On July 3, 1916, Henrietta “Hetty” Robinson Green, dubbed "The World’s Greatest Miser: died at age 81 at her son’s New York City home. Estimates of her net worth ranged from $100 million to $200 million ($2.17 billion to $4.33 billion in 2015), making her arguably the richest woman in the world at the time.
Her two children split her estate, reported to enjoy their wealth more than she had. Both, notably, came through the Great Depression relatively unscathed by following Hetty’s philosophy of conservative buying backed by substantial cash reserves. Her son Ned was an accomplished collector with interests in everything from auto racing to science to horticulture. After his death, his sister Sylvia as heir donated his Round Hill, Massachusetts estate in 1948 to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which used the property for certain experiments. These included a prototype atom smasher. They used his powerful WMAF radio transmitters to keep in touch with Richard E. Byrd’s 1928-30 Antarctic expedition.
Sylvia died in 1951, leaving an estimated $200 million and donating all but $1,388,000 to 64 colleges, churches, hospitals, and other charities.
Beavers secrete a goo that smells like vanilla. In fact, it’s sometimes used in vanilla flavorings.
Castoreum is a chemical compound that mostly comes from a beaver’s castor sacs, which are located under the tail. It is secreted as a brown slime that’s about the consistency of molasses and smells like musky vanilla. It’s an FDA-approved natural flavoring.
Car wheel alignments typically involve ensuring three measurements of the front wheels are within spec: camber, caster, and toe.
Camber: Camber angle is best pictured when standing directly in front of a car and looking at its front wheels. Zero camber means the wheels are, when viewed from standing in front of the car, when the tires sit perfectly straight up and perpendicular to the road surface. Positive camber is when the tops of the tires are further out from the center line of the car than are the bottoms of the tires as they sit on the road - the tires form a V shape when viewed from the front. Negative camber is the opposite, and the tires form an A shape when viewed from standing directly in front of the car. Positive camber == V; Negative camber == A.
Caster: For the caster angle, imagine the front wheel and handlebars of a bicycle. If you view the bicycle from the side, the post that connects the handlebars to the front wheel tilts backward - the top of this post is more to the rear than the bottom of this post. This is Positive caster angle. Negative caster angle would be when the top of the steering post is further to the front than the bottom of the post. Zero caster angle would be when the post, as viewed from the side, is perpendicular to the ground. Positive caster angle allows the bicycle rider to ride without his/her hands on the handlebars; the bicycle pretty much steers itself. Positive caster angle yields high speed stability in a car, while lower caster angles (still positive, closer to zero) are for cars that change directions quickly, and quick steering inputs.
Toe In / Out: For toe, imagine you are standing up and looking down at your own feet. Toe in means your toes are pointed toward themselves and your feet form an A when you’re looking down at them, and with toe out your feet form a V. **Toe in **Is equivalent to being pigeon-toed, like John Elway. The ssme aplies to your car’s front wheels.
During his ten-year career with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Jack Lambert established himself as one of the NFL’s best linebackers. The nine-time pro bowler was key to the tough Steelers defense and famous for his missing front teeth. But despite his toughness, all it took to sideline his career was a toe injury. A reoccurring turf toe injury, where a toe is hyperextended, forced him to exit the league in 1984.
The great Jack Lambert, along with the great Jack Ham, were part of the dominant Steelers teams of the 1970s. Their linebacking corps backed the famed Steel Curtain that sent all four of its members to the Hall of Fame. Lambert was drafted in 1974, a Steelers draft that landed them four Hall of Famers in one draft year, Lynn Swann, Jack Lambert, John Stallworth, and Mike Webster.
The Pittsburgh Steelers’ 1974 draft was their best ever; no other team has ever drafted four future Hall of Famers in one year, and only very few (including the 1970 Steelers) have drafted two or more in one year.
The NFL draft is now only 7 rounds long. It was reduced in stages from 17 rounds after the Atlanta Falcons and coach Norm Van Brocklin used their last pick in 1972 on “John Wayne of Fort Apache State” as a joking protest.
There’s this famous Vince Lombardi saying: “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” Lombardi stole it. From John Wayne. Who said it in “Trouble Along the Way,” a 1953 movie in which Wayne happened to play … a football coach.
Seinfeld’s Newman, played by Wayne Knight, once explained the phenomenon of “going postal” :“The mail never stops! It just keeps coming and coming and coming, there’s never a let-up! It’s relentless! Every day it piles up more and more and more! And you gotta get it out! But the more you get it out the more it keeps coming in! And then the bar code reader breaks, and it’s Publisher’s Clearing House day…!”
Wayne Knight’s character in the original Jurassic Park film, an obnoxious lawyer, was the first human to get eaten - typically with the theater audience’s loud approval.
Note: Elvis, Wayne Knight played the venial software manager, not the lawyer (albeit little difference)
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The sixth Star Wars movie (although labeled as Chapter III), *Revenge of the Sith *premiered on May 15, 2005 at the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France and had its general release on May 19, 2005. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, especially in contrast to the mixed reviews of the previous two prequels. It is the last film in the Star Wars franchise to be distributed by 20th Century Fox.
Revenge of the Sith broke several box office records during its opening week and went on to earn over $868 million worldwide, making it the second-highest-grossing film in the Star Wars franchise, unadjusted for inflation. It was the highest-grossing film of 2005 in the U.S. and the second-highest-grossing film of 2005.As of June 2015, it is the 42nd highest-grossing film of all-time.
Ray Park played Darth Maul, a Sith Lord and Darth Sidious’s first apprentice. Darth Maul is one BAMF - he is one Bad-Ass-Mother-Fucker! (IMHO) The role was played by Ray Park and voiced by Peter Serafinowicz in the fourth movie, Episode I.
The Motherfucker with the Hat (sometimes censored as The Motherf**ker with the Hat and The Mother with the Hat) is a 2011 play by Stephen Adly Guirg, which premieredat Broadway’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on April 11, 2011, starring Chris Rock in his Broadway debut as Ralph D.
The Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre was previously known as the Plymouth Theatre. It was renamed in 2005 in honor of the then-chairman of the Shubert Organization.
The London revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, with Jason Donovan in the lead, took place n 1991 at the London Palladium with Jason Donovan in the title role. When Donovan left, former children’s TV presenter Phillip Schofield made his West End debut as Joseph.
<off topic>I saw the show. Rock was just OK, but Bobby Carnavale had a real standout performance.
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Donovan Leitch started out as a Bob Dylan imitator with his single “Catch the Wind,” but soon changed his style to the ultimate hippie and had hits like “Mellow Yellow,” “Sunshine Superman,” and “Jennifer Juniper.”
Donovan Leitch performed professionally as simply Donovan. He also wrote and recorded the theme song to the film If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, in which Ian McShane woos Suzanne Pleshette on a “World Wind Tour” of Europe by Americans.
In Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, “Belgium” is the most offensive word in the Universe. By strange coincidence, the word is also the name of a country on Earth, whose inhabitants have no idea what it actually means.
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The region in what is now Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg was called Belgica in Latin, after the Roman province of Gallia Belgica, which covered more or less the same area. Gallia Belgica was a province of the Roman Empire. Gallia Belgica was originally composed of the lands of the alliance of the Belgae, who were a large confederation of tribes living in northern Gaul, between the English Channel and the west bank of the Rhine, from at least the third century BC.