A *distelfink *is a stylized goldfinch, probably based on the European variety. It frequently appears in Pennsylvania Dutch folk art. It represents happiness and good fortune and the Pennsylvania German people, and is a common theme in hex signs and in fraktur. The word *distelfink *(literally ‘thistle-finch’) is the German name for the European goldfinch.
The Pennsylvania Dutch are not of Dutch ancestry. The name is corrupted from Deutsch.
An endonym (or autonym; Greek, for self name) is a name given by its peoples to their country or place, or to their language or dialect. Deutschland is the German peoples’ endonym for Germany. D, DE, and DEU are the abbreviations or ISO 3166 codes for Germany.
There are very few countries whose endonym is exclusive to the country itself, without influencing the name elsewhere. Suomi (Finliand) and Bharat (India) are examples of countries whose names are derived from a different root virtually everywhere else in the world. Misr (Egypt) is partially so, but that name is used in all Arabic-speaking countries. Switzerland self-identifies as Helvitia (code CH), the Latin name for the region, because there are four official spellings in national languages for Switzerland. That is never meant to be the name of the country, but only a self-standing identifier to avoid an appearance of language favoritism.
The official name of Switzerland is, from the Latin, Confederatio Helvetica. The personage of Helvetia is meant to represent the country and is seen on coins, stamps and statues. She is somewhat analogous to Columbia in the US, a female figure often meant to represent the country.
It is not clear who wrote the hymn “O Come All You Faithful” (originally in Latin, known as “Adeste Fideles”), but the earliest known copies bear the name of John Francis Wade, a Roman Catholic Jacobite who wrote hymns. Some see Jacobite symbolism in the hymn.
The Wade-Giles romanization of Mandarin Chinese prevailed for nearly a century, and was the traditional standard for respelling Chinese names. It was created in the mid-1800s by Thomas Wade, as amended by Herbert Giles. The Yale system replaced it around WWII, and since the 1980s the present Pinyin form has been in use, introducing some letter substitutions (such as Q for CH) which are less intuitive to westerners…
U.S. Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas all attended Yale University. So did author Tom Wolfe.
And so did Finnish architect Eero Saarinen, the designer of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.
Harold Rupert Leofric George Alexander (3rd son of the Earl of Caledon and eventually 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis in his own right) was a precocious British Army officer who commanded the rearguard at Dunkirk and later served as Supreme Allied Commander of the Mediterranean Forces.
It took Alexander nearly a year to comply with Churchill’s instruction; when he finally did he politely asked for further orders:
[QUOTE=General the Honourable Sir Harold Alexander to Winston Churchill]
Sir: Orders you gave on August 15, 1942 have been fulfilled. His Majesty’s enemies, together with their impediments, have been eliminated from Egypt, Cirenaica, Libya and Tnpolitania. I now await your further instructions.
[/QUOTE]
George Selkirk was the first Canadian-born player to hit a home run in the World Series. It came against the Giant’s Carl Hubbell in the third inning of game one of the 1936 series in the Polo Grounds. It was Selkirk’s first post-season plate appearance after replacing Babe Ruth in the Yankee lineup, and he homered again in game five.
John Franklin “Home Run” Baker (1886 – 1963) was an American professional baseball player. A third baseman, Baker played in Major League Baseball from 1908 to 1922, for the Philadelphia Athletics and the New York Yankees. Baker has been called the “original home run king of the majors”. Though nicknamed “Home Run”, Baker hit only 96 home runs in his career, and never more than 12 in a season.
In the 1911 World Series between the NY Giants and Frank Baker’s Philadelphia Athletics, Giants pitchers Christy Mathewson and Rube Marquard allowed two game-winning home runs to the Hall of Famer Baker. This is where Baker earned his nickname, “Home Run Baker.”
Talk about indigestion!
In play:
Charlie Baker, national field director for the Dukakis for President campaign in 1988, is no relation to Charlie Baker, the current Governor of Massachusetts.
Jazz trumpeter/singer Chet Baker was no relation to any of the above. Nor to Tennessee Senator Howard Baker. Nor to Thomas Baker, the gold rush pioneer who founded Bakersfield, California.
In the mid-19th century, lawyer and former Ohio militia Colonel Thomas Baker settled in California, in Kern County along the banks of the Kern River. This is in the San Joaquin Valley, about 100 miles north of Los Angeles and 100 miles south of Fresno. Baker’s place, a field of farms, became known as Baker’s Field, and then later grew into Bakersfield, the 52nd largest city in America.
Famous people from Bakersfield include Chief Justice Earl Warren, country singers Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, and the recently departed football star Frank Gifford.
John Francis “Jack” **Buck **(1924 – 2002) was an American sportscaster, best known for his work announcing Major League Baseball games of the St. Louis Cardinals. His play-by-play work earned him recognition from numerous Halls of Fame, such as the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and the National Radio Hall of Fame. He has also been inducted as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame Museum.
In 1954, Buck was promoted to radio play-by-play of Cardinal games on KMOX, a position that he maintained for nearly all of the next 47 years. He was known in St. Louis for his trademark phrase “That’s a winner!”, which was said after every game that the Cardinals had won.
The Stanford Cardinal is never plural since it refers to the color, not the bird.
The Canadian Football League’s Ottawa Redblacks is always plural, since it doesn’t matter that it refers to the color.
The NFL’s Cleveland Browns are named after Paul Brown and not after the color brown.
The St. Louis Blues refers to the title of a song based on a musical genre, not the color. The Toronto Maple Leafs are never pluralized as “Maple Leaves”. Names like the Miami Heat are just plain stupid and there is a credible school of thought that they should be banned.