The China-Burma-India theater in WWII was commonly called CBI - local wags frustrated by a complex command structure and politicized objectives said that stood for “Confusion Beyond Imagination”.
In WWII, Claire Chennault and his “Flying Tigers” flew Curtis P-40 Warhawks as a volunteer air group for the Chinese Air Force. The Flying Tigers comprised pilots from the Army Air Corps, Navy, and Marine Corps. Before the US entered WWII the Flying Tigers trained in Burma.
The Bandy Papers are a series of novels about a young Canadian, Bartholomew Bandy, who goes off to fight in WWI. Starting in the trenches, he eventually transfers to the Royal Flying Corps. Lester “Mike” Pearson, future Prime Minister of Canada and also in the RFC, has a minor cameo, appalled to discover that Bandy has made it as a staff officer, red boards and all.
In play:
The U.S. Marine Corps’s “Devil Dog” nickname is of dubious historical origins:
(Well, it seems to be so…)
In Play:
It is said that in WWI the Germans gave the Scottish and Canadian kilted regiments the nickname “the Ladies from Hell” (“Die Damen aus der Hölle”), but it is also said that this has not been found in any German source from the War.
During WWII, Hitler’s deputy, Rudolph Hess, crash landed his Messerschmitt BF-110 in a field at Eaglesham, a village in Scotland. Hess parachuted to the ground and was captured by a local farmer.
The Earls of Argyll were the hereditary chief justiciars of Scotland’s western Highlands. The 9th Earl, Archibald Campbell, was son of the 1st Marquess of Argyll and father of the 1st Duke, but was lucky just to get his lands back after his father was beheaded at the order of Charles II. The 9th Earl, in turn, forfeited his lands and head after he led the vanguard of The Revolt of the West against Charles II’s younger brother, King James II.
Many in the Campbell clan who abeted the revolt were exiled at about the time the 9th Earl was beheaded. Those sent to Jamaica became indentured servants but an American jury gave freedom to those who traveled to Philadelphia 1685 on Henry and Francis.
Charles II is quoted as saying: “There never was trouble brewing in Scotland but that a Dalrymple or a Campbell was at the bottom of it.”
King George III apocryphally commented on the American revolutionaries to the former royal governor of Massachusetts, William Shirley: “Mr. Cushing I know, and Mr. Hancock I know, but where the Devil this brace of Adams’s came from, I can’t conceive.”
Before being the US’s 2nd President, John Adams served as its 1st Vice President under George Washington. Complaining to his wife Abigail about the position, Adams said, “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”
FDR’s first Vice President, John Nance Garner, described the office as “not worth a bucket of warm piss”.
John “Cactus Jack” Garner was born in Detroit. Not the one in Michigan, the one in Texas. Detroit TX is about 125 miles NE of Dallas and about 20 miles south of the Oklahoma state border.
Garner got his nickname from when Texas was selecting its state flower. Garner backed the prickly pear cactus, but the bluebonnet won out.
<Commentary>
Not familiar with either plant / flower, I did some image searches. The prickly pear cactus flower is quite pretty.
Bluebonnet: https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4027/4526181633_b914f23cda_b.jpg
Prickly Pear Cactus Flower:
</Commentary>
After Vanilla Fudge broke up, Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice planned to join up with Jeff Beck as a power trio. Beck was badly injured in a car accident, so Bogert and Appice joined up with Jim McCarty (from Mitch Rider’s Detroit Wheel) and Rusty Day (The Amboy Dukes) to form the supergroup Cactus. After three albums, the group broke up, and, with Beck available, Beck, Bogert and Appice was formed.
Beck’s beer comes from Bremen, in northern Germany. It is the world’s best selling German beer, sold in nearly 90 countries (although no longer brewed exclusively in Germany). The St. Pauli Girl brewery is housed inside Beck’s Brewery.
Angela Merkel, the current and long-serving Chancellor of Germany, was born in what was then East Germany. Due to Germany’s clout in the European Union and her own political skills, she is widely considered one of the most powerful women in the world today.
The two women often considered the most influential in all of history were the mother-in-law and daughter of the same man – King Henry VIII of England.
King Henry VIII has been played by such actors as Damian Lewis, Jack Hawkins, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Brian Blessed, Robert Shaw, Eric Bana, Richard Burton, Alan Bates, Charlton Heston, Dan Castellaneta (on an episode of The Simpsons, often reminding himself, “Must sire a dude”) and Ray Winstone, among others.
Charlton Heston asked for suggestions for what to name his autobiography, which was finally titled In the Arena. (I’d suggested Ben Hur, Done That.)
The role of Jesus in the movie version of Ben Hur was played by an uncredited Claude Heater.