The Ministry of Defence in the UK operates twice-weekly non-commercial flights to the Falkland Islands. They depart from the RAF base at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire on Sundays and Wednesdays. The flight time is approximately 20 hours, including a refuelling stop on Ascension Island at the mid-way point.
NFL defensive end Reggie White’s nickname was the Minister of Defense.
In Lewis Carroll’s *Through the Looking Glass *it is the White Queen who advises Alice to practise believing in impossible things. She notes, “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson selected his pen name by taking the first two parts of his name and translating them into Latin: Carolus Ludovicus. He then reversed their order: Ludovicus Carolus, and then loosely translated them back into English: Lewis Carroll. He actually supplied his first publisher with a short list of possible pen names, and it was the publisher who selected “Lewis Carroll” from the list.
Charles Carroll was a wealthy Maryland planter and an early advocate of independence from Great Britain. He was the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence. He was also the longest-lived (and last surviving) signatory, dying in 1832 at the age of 95.
Carroll Shelby was a Texas race car driver and auto designer. He raced Formula One in 1958 & 1959, and in the 1950s he drove for Aston Martin and for Maserati. In 1959 he won the 24 Hours of LeMans driving for Aston Martin, and driving for Healey he set several U.S. and international speed records. During WWII he was a test pilot and a flight instructor. He is perhaps best known for his performance cars, especially the Shelby Mustang and the Shelby Cobra.
A mustang is a free-roaming feral horse of the American west. The equivalent Australian term is ‘brumby’.
In Nevada there is a lot of BLM land (US Bureau of Land Management) and wild mustangs can be regularly seen. The next time I spot them, ?I’ll want to remember that name, Brumby.
The Ford Mustang was introduced in mid-1964 as a 1964½ model year car. It was a car based on the Ford Falcon chassis. It was Ford’s most successful car introduction since the Model A of 1927.
The North American P-51 Mustang pursuit/fighter plane was the pinnacle of American fighter planes. It was introduced in 1940 but it’s performance with an Allison engine was lackluster. It was not until being matched with the British Rolls Royce Merlin engine that the Mustang became a true air superiority fighter.
During WWII the Ford Motor Company was used to manufacture some Rolls Royce Merlin engines.
The character Lord Merlin in Nancy Mitford’s novel The Pursuit of Love was based on Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, 14th Baron Berners. He was a British composer of classical music, novelist, painter and aesthete. He was also well known for his eccentricities.
As a child, on hearing that you could teach a dog to swim by throwing him into water, the young Gerald promptly decided that by throwing his mother’s dog out the window, he could teach it to fly. The dog was unharmed, though the act earned Berners a beating.
Berners was notorious for dyeing pigeons at his house in Faringdon in vibrant colours and at one point entertaining Penelope Betjeman’s horse to tea. Near his house he had a 100-foot viewing tower constructed, Faringdon Folly, a notice at the entrance reading: “Members of the Public committing suicide from this tower do so at their own risk”.
Comedian George Burns financed the original pilot for Mr Ed which was shot at his McCadden Studio in Hollywood at a cost of $70,000.Scott McKay played Wilbur, and Jack Benny was involved behind the scenes.
When director Arthur Lubin was unable to sell the show to a network he decided to sell the show into syndication first. He managed to get single sponsor identification for the program on over 100 stations. The show was recast with Alan Young in the lead. Production began in November 1960 although Lubin did not direct early episodes because he was working in Europe on a film. The first 26 episodes were well received enough for the show to be picked up by CBS, making Mr. Ed one of the few shows to start out in syndication and be picked up by a major network.
George Burns was only the second-oldest Oscar winner, at 80, for “The Sunshine Boys” (next to Walter Matthau). Jessica Tandy was a few months older when she won for “Driving Miss Daisy”.
George Washington did indeed grow hemp on his Mount Vernon farm, but it is not the same plant so beloved by marijuana-legalization advocates today.
The first reggae album by Peter Tosh (Winston Hubert McIntosh), after he and Bunny Wailer (Neville O’Riley Livingston) left Bob Marley and the Wailers, was titled Legalize It, released in 1975. Bob Marley’s solo Rastaman Vibration and Bunny Wailer’s Blackheart Man came out the same year.
One of the reasons that bunnies are associated with Easter is that it was originally believed to be hermaphrodites and could reproduce without losing virginity, much like the virgin Mary.
Good trivia, thanks Buck, and welcome to the game.
Superfetation (or superfoetation) is the ability to conceive a second litter of offspring while still pregnant with the first. Bunnies have this trait. When two separate instances of fertilisation occur during the same menstrual cycle, it is known as superfecundation.
Peter O’Toole played King Henry the Second of England in two different movies, *Becket *and The Lion in Winter.
Helen Mirren has played both Queen Elizabeths - QE1 in the TV miniseries “Elizabeth I”, and QE2 in the film The Queen, and Queen Charlotte in the film The Madness of King George. She has also voiced the Snow Queen and the Queen of Egypt in animated works.
Ninja’d!
Australian actress Cate Blanchett has played Queen Elizabeth I in two movies, Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. If all goes well, she hopes to play the Virgin Queen in several more movies, each set later in the monarch’s life.
The Australian Life Tables (ALT) 2010-12 are the most recent ones published by the Australian Government Actuary. They are based on the population mortality over the three calendars years centred on the 2011 census.
According to ALT 2010-12, the expectation of life at birth for a male is 80.06 years, and for a female is 84.31 years.