The Bristol Blenheim was a British light bomber used in the early days of World War II. On the day Britain declared war on Germany, a Blenheim became the first-ever plane to cross into Germany for the war.
Bristol Temple Meads railway station is the oldest and largest railway station in Bristol, England. It opened on 31 August 1840 as the western terminus of the Great Western Railway from London Paddington. The railway, including Temple Meads station, was the first one designed by the renowned British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
I’ve seen the marker in Sarasota, Fla. which allegedly marks where Benjamin put to sea: http://www.sarasotahistoryalive.com/images/directory/Stories/creation-judah-benjamin-marker_med.jpg.
In play:
Vannevar Morgan, the very talented civil engineer and hero of Arthur C. Clarke’s The Fountains of Paradise (1978), is a great admirer of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, whose picture he has in his office.
The El Alamein Fountain in the inner-city Sydney suburb of King’s Cross was completed in 1961 as a memorial to soldiers who died in 1942 during the Second World War in two battles at El Alamein, Egypt.
It was designed by architect Bob Woodward and is said to be the first fountain of the “dandelion” type design.
The “Battle of El Alamein” is a pipe tune composed in 1942 by Willie Denholm, Pipe Major of the Royal Scots. Originally in 4 parts, it was customarily played as a two-parter, but is now rarely heard.
When Lee Majors, actor and star of The Six Million Dollar Man, graduated from college, he was invited for an NFL tryout with the (then-St. Louis) Cardinals, but he instead pursued acting. A few short years later he beat out Burt Reynolds for the role of Heath Barkley in The Big Valley.
The heath lands of Australia are home to the world’s only nectar-feeding terrestrial mammal: the honey possum.
Most of the population of California and Baja California live in the ecoregions of the Heath communities of the California chaparral and woodlands. These areas include the San Francisco Bay Area, Ventura County, the Greater Los Angeles Area, San Diego County, and Tijuana.
California has 23 municipalities beginning with the word “San”
- San Anselmo
- San Bernardino
- San Bruno
- San Carlos
- San Clemente
- San Diego
- San Dimas
- San Fernando
- San Francisco
- San Gabriel
- San Jacinto
- San Joaquin
- San Jose
- San Juan Bautista
- San Juan Capistrano
- San Leandro
- San Luis Obispo
- San Marcos
- San Marino
- San Mateo
- San Pablo
- San Rafael
- San Ramon
The Central Florida municipalities of Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista were created by the Florida legislature for the purpose of containing and controlling Disney property. The Walt Disney Company provides low-cost housing for some favored employees and families at each property in return for their constituting city governments who do what they’re told. All four Walt Disney World theme parks are in Bay Lake, while the other resorts are in Lake Buena Vista.
Aviation enthusiast Kermit Weeks maintains one of the largest private collections of flight-worthy historic aircraft in the world, most of which are at his Fantasy of Flight facility in Polk City, Florida.
James K. Polk served one term as President, and did not seek re-election, having achieved almost all of his stated goals on taking office.
The term of an Australian House of Representatives is set at a maximum of three years by section 28 of the Constitution: “Every House of Representatives shall continue for three years from the first meeting of the House, and no longer, but may be sooner dissolved by the Governor-General.”
In practice, Parliaments are almost always dissolved before their three-year term expires. Since federation only one parliament, the third, has run its full term. It was elected on 12 December 1906, first sat on 20 February 1907 and expired on 19 February 1910.
In 2014, Beau Biden, R.I.P., did not seek election to a third term as Delaware’s Attorney General. At the time of this announcement, the cancer that killed Biden yesterday had been diagnosed but was in remission, though this information was not public at the time.
The office of Attorney General dates back to the 13th century at least. In 1243 there is the first mention of the “King’s Attorney”, the beginning of an English legal office which has since spread throughout the common law world.
There are 1,050 registered patent and trade mark attorneys in Australia.
In Canada federal law requires all handguns to be registered with the Federal Firearms Centre.
Although Australia has no ‘official’ geographical centre, Geosciences Australia uses a number of methods to calculate where it is:
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the centre of gravity method, effectively taking a perfect cut-out of Australia, with thousands of tiny weights distributed along the perimeter, and then working out the point where it could be balanced perfectly horizontally. The result for this method would be the point 23° 07’ S, 132° 08’ E.
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the **furthest point from the coastline **method, which is essentially the centre of the largest perfect circle that could be drawn anywhere inside Australia that only just touches the coastlines. This method gives the point 23° 02’ S, 132° 10’ E.
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the median point method, which draws a rectangle around Australia, just touching the northern, eastern, southern, and western-most points on the continent. Lines are then drawn from the diagonals, with the intersection giving the centre point as 24° 15’ S, 133° 25’ E.
The closeness of the results of the different methods is due to Australia’s shape rather than any general rule of correlation between the methods. Despite its irregular coastline, Australia’s distinctive shape actually has a relatively high degree of symmetry.
There was one British Royal Navy warship named HMS Australia, an Orlando-class cruiser scrapped in 1905, and there have been two ships in the Royal Australian Navy named HMAS Australia, a battlecruiser and a heavy cruiser, the latter of which was scrapped in 1956.
Royal Randwick racecourse is the premier venue in Sydney of the Australian Turf Club. It is situated in the suburb of Randwick, about 6 km to the south east of the CBD.
As well as horse racing, the racecourse has accommodated a number of other functions over the years, including three Papal masses (celebrated by Pope Paul VI in 1970, Pope John Paul II in 1995 and Pope Benedict XVI in 2008).