In Canada, there is a tradition that Finance Ministers (federal and provincial) buy new shoes on Budget Day.
Dan Quayle, once Vice President of the United States (1989-1993), had a tradition of having his teeth cleaned after voting on Election Day.
I hope he had them cleaned in between elections as well.
In play: Commonwealth, state and local government elections in Australia are held on Saturdays.
The ISO standard, Data elements and interchange formats – Information interchange – Representation of dates and times, first published in 1988, has Saturday as the sixth day of the week. Sunday is the seventh day of the week, and the week begins on a Monday. Most Americans show calendars having Saturday as the seventh day of the week, and the week begins on a Sunday. The Romans named Saturday as Saturn’s Day.
In liturgical Latin the days of the week are named on the assumption that Sunday is the first day of the week. The weekdays themselves, except for Saturday, do not have specific names, but are simply numbered sequentially, using the term *feria *(‘weekday’) e.g.
- Monday is feria secunda
- Tuesday is* feria tertia*
- Wednesday is* feria quarta*
- Thursday is feria quinta
- Friday is feria sexta.
The Second Vatican Council, known informally as Vatican II, was convoked by Pope John XXIII. It opened in 1962 under Pope John XXIII and closed in 1965 under Pope Paul VI. One significant change from this council was that masses in Latin were no longer required. Of those who took part in the council’s opening session, four have become pontiffs to date: Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul I, Pope John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI.
Benedict XVI (Josef Ratzinger) was the first pope to resign since Gregory XII in 1415. He appeared at the joint canonization ceremony held by Pope Francis for John XXIII and John Paul II - wags suggested he was only the fourth most popular pope there. At least it was a change from the jokes about his resemblance to Emperor Palpatine.
He was also the only former Hitler Youth to become Pope.
Not quite sure I understand this sentence. American calendars are printed with Saturday as the farthest-right day of the week, but Monday is commonly considered the first day of a new week.
In play:
Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was played by Swiss actor Bruno Ganz in the oft-YouTube-parodied (but very good) WWII drama Downfall, originally released in 2004 as Der Untergang.
Sunday, not Monday, is commonly considered the first day of the week.
In play:
German-Austrian actor Christoph Waltz, who played SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (2009) is the only actor to win an Academy Award for appearing in a Quentin Tarantino film.
Hmm. I haven’t seen American polling on that, but Saturday and Sunday are called “the weekend.” Note the last three letters of that word. After the week ends, a new week begins - on Monday. Most people return to work on Monday after two days off, beginning a new week. Purely anecdotally, I have never heard anyone refer to Sunday as the beginning of the week.
In play:
Fictional SS-Standartenführers appear in Where Eagles Dare, SS-GB, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Dead Snow and the “Nazi planet” episode of Star Trek: The Original Series.
I doubt there’s anything official, although the ISO 8601 standard attempts to standardize it. I usually go by the old paper calendars, and Sunday is on the far left and Saturday on the far right, as you said earlier.
My American company was bought by a Swedish company, and the paper company calendars to hang on your wall was a monthly view, and had Monday as the first day, and Sat & Sun as the last. I found that annoying, only because it’s not what I’m used to.
And yet, as you said earlier, it’s called the weekend. So there is that.
If you Google first day of week, many hits show Sunday as the first day. Again, I doubt that’s official.
The story that Raiders of the Lost Ark was originally cast with Tom Selleck as Indiana Jones, but he turned it down to take the “Magnum P.I.” series instead are not true, according to Selleck. He instead says CBS prevented him from starring in the movie — which resulted in him working as a handyman in Hawaii.
*L’Arche *(French for ‘ark’) is an international federation dedicated to the creation and growth of homes, programs, and support networks for people who have intellectual disabilities. It was founded in 1964 by Jean Vanier, the son of the Governor General of Canada Georges Vanier, in the town of Trosly-Breuil, France.
The Templeton Prize is an annual award presented by the Templeton Foundation awarded to a living person who, in the estimation of the judges, “has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works”.
Jean Vanier was awarded the 2015 Templeton Prize two months ago.
The Archibald Prize is regarded as the most important portraiture prize in Australia. It was first awarded in 1921 after the receipt of a bequest from J. F. Archibald, the editor of *The Bulletin *magazine, who died in 1919. It is administered by the trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales and awarded for “the best portrait, preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in Art, Letters, Science or Politics”. The Archibald Prize is awarded annually, and the exhibition of the portraits vying for the prize draws large crowds to the Gallery.
The prize has historically attracted a good deal of controversy and several court cases. The most famous was in 1943 when William Dobell’s winning painting of Joshua Smith was challenged because of claims it was a caricature rather than a portrait.
In recent years two complementary prizes have been instituted:
- the Packing Room Prize, in which the staff who receive the portraits and install them in the gallery, vote for their choice of winner; and
- the *People’s Choice Award *in which votes from the viewing public are collected to find a winner.
CMCs, Commandants of the Marine Corps, typically serve in that position for four years. The CMC when I enlisted and went to boot camp (MCRD) was Robert H. Barrow. The man known as the “Grand Old Man of the Marine Corps” and the longest-serving CMC, from 1820 to 1859, was Archibald Henderson. Henderson’s Marine Corps career was 54 years long.
The longest-serving member of the Australian House of Representatives (the ‘Father of the House’) is Philip Ruddock, who was first elected to the seat of Parramatta in NSW at a by-election on 22 September 1973.
The Parramatta Eels are an Australian professional rugby league club based in the Sydney suburb of Parramatta. The Parramatta Rugby Club originally was formed in 1879. In the mid-1960s, Peter Frilingos, a Sydney rugby league journalist, suggested that the club should be known as the “Eels”. This reasoning was based on the name of the Parramatta, anglicised from the Aboriginal dialect “Barramattagal” meaning “place where the Eels dwell”. After this, the team was commonly called “The Eels” and it became an official nickname in the late 1970s.