Sturgeon are among the longest-lived of the fishes, some living well over 100 years and attaining sexual maturity at 20 years or more. The combination of slow growth and reproductive rates and the extremely high value placed on mature, egg-bearing females make sturgeon particularly vulnerable to overfishing.
Isaac H. Sturgeon was a superintendent of the North Missouri Railroad. The city of Sturgeon, Missouri was named after him.
Isaac Bashevis Singer, a leading figure in the Yiddish literary movement who wrote and published only in Yiddish, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978.
Sir Isaac Isaacs was successively a member of the first Parliament of Australia, the Attorney General of Australia, a judge of the High Court, the Chief Justice of Australia, and finally the Governor General of Australia.
Ishmael of the bible’s book of Genesis was the son of Abraham and the half brother of Isaac. The Book of Genesis and Islamic traditions consider Ishmael to be the ancestor of the Ishmaelites. According to the historian and non-Christian Josephus, Ishmael had twelve sons: Nabaioth, Kedar, Abdeel, Mabsam, Idumas, Masmoas, Massaos, Chodad, Theman, Jetur, Naphesus, and Cadmas. They inhabited the country from Euphrates to the Red Sea, called Nabatene.
Ismael and his twelve sons is almost the same as Jacob and his twelve sons (with thanks to Tim Rice):
Reuben was the eldest of the children of Israel
With Simeon and Levi the next in line
Naphtali and Isaachar, Asher and Dan
Zebulun and Gad took the total to nine
Jacob, Jacob and sons,
Benjamin and Judah, which leaves only one
Jacob, Jacob and sons,
Joseph - Jacob’s favourite son.
Less well known (and not mentioned in the musical, and rarely in Sunday or Hebrew school, is the brothers’ sister Dinah
Judah P. Benjamin was the first practicing Jew to be a US Senator. He later became Secretary of State for the Confederacy.
After the Civil War, Benjamin fled to England and became a respected member of the bar. His treatise on the Law of Sales is still in print, many editions later. He appeared in the Judicial Committee of the Imperial Privy Council on some constitutional cases from Canada, arguing for provincial rights (of course). He retired to Paris and is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery.
Edmée Elizabeth Monica Dashwood, née de la Pasture, commonly known as E. M. Delafield, was a prolific English author. She is best known for her largely autobiographical Diary of a Provincial Lady, which took the form of a journal of the life of an upper-middle class Englishwoman living mostly in a Devon village of the 1930s.
English author Pamela Lyndon Travers was known best for the Mary Poppins series of children’s books featuring the magical English nanny Mary Poppins. She began writing the Mary Poppins books in 1933.
In Diary of a Provincial Lady, the provincial lady at one point is putting her children to be and asks what her daughter is thinking about. She replies, “Oh, Kangaroos and things.”
Royal Canberra Golf Club is well known for its resident mob of kangaroos that can make for some interesting hazards.
Hazard is a gambling game with dice which dates back at least to Chaucer’s time and was very popular in the 18th century in England.
The Life Assurance Act 1774 (14 Geo. 3 c.48, also known as the Gambling Act 1774) was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain, which received the Royal Assent on 20 April 1774. The Act prevented the abuse of the life insurance system to evade gambling laws. It introduced the concept of ‘insurable interest’ and required that it be present before a life insurance policy could be effected.
IN the 1970’s card clubs in Califonia were not allowed to offer gambling at games of chance like ordinary poker, but could offer gambling at games of skill like bridge, backgammon, … and lowball poker.
The reasoning for allowing lowball was that it took skill to win with a bad hand. 
(One Doper turned down a chance to serve as expert witness arguing that Pai Gow was also a “game of skill.”)
The Sydney Harbour Bridge climb is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Sydney. Since its inception more than 3 million visitors from over 137 different countries and territories have climbed the southern half of the bridge. The standard round trip takes about three hours, with a choice of dawn, day, dusk and night climbs.
There have been over 4,000 marriage proposals at the summit of the bridge.
The oldest climber has been 100 years old.
San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge is named after the strait it spans, not its color. Entering San Francisco Bay from the Pacific in 1864, U.S. Army officer and explorer John C. Frémont named the strait Chrysopylae, or Golden Gate, “for the same reason that the harbor of Byzantium [now Istanbul] was called Chrysoceras, or Golden Horn.”
Thermopylae was the site in 480 BC of the famous battle between an alliance of Greek city-states, led by King Leonidas of Sparta, and the Persian Empire of Xerxes I. The name Thermopylae, Greek for ‘hot gates’, described the narrow pass between the mountains and the sea, guarded by hot pools.
The Battle of Thermopylae during World War II was a delaying action during the German invasion of Greece. Brigades from Australia and New Zealand held the pass while allowing other Allied units to withdraw. No Greek Army elements helped to hold the pass, and was a source of shame for its commanders.
Among the most important battles of history was the 1704 Battle of Blenheim, in which John Churchill rescued the city of Vienna from the joint Franco-Bavarian army. Rising from the status of lowly page, Churchill was already a Duke by the Battle of Blenheim, and was later ennobled twice by German Princes and became one of the wealthiest Englishmen of his day. He is considered one of the greatest military commanders ever. His great-great-great-great-great-great grandson Winston Churchill was also a great commander, and instrumental to victory in the Battle of Britain.