Chuck Taylor was a basketball player and shoe salesman/evangelist. He is best known for his association with the Chuck Taylor All-Stars sneaker by Converse, the most successful selling basketball shoe in history.
The four evangelists (traditionally ascribed writers of the Gospels) each have a symbol used in iconography:
• Matthew: a winged man or angel;
• Mark: a winged lion;
• Luke: a winged bull;
• John: an eagle.
The architectural highlight of Venice is the Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di San Marco, fronting Piazza San Marco and the Palazzo Ducale. The first church on the site was built to house the supposed relics of Mark the Evangelist, stolen from Alexandria. The famous four bronze horse statues there may have originally stood on the Arch of Trajan in Constantinople, and were seized and brought to Paris by Napoleon after his defeat of the Venetian Empire.
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina, or Library of Alexandria, is a major library and cultural center located on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. It is both a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, and an attempt to rekindle something of the brilliance that this earlier center of study and erudition represented.
The original library of Alexandria, one of the great centers of learning in the ancient world, was destroyed, although the actual dates and causes are still subject to some debate.
Thomas Chambliss Williams was a former superintendent of Alexandria City (Virginia) Public Schools. The high school named after him, T.C. Williams High, was the subject of the 2000 sports movie starring Denzel Washington, Remember the Titans.
“Who’s your daddy?!” - a quote from the movie.
The twelve first-generation Titans were among the second order of Greek divine beings, following their parents, Uranus (Father Sky) and Gaia (Mother Earth). They in turn spawned the Olympians, the third order. The twelve were Oceanus, Tethys, Hyperion, Theia, Coeus, Phoebe, Cronus, Rhea, Mnemosyne, Themis, Crius, and Iapetus. The second generation of Titans consisted of Hyperion’s children Helios, Selene, and Eos; Coeus’ children Lelantos, Leto, and Asteria; Iapetus’ sons Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Menoetius; Oceanus’ daughter Metis; and Crius’ sons Astraeus, Pallas, and Perses.
Located in Santa Clara, California, ‘IMRS’ (Information Management Reporting Services) was founded in 1981. In 1995 IMRS changed its name to Hyperion Software Corporation. Oracle acquired Hyperion in 2007 so now it’s owned by Larry Ellison.
The word “oracle” comes from the Latin verb “to speak” and refers to the priest or priestess saying a prediction.
First performed about 429 BC, Oedipus Rex, the Greek tragedy by Sophocles, saw Oedipus the King of Thebes killed his father Laius and married his mother Jocasta. It is the Oracle of Delphi who tells Oedipus that that will be his fate.
The Greek Civil War was fought from 1946–49 between the Greek government army—backed by Great Britain and the United States—and the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE), the military branch of the Greek Communist Party (KKE), backed by Yugoslavia and Albania as well as Bulgaria. The result was the defeat of the Communist insurgents by the government forces.
The insurgents were demoralized by the bitter split between the Soviet Union’s Premier Joseph Stalin (who wanted the war ended) and Yugoslavia’s President Josip Broz Tito (who wanted it to continue). Tito was committed to helping the Greek Communists in their efforts, a stance which angered Stalin as he had recently agreed with Winston Churchill to not support the Communists in Greece, a position held and documented in their Percentages Agreement.
The former Yugoslavia came into existence after World War I in 1918 as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In 1929 it was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In 1963, the country was renamed again to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Today the former Yugoslavia is made up of six countries:
Bosnia and Herzegovina (capital, Sarajevo)
Croatia (capital, Zagreb)
Macedonia (capital, Skopje)
Montenegro (capital, Podgorica)
Serbia (capital, Belgrade)
Slovenia (capital, Ljubljana)
Kosovo (capital, Pristina) too, depending on your POV.
The Adriatic port city of Trieste, now in Italy, has been fought over many times through its history, most recently at the end of WWII when Marshal Tito wanted to make sure it was part of Slovenia (Yugoslavia), partly as compensation for the ravages of Fascist Italy to what it called the Province of Ljubljana. Eventually the UN protectorate Free Territory of Trieste became fully part of Italy.
In January 1960 the bathyscaphe Trieste was the first manned vessel to reach the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, near Guam.
The largest flying boat ever to enter production for the Allies, although only 7 were built, was the Martin JRM Mars. Each had a name, not just a number - the prototype Old Lady, Marianas Mars, Philippine Mars, Marshall Mars, Caroline Mars, and two named Hawaii Mars (the first crashed). The second Hawaii Mars is still flying as a forest-fire-fighting tanker based on Vancouver Island, Canada.
Cool trivia.
The Philippine Mars was stationed at NAS Alameda, California, in the 1940s. Later it continued to fly with Flying Tankers Incorporated until she and the Hawaii Mars were purchased in 2007 by the Coulson Group. The Philippine Mars has not flown on fires since the summer of 2006.
It has been repainted to original U.S. Navy markings and is being prepared to be a museum display at the National Naval Aviation Museum at NAS Pensacola, Florida.
Robert Clark Gregg, born April 2, 1962, is an American actor, screenwriter and director. He has played Phil Coulson in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, appearing in Iron Man (2008), Iron Man 2 (2010), Thor (2011), Marvel’s The Avengers (2012), and the television series Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Gregg has been married since July 21, 2001 to actress Jennifer Grey. They have a daughter Stella, born December 3, 2001. He is a sober alcoholic, and has a brown belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
In addition to the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret Jennifer Grey’s father, Joel Grey (born Joel Katz) has starred as Amos in Chicago, The Wizard in Wicked, George M. Cohan in George M., and portrayed a demonic figure who shows JR what the world would have been like withouth him in the series finale of Dallas.
Dallas ran from 1978 to 1991. When the series ended, J.R. Ewing was the only character to appear in every single episode. With 357 episodes, Dallas remains one of the longest lasting full-hour primetime dramas in American TV history, behind Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (366+ episodes), Bonanza (430 episodes), Law & Order (456 episodes), and Gunsmoke (635 episodes).
The Simpsons spoofed the “Who-shot-JR” episode of Dallas with “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” is a two-part episode of . Part One was the twenty-fifth and final episode of the sixth season and originally aired on Fox on May 21, 1995, while Part Two is the season premiere of the seventh season and aired on September 17, 1995. The biggest clue was a hair found on Mr. Burns’s suit, containing Simpson DNA evidence. Turned out the shooter was baby Maggie.
In order to keep the ending a secret, it was revealed in the 168th Simpson Showcase that several endings were shot, with one ending showing that the shooter was Waylon Smithers. However, as Troy McClure put it “For that ending to work, you’d have to ignore all the Simpson DNA evidence. And that would be downright nutty.”
Funniest. Simpson. Line. Ever.
Mount Kosciuszko is named after Polish military engineer Tadeusz Kościuszko, or Thaddeus Kosciuszko. Mount Kosciuszko is the tallest mountain in Australia. There are also Kosciuszko Island in Alaska, Kosciuszko County in Indiana, and the city of Kosciuszko in Mississippi. On Northerly Island in Chicago, there is a statue of Kosciuszko on a horse with him holding a raised sword.
Kosciuszko designed Fortress West Point on the Hudson River in New York. As part of the fortress, a gun battery and other structures were built on Constitution Island on the Hudson, and this island was the location of the earliest Revolutionary War fortifications in the Hudson River Valley.
In the early 1900s Constitution Island was donated to the federal government as an addition to West Point by philanthropist Olivia Slocum Sage, widow of robber baron Russell Sage, who on his death in 1906 left his entire $70 million fortune to Olivia. Olivia also founded Troy, New York’s Russell Sage College, a women’s college named in honor of her late husband.