The Pont d’Avignon of the French song is actually called the Pont Saint-Bénézet. It is a mediaeval bridge in the town of Avignon that originally spanned the River Rhone.
Built with 22 stone arches, it was very costly to maintain as the arches tended to collapse when the Rhone flooded. Eventually in the middle of the 17th century the bridge was abandoned.
The longes bridge in California is the San Mateo–Hayward Bridge (commonly called the San Mateo Bridge). It is the 25th longest bridge in the world by length.
There are 635,013,559,600 possible hands in a game of bridge (selecting 13 cards from a standard pack of 52).
The number is given by 52!/(13! x 39!)
Section 52 of the Constitution Act, 1982 establishes that the Constituion of Canada is the supreme law of the land. It also defines the Constitution by reference to a list of constitutional documents, set out in the Schedule to the Act.
Queen Maud Land is a region of Antarctica claimed as a dependent territory by Norway. It has an area of approximately 2.7 million km[sup]2[/sup].
It is named for Queen Maud of Norway, consort of King Haakon VII and daughter of King Edward VII of the UK.
Tennyson calls on Maud, his beloved, to come into the garden when the black bat of night has flown and the planet of Love is on high.
Agatha Christie was fond of Tennyson’s poem Maud and quoted from it on a number of occasions. In A Murder is Announced one character describes the beautiful, but emotionally cold, Philippa with the words “faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null”. Also, the title of The Hollow, one of her more psychologically complex novels, is taken from the opening lines of Maud:
Caesarea Philippi was an ancient Roman city located at the southwestern base of Mount Hermon. The city is mentioned in the gospels of Matthew and Mark. The city is now uninhabited and is an archaeological site in the Golan Heights.
Kurnell is a suburb in southern Sydney, on the southern headland of Botany Bay.
On 29 April 1770 it was the site of the first European landing on the east coast of Australia with the arrival of Captian James Cook and his party.
Several officers who served under Captain James Cook went on to distinctive accomplishments. William Bligh, Cook’s sailing master, was given command of HMS Bounty in 1787 to sail to Tahiti and return with breadfruit. Bligh is most known for the mutiny of his crew which resulted in his being set adrift in 1789. He later became governor of New South Wales, where he was subject of another mutiny. This was the only successful armed takeover of an Australian government.
William Bligh died in Bond Street, London on 7 December 1817 and was buried in a family plot at Saint Mary’s, Lambeth (this church is now the Garden Museum). His tomb is topped by a stone breadfruit.
I visited his tomb when I was last in London.
The notably rotund William Howard Taft, while military governor of the Philippines, supposedly once sent a telegram to President Theodore Roosevelt reporting on Filipino affairs and closing with, “Took a long horseback ride this morning and feel wonderful.”
The President immediately replied, “How is the horse?”
Horse meat forms a part of the culinary traditions of many countries, from Europe to South America to Asia. The top eight countries consume about 4.7 million horses a year.
According to the Facebook page for 11 Countries Which Still Eat Dog Meat, the countries are China, Indonesia, Korea, Mexico, Philippines, Polynesia, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Arctic and Antarctic and two cantons in Switzerland.
Bob was a TV series starring Bob Newhart as a comic book writer, whose creation, Mad-Dog, was being brought back. Marvel Comics did a series of Mad-Dog comics to tie in with the show.
In American or Canadian football, a blitz is when additional players are sent to “rush the quarterback”—that is, try to tackle the quarterback or disrupt his pass attempt. The term is borrowed from the Blitzkrieg, the German strategy of “Lightning War” employed during World War II. The blitz began with the “red-dog”, likely first done by Red Ettinger, sometime between 1948-1950. The term “red-dog” referred to rushing a linebacker and creating a six-on-five matchup against the offensive line; and blitz meant rushing 7, thereby leaving one potential receiver uncovered. The term “red-dog” is at least as old as 1959.
*Red Dog *is a 2011 Australian comedy-drama film that starred a dog named Koko as the title character, as well as Josh Lucas and Rachael Taylor. It was the highest-grossing Australian film of 2011.
“Clichéd but charming” was one critic’s accurate summary of the film.
Rachael (Sean Young) was the Tyrell replicant with whom retired LAPD officer Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) fell in love in the Ridley Scott movie Blade Runner. For a clever neo-noir trailer: Blade Runner Trailer - Classic Noir - YouTube
Sir James Tyrrell was a trusted servant of King Richard III of England. He allegedly confessed to the murders of the ‘Princes in the Tower’ (the king’s nephews) under Richard’s orders. William Shakespeare portrays Tyrrell as the man who organises the princes’ murder in his play Richard III.
The 1976 Swedish Grand Prix in Anderstorp, Sweden was won by Jody Scheckter, and Patrick Depailler finished second. Both drivers were driving the same kind of car, the Tyrrell P34, a six-wheeled car. The P34 had four tiny, 10" wheels at the front, which resulted in significant advantages due to decreased aerodynamic drag, increased tire contact patch and increased brake swept area.
It was the one and only time that a six-wheeled car finished first and second in a Formula 1 race. For the 1976 F1 season Scheckter and Depailler finished third and fourth, respectively, behind James Hunt and Niki Lauda.
The Tyrrell P34 did not last, however, due to inadequate tire suppliers and increased weight of the front suspension parts. By 1978 the P34 was abandoned by Tyrrell.