the Conference, with the narrator hoping Captain Nemo has revealed his nationaliity:
[QUOTE=Jules Verne in Vingt mille lieues sous les mers: Tour du monde sous-marin]
« Monsieur Aronnax, nous sommes par cent trente-sept degrés et quinze minutes de longitude à l’ouest…
– De quel méridien ? demandai-je vivement, espérant que la réponse du capitaine m’indiquerait peut-être sa nationalité.
– Monsieur, me répondit-il, j’ai divers chronomètres réglés sur les méridiens de Paris, de Greenwich et de Washington. Mais, en votre honneur je me servirai de celui de Paris. »
Cette réponse ne m’apprenait rien.
[/QUOTE]
In French, celui is the masculine singular demonstrative pronoun.
In French, personal pronouns vary by grammatical case, gender and number, so* il, elle, ils, elles, eux, leur, leurs, se, lui, on, soi, les, sien, sienne, siens, siennes, celui*, etc. are all 3rd-person personal pronouns. Thai is uninflected: the same word, เขา, would be used for any of those French pronouns. On the other hand, a Thai might choose from among about ten different 1st-person pronouns depending not on grammatical case, but on social relationship. … And indeed might avoid a pronoun altogether (e.g., by referring to self as ‘teacher’ if a teacher) to avoid any social implication.
In the totalitarian society portrayed in Ayn Rand’s novella Anthem, the use of the first person singular pronoun ‘I’ is forbidden.
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand’s iconic 1957 novel, has been published in at least 21 languages, including Albanian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Marathi, Mongolian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Slovak, Swedish, and Turkish.
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a professor at Bowdoin College in Maine before becoming a hero of the American Civil War for his gallant stand while leading the 20th Maine infantry regiment at the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg, was fluent in nine languages other than English: Greek, Latin, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac.
“Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!” was a rallying cry in the Spanish-American War after the USS Maine’s 1898 sinking in Havana harbor.
There is a classic cocktail drink called Remember the Maine that dates from 1933:
2 oz. rye whiskey
3/4 oz. sweet vermouth
2 tsp. Cherry Heering
1/2 tsp. absinthe, or absinthe substitute
Tools: mixing glass, barspoon, strainer
Glass: cocktail
Garnish: cherry
Combine ingredients in a mixing glass. Fill with ice and stir for 20 seconds. Strain into a chilled glass and serve.
The mast of the USS Maine was removed from the ship in 1905 shortly before the ship was taken out to sea and sunk with military honors. The mast was then installed above a memorial in Arlington National Cemetery in honor of those who lost their lives when the ship sank in Havana, Cuba, Harbor in 1898. She is also remembered in the song “Trouble” from The Music Man, when Prof. Hill urges the townspeople to “Remember the Maine, Plymouth Rock and the Golden Rule!”
Meredith Willson (Robert Meredith Willson, 1902-1984) wrote the book, music and lyrics for The Music Man (1962). He also composed the songs, It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas, and May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You.
In 1962 James Meredith was the first African-American student accepted and enrolled in the University of Mississippi, with federal pressure on Gov. Ross Barnett following a successful antisegregation suit required to make it happen. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ordered in 500 U.S. Marshals to accompany Meredith during his arrival and registration. That evening, after State Senator George Yarbrough withdrew the State Highway Police, a riot broke out, and the nationalized Mississippi National Guard and federal troops were called in. In the violent clashes, two men were killed by gunshot wounds, cars were burned, federal marshals were pelted with rocks, bricks and small arms fire, and university property was damaged.