Franklin Roosevelt defended himself against Republican charge sabout his Scottish terrier, Fala (or Murray the Outlaw of Falahill, after John Murray of Falahill, a famous Scottish ancestor) in 1944 with a radio speech:
These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my family don’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I’d left him behind on an Aleutian island and had sent a destroyer back to find him—at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars—his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself … But I think I have a right to resent, to object, to libelous statements about my dog.
Roald Dahl’s second newspaper article was about “gremlins”–the World War II RAF pilots word for unexplained things that happen to a fighter’s plane engine. The rights to the idea were brought by the Disney Corporation, and they put out a children’s book based on the idea, though the film they thought of making never was completed.
Because Eleanor Roosevelt loved the book and read it to her grandchildren, President Franklin Roosevelt issued an invitation to Dahl to come to the White House so she could meet him. This lead to a friendship between FDR and Dahl, who often went riding with FDR in the President’s s especially equipped car that could be driven entirely with his hands.
The common story for Disney abandoning the Gremlins project is that Dahl was simply expanding on stories that were already in common currency in the RAF, and could not demonstrate that he had created the name. Disney insisted on full copyright control of all projects and characters, and couldn’t ensure it. The characters in the 1984 Warner film were sufficiently different to get around the problem.
Roald Dahl was assigned as an RAF officer to the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., trying to build U.S. support for Great Britain before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He went to quite a few parties and gatherings, schmoozing with the capital elite, and once complained in a dispatch home that he was exhausted by the demands of a sexually-voracious socialite.
Many of the Embassies and High Commissions to Australia are located in the up-market Canberra suburb of Yarralumla, which is near Parliament House and also the location of Government House. Some are built in the architectural style of their homeland:
On 18 April 1943, Japanese Admiral Yamamoto was killed in an air attack by U.S. P-38 Lockheed Lightnings in New Guinea. Yamamoto’s plane was shot down, and the plane wreckage is a tourist attraction that can be visited today in the Bougainville jungle. A foot path has been cut through the jungle from the nearest road, and it is about an hour’s hike from the road.
The island of Bougainville in PNG is named for Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, a French admiral and explorer. In 1764 he led the first expedition to found a permanent settlement in the “Isles Malouines” (later the Falkland Islands).
The PNG image file format was developed in response to certain limitations of the GIF format, notably the fact that GIF’s compression algorithm was subject to patent protection. This origin is reflected in the name itself: PNG started as an acronym for Png is Not Gif.
Albedo is the ratio of reflected radiation from a surface to incident radiation upon it. Of the planets in the solar system it is Venus which has the greatest albedo.
And indeed, as I type, Venus is currently blazing brightly in the western evening sky.
Of our planets, Mercury experiences the greatest temperature differential during its day, from −280 °F at night to 800 °F during the day - an ~1,100 °F swing. This is because Mercury has no atmosphere to retain any heat.
*The Flight from Troy *is one of the most dramatic episodes in Virgil’s epic poem, the Aeneid. It is described in the final scenes of Book II. Aeneas, carrying his father Anchises on his shoulders and leading his son Ascanius by the hand, flees the city as it is being sacked by the triumphant Greeks. Creusa, Aeneas’ wife, has become separated from them and lost among the tumult.
The episode provided inspiration for many artists, with Bernini’s sculpture of the scene probably being the most famous.
Cool. My hometown is Latham NY, right next to Troy, and I haven’t yet been to Uncle Sam’s grave…In play:
RPI in Troy NY is Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a private university. Rensselaer, pronounced “RENN-sa-LEER” is named after Kiliaen van Rensselaer, a 17th century Dutch diamond and pearl merchant from Amsterdam. The town of Rennselaer is about 10 miles south of Troy.
Pure carbon can exist in many different molecular forms. In addition to diamond, graphite, charcoal, ethenediylidene gas, glassy carbon and carbon fibers, there are lonsdaleite crystals, buckyballs and other fullerenes including nanotubes, nanobuds, and nanofoam. While buckyballs are formed by adding pentagons to the hexagonal structure of graphene, nanofoam is formed by adding heptagons.
Graphite and diamond are opposite in many ways: the former is very dark, conducts electricity and is an exellent lubricant; the latter is transparent, an excellent electric insulater and the ultimate abrasive.
Henry Lewis Stimson served twice as US Secretary of War:
● 1911-05-22 to 1913-04-03: 45th US Secretary of War under Republican President Taft
● 1940-07-10 to 1945-09-21: 54th US Secretary of War under Democrat Presidents FDR & Truman
During his second stint, in May 1941, Stinson told FDR that the War Department needed more space. Between May and September, in seemingly record time for our government, the following all happened:
● Stinson had his conversation with FDR
● a congressional hearing was held to review proposals for new War Dep’t buildings
● the War Department came up with a plan for an “overall solution”, instead of using temporary buildings like they had been doing
● government officials agreed (!) that the new War Dep’t building be constructed in Arlington VA
● building requirements were defined
● Congress authorized funding
● sites were evaluated, and a final site was chosen: the old Hoover Airfield (Washington-Hoover Airport closed in June 1941)
● an additional 287 acres was needed, and this land was purchased
● FDR approved the site
● the new building was designed, by American architect George Bergstrom (1876–1955)
● contractors were evaluated and chosen
● on 11 Sep 1941, final contracts had been written, and signed
● on 11 Sep 1941, ground was broken for The Pentagon
All in about 4 months!
The Pentagon is shaped as a symmetrical, regular pentagon because the land of an original planned site, Arlington Farms, was an asymmetrical, irregular pentagon and the building plans were drawn to fit that space. When the final site was chosen to be the roomier old Hoover Airfield, a major redesign would have been costly and the building was modified to the now-familiar symmetrical pentagon.
In 1897, in his pre-political days, Herbert Hoover went to Western Australia as an employee of Bewick, Moreing & Co., a London-based gold mining company. He worked at gold mines in Big Bell, Cue, Leonora, Menzies, and Coolgardie.
