Champ or Champy is the name given to a reputed lake monster living in Lake Champlain, a 125-mile long body of fresh water that is shared by New York and Vermont and just a few miles into Quebec, Canada. While there is no scientific evidence for the cryptid’s existence, there have been over 300 reported sightings. The legend of the monster is considered a draw for tourism in the Burlington, Vermont and Plattsburgh, New York areas.
Lake Champlain is home to the oldest known fossil reef in the world, about 450-480 million years old.
Sailboats often have mechanisms to reef their sails – reducing the sail area in response to strong winds that may capsize or breach the boat. The traditional method is to use cords built into the sail to tie down the bottom portion. Nowadays, sails can also be reefed by furling them into the mast.
The Legislature of Saskatchewan abolished the common law action of breach of promise to marry in 2010.
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I recently learned this little bit of trivia: The Federal Legislature of the United States of America established an employee’s legal right to take bathroom breaks in April of 1989.
Before, that we just kept our legs crossed.
The Jolly Roger, the traditinal Pirate flag of the skull and cross bones, comes from the French expression Jolie Rouge (pretty red), a pirate flag used as early as 1694.
Hmm… jtur88, I’m not seeing it, what is the connection with your play and Annie’s?
Crossed legs —> Cross bones
In play: Angelina Jolie (Voight) is the daughter of actor John Voigt and niece of singer/songwriter Chip Taylor (James Wesley Voight)
Angelina Jolie has been married to actors Jonny Lee Miller, Billy Bob Thornton (they each wore vials of each others’ blood on necklaces), and now Brad Pitt.
The Dylan song “The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest” ends with a moral, telling the listener “the moral of this story, the moral of this song, is simply that one should never be where one does not belong”, to help one’s neighbor with his load, and “don’t go mistaking Paradise/for that home across the road.”
“Don’t Go” was the second single from Judas Priest’s Point of Entry album, released in 1981.
“Baby, Please Don’t Go” is a blues song which has been called “one of the most played, arranged, and rearranged pieces in blues history” by music historian Gerard Herzhaft. It was likely an adaptation of “Long John”, an old folk theme dating back to slavery in the United States. Delta blues musician Big Joe Williams popularized it with several versions beginning in 1935.
The Blues Brothers band was founded in 1976 by comedy actors Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi as part of a musical sketch on Saturday Night Live. Belushi and Aykroyd, in character as lead vocalist “Joliet” Jake Blues (named after Joliet Prison) and harmonica player/backing vocalist Elwood Blues (named after the Elwood Ordnance Plant, which made TNT and grenades during World War II), fronted the band, which was composed of well-known and respected musicians. The Blues Brothers band only appeared on SNL for three times before going on to bigger and better things until Jake’s death.
Frankie Baker, a woman in St. Louis Missouri, who shot her lover Albert in 1899, was the historical event upon which the song “Frankie and Johnny” was based. The Frankie and Johnny version was first published in 1904, changing the name of the character to one better fitting the music… Baker was acquitted, claiming self-defense.
Reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins was assigned to cover the 1924 trials of accused murderers Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner for the Chicago Tribune. In the early 1920s, Chicago’s press and public became riveted by the subject of homicides committed by women. Several high-profile cases arose, which generally involved women killing their lovers or husbands. These cases were tried against a backdrop of changing views of women in the Jazz age, and a long string of acquittals by Cook County juries of female murders (jurors at the time were all men, and convicted murderers generally faced death by hanging). A lore arose that, in Chicago, feminine or attractive women could not be convicted.
Watkins was so impressed by the whole thing that she turned it into a play called Chicago. Gwen Verdon read it and suggested to her husband Bob Fosse that he turn it into a musical. Watkins, who had become a born again Christian, refused to sell the rights, but Fosse was able to buy them later from her estate.
Zora Neale Hurston, a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance who is best known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, also reported on the trial of Ruby McCollum, the prosperous black wife of the local racketeer in Live Oak, Florida, who had killed a racist white doctor. Although McCollum was convicted, her defense that he had abused her and forced her to have sex and bear his child led to the end of Jim Crow-era “paramour rights”.
The play Jack Ruby All American Boy presented Ruby, who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, as an American so outrage over the President’s death that he had to kill his killer. It was a critical and audience smash hit, yet it has been produced since the Dallas Theater’s Center only production.
*Assassins *is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by John Weidman, based on an idea by Charles Gilbert, Jr. It uses the premise of a murderous carnival game to produce a revue-style portrayal of men and women who attempted (successfully or not) to assassinate Presidents of the United States. The music varies to reflect the popular music of the eras depicted. The musical first opened Off-Broadway in 1990, and the 2004 Broadway production won five Tony Awards.
Neil Patrick Harris made his West End debut in the late Jonathan “Rent” Larson’s first musical’s first London staging, “tick…tick…BOOM.”
Stephen Sondheim, a huge Larson fan, caught the show and immediately decided to revive Assassins with NPH in the title role