Queen Elizabeth II will, God willing, surpass Queen Victoria as the longest-living British monarch on Sept. 10.
As of today’s date, Queen Elizabeth II’s reign has lasted 63 years, 204 days.
Queen Victoria’s reign lasted 63 years, 215 days.
King Bhumibol Adulyadej, King of Thailand, has the longest current active reign. He has reigned 69 years, 81 days. He began his reign on 09 June 1946. Queen Elizabeth II began her reign on 06 February 1952.
Queen Elizabeth is a member of more legislative bodies than any other individual: the national parliaments of the 16 Commonwealth realms which retain her as head of state; the legislatures of the 10 Canadian provinces and 6 Australian states; the assemblies of the 11 British overseas territories with representative governments; and the legislatures of the three Crown dependencies of Man, Jersey and Guernsey, for a total of 46.
The Iowa-class battleship USS New Jersey, commissioned in May 1943, is now moored in Camden, N.J., across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, as a museum ship.
Every single Iowa-class battleship that was completed is preserved and can be visited, except for one: the USS Kentucky, BB-66, launched in 1950 was broken up in 1959.
BB-61, USS Iowa, is preserved as a museum ship in Los Angeles CA.
BB-62, USS New Jersey, is preserved as a museum ship in Camden NJ. As EH told us.
BB-63, USS Missouri, is preserved as a museum ship in Pearl Harbor HI.
BB-64, USS Wisconsin, is preserved as a museum ship in Norfolk VA.
FWIW, I have visted both the Wisconson and New Jersey and have hopes of touring *Iowa * and Missouri one day.
Now, on topic:
Originally a Fortress, then a Palace, the Louvre, in Paris, France, is now one of the largest and is beleived to be the most-visited museum in the World (9.7M visitors per year). It has over 35,000 works of art distrbuted over 652,000 square feet of floor space.
The Louvre was designated a museum during the French revolution in 1793.
The Louvre Pyramid was designed by the architect I. M. Pei, who is responsible for the design of the Miho Museum in Japan, the MasterCard Corporate Office Building in Purchase, New York, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland, Place Ville Marie in Montreal, the Suzhou Museum in Suzhou, China (Jiangsu Province), and the National Gallery of Art (East Building) in Washington, D.C. among others.
The Louvre Pyramid is featured prominently in Dan Brown’s novel The DaVinci Code and the movie based on it.
Dan Brown writes about the number of glass panes in the Louvre Pyramid in The Da Vinci Code,
.
The Louvre Pyramid contains exactly 673 glass panes.
Mordecai Peter Centennial Brown, nicknamed Three Finger, was an American Major League Baseball pitcher at the turn of the 20th century. Due to a farm-machinery accident in his youth, Brown lost parts of two fingers on his right hand and eventually acquired his nickname as a result. Overcoming this handicap and turning it to his advantage, he became one of the elite pitchers of his era. He was known primarily for his exceptional curveball, which broke radically before reaching the plate.
His major league career lasted from 1903-1916, and with a 239-130 won-loss record, he was elected to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame in 1949, a year after his death.
Most of the early Batman comics were written by Bill Finger, who also was instrumental in creating the Joker. Since Bob Kane’s contract forbade anyone else from getting credit for the comics, Finger’s contributions were overlooked for many years. Now, it’s generally thought that he was the true creative force behind the character.
In Canada, contributions to one’s Registered Retirement Savings Plan are deducted from your taxable income for the year of the contribution. The contributions and the income earned on the contributions in the RRSP are not taxed until they are drawn out in retirement.
As my priest liked to say, “There’s a reason you find Dan Brown’s books in the Fiction section of the bookstore.”
In play:
Official sources of the United Nations… international organizations (such as the Organization of American States), the European Union, the United States, and other polities with which Canada has official relations as a state consistently use Canada as the only official name, state that Canada has no long-form name, or that the formal name is simply Canada. While no legal document ever says that the name of the country is anything other than Canada, Dominion and Dominion of Canada remain official titles of the country.
From here: Name of Canada - Wikipedia
Canada consumes more macaroni & cheese than any other country in the world.
Smelly, or ‘stinky’ cheese refers to a cheese variety in the washed-rind family, which means its rind was actually rinsed (most likely in salt water solution) during the aging process. This procedure stimulates the growth of brevibacterium linens (or b-linens for short), a bacteria that is unique to washed rinds, resulting in a less acidic cheese that is profoundly pungent. The intensity of aroma and flavor increases the longer and more often a cheese is washed.
Among the best-known (or perhaps infamous) ‘stiky’ cheeses are Taleggio, Epoisses, Limburger, and Stinking Bishop.
The city of Bishop, California, sits at about 4,000’ elevation and has a population of about 4,000. Bishop is located on the east side of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains (rugged, beautiful country, that east side is!), at the north end of Owens Valley and 65 miles south of Mono Lake and the town of Lee Vining, CA. Bishop and its creek flowing out of the Sierra Nevada, Bishop Creek, were named after an early Owens Valley settler, Samuel Addison Bishop. Samuel Addison Bishop was a Virginian who moved west in 1849 in search of California’s gold and eventually settled about 3 miles west of the present-day city in 1861.
Bishop’s annual big celebration is “Mule Days” (!). Held around Memorial Day weekend each year, Mule Days is a large fair to celebrate the mule which was so vital to settling the rugged and steep eastern Sierra Nevada. Pack mules were used to ferry supplies over the Sierra Nevada passes. Mules are still vital and in some rugged terrain are the only best method of transporting supplies over rugged land.
MCMWTC, the USMC’s Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in Pickel Meadows near Bridgeport, CA, is the only USMC unit that uses mules. There are many places where a HummVee cannot go but a mule can. MCMWTC displays their mules during Mule Days.
You see the eastern Sierra Nevada, unlike its gently-rising and moisture-laden lush western slopes, is steep, jagged, rugged and dry. Most Bay Area Californians who visit Yosemite National Park drive up the forested and green western side and have no idea about how dramatically different the two sides of the mountains are. If they continued past Yosemite Valley and exited to the east side on Highway 120 (known as the Tioga Road) they would see and experience the dramatic drop just 10 miles before Lee Vining and Mono Lake. That is a beautiful area. Another scenic pass over the Sierra Nevada is Highway 108, Sonora Pass Road. Heading from west to east, the drop just beyond the summit is incredibly severe, steep, and scenic.
Bishop is located along US-395 about 250 miles north of Los Angeles, CA and 200 miles south of Reno, NV.
Bishop, by the way, is beautiful in a rugged, high desert sort of way, and it doesn’t stink. Unless you get too close to the mules, that is.
Samuel Addison Bishop later moved to San Jose, CA where he died on 03 June 1893.
Bishop, the android or artificial person assigned to the crew of the U.S. Colonial Marines starship USS Sulaco in the James Cameron-directed Aliens (1986), was played by Lance Henriksen.
A young Lance Henriksen played a supporting role in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The Musical Ride of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police features approximately 50 horses and Mounties, in a series of manoeuvres modelled on British cavalry drill of the 19th century. Each Mountie controls the horse with one hand while holding a lance in the other. One of the highlights of the performance is a simulated cavalry charge with lances forward.
Traditions of the US Army Cavalry (which now rides tanks instead of horses) includes the poem “Fiddler’s Green”, about a legendary afterlife originally created for sailors, where the music and dancing and drinking never stop.
… And so when man and horse go down
Beneath a saber keen,
Or in a roaring charge of fierce melee
You stop a bullet clean,
And the hostiles come to get your scalp,
Just empty your canteen,
And put your pistol to your head
And go to Fiddlers’ Green.