Secretariat won the triple crown of racing in 1973. Chris Evert*won the filly triple crown in 1974. The two horses were bred; the resulting filly was named Six Crowns.
*not the tennis player, obviously; the horse was named for her.
The Commonwealth Secretariat is the main intergovernmental agency and central institution of the Commonwealth of Nations. The Secretariat has observer status in the United Nations General Assembly.
It is located at Marlborough House in London.
John Churchill became the first Duke of Marlborough for his great victory at the Battle of Blenheim. He named his palace after the battle, and it was there that his descendant Winston Churchill was born in 1874. Winston Churchill later wrote a noteworthy biography of the first Duke.
The first Prime Minister of the newly established Commonwealth of Australia was Sir Edmund Barton. He held the position from 1 January 1901 until 24 September 1903, when he resigned to become one of the founding Justices of the High Court of Australia.
Various places are named for him: the electorate of Barton in New South Wales and the suburb of Barton in the Australian Capital Territory, which is the location of many government departments and national institutions, and the headquarters of Australia’s main political parties.
The Wright brothers first flight was on 17 December 1903. On 17 September 1908, on a flight piloted by Orville Wright, passenger and Army Lieutenant Tom Selfridge became the first-ever person to die in an aviation air crash. Orville barely survived the crash.
The ‘Flight to Varennes’ during the night of 20–21 June 1791 was a dramatic episode in the French Revolution during which King Louis XVI, his wife Queen Marie Antoinette, and their immediate family attempted unsuccessfully to escape from Paris in order to initiate a counter-revolution at the head of loyal troops under royalist officers concentrated at Montmédy near the frontier. Their escape led them only as far as the small town of Varennes, where they were arrested after having been recognised at their previous stop in Sainte-Menehould.
The Fortified Sector of Montmédy was the French military organization that in 1940 controlled the 40-mile section of the Maginot Line between Sedan and Longuyon.
The number 40, when written in English (‘forty’), is the only cardinal number which has its letters in alphabetical order.
The first Transcontinental Railroad was not completed at Promontory Point, Utah. It was completed at Promontory Summit. The Central Pacific RR’s Jupiter met the Union Pacific RR’s Number 119, which was built at the Schenectady Locomotive Works in Schenectady NY.
Jupiter is larger than all other planets in the solar system combined. The best known feature of Jupiter is the Great Red Spot, a persistent anticyclonic storm that is larger than Earth.
The* persistent storm *is larger than the earth. How cool is that?!?! 
At the golden spike ceremony at Promontory Summit, Utah, one of the locomotives burned wood while the other burned coal. The Jupiter burned wood, and Schenectady Locomotive’s Number 119 burned coal.
The tune Thaxted, best know for its use in the patriotic song I Vow to Thee My Country, was adapted by the composer Gustav Holst from a section of the *Jupiter *movement of his orchestral suite The Planets.
“My Country, 'Tis of Thee”, also known as “America”, is an American patriotic song whose tune is the same as that of the national anthem of the United Kingdom, “God Save the Queen”. The song served as one of the US’s de facto national anthems before the adoption of “The Star-Spangled Banner” as the official anthem in 1931.
Should she still be reigning on 9 September 2015, Queen Elizabeth will become the longest ever reigning monarch in British history, surpassing the record of 63 years and 216 days set by her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria.
Director Blake Edwards and actress Julie Andrews were married when they filmed 1982’s Victor Victoria. The film was a remake of the 1933 German film, Viktor und Viktoria. Another remake was My Girlfriend, the Transvestite (1957). Edwards and Andrews also worked together in Darling Lili (1970) and 10 (1979).
Blakes 7 was a UK science fiction series about a band of criminals rebels who joined together under the leadership of Roj Blake to fight the corrupt Federation.
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss, the German mathematician, astronomer and physicist, is credited with the quote:
When last seen on HBO’s Game of Thrones, both Queen Margaery and Queen Cersei (the wife and mother of the current king, respectively) were imprisoned in King’s Landing by the Faith Militant on suspicion of various crimes.
LeBron Raymone “King” James is closing in on another NBA championship. With his Cleveland Cavaliers leading the Golden State Warriors 2 games to 1, if they beat Golden State it would be James’ third championship and Cleveland’s first ever since the team’s founding in 1970.
The Laughing Cavalier is one of the best known paintings in the Wallace Collection in London. It was purchased at auction in Paris in 1865 by the 4th Marquess of Hertford for the princely sum of 51,000 francs (about £2,040).
Neither the identity of the sitter nor the function of the portrait has yet been firmly established. The painting’s title is a misnomer; as the Wallace Collection notes “the sitter is neither laughing nor a cavalier”.