When Anna Owens arrived in Bangkok to be an English tutor to the children of King Mongkut/Rama IV she took with her her son Louis (she sent her daughter to school in England), a married pair of Indian servants, and her Newfoundland. By the time she wrote of her experiences she was using the surname Leonowens, a combination of her late husband’s first name (Leon) and surname, though it is not clear why she did so.
In the 1800s explorer John Charles Frémont explored the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. Frémont was a Captain in the US Army (he reached Major General, 2 stars); he held Command Posts of the California Battalion, and the Department of the West; Governor of California; US Senator; and Territorial Governor of Arizona.
When Frémont explored the dramatic landscape of Eastern Side of the Sierra Nevada, an explorer named Richard Owens was in his party. Owens Valley, Owens River, and Owens Lake are named after Richard Owens. Bishop CA, pop. approx. 4,000 and elev. approx. 4,000’, is the biggest town in Owens Valley. Bishop is located on the Owens River.
James “Jesse” Owens (1913 – 1980) was an American track and field athlete and four-time Olympic gold medalist. His achievement of setting three world records and tying another in less than an hour at the 1935 Big Ten track meet in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has been called “the greatest 45 minutes ever in sport” and has never been equaled. At the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, Owens won international fame with four gold medals: 100 meters, 200 meters, long jump, and 4 × 100 meter relay. He was the most successful athlete at the games and as such has been credited with “single-handedly crush[ing] Hitler’s myth of Aryan supremacy.”
At the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, Jesse Owens said at that time, “Hitler had a certain time to come to the stadium and a certain time to leave. It happened he had to leave before the victory ceremony after the 100 meters. But before he left I was on my way to a broadcast and passed near his box. He waved at me and I waved back. I think it was bad taste to criticize the ‘man of the hour’ in another country.”
Adolf Hitler is spoken of but never actually appears in British author Robert Harris’s best-selling 1992 alternative history novel Fatherland, set in Nazi Germany in early April 1964, just before der Fuhrer’s 75th birthday celebrations.
The surname ‘Hitler’ did not exist before the 1870s. It was adopted by Adolf Hitler’s father, Alois, apparently as a combination of Heidler and Huttler (the surnames of two relatives). Prior to this, Alois Hitler’s surname was Schicklgruber. Some of Hitler’s political opponents would later refer to him disparagingly as ‘Herr Shicklgruber’.
‘Heil Schicklgruber’ doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, does it?
Hitler’s mother Klara Polz’s maternal grandfather was Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, whose brother was the stepfather and eventually adoptive father of Alois Hitler. Alois was illegitimate and the identity of his biological father has never been identified, but by some accounts it was his stepfather, which would make him a cousin of his second wife Klara, and by some it was Johann, which would make him Klara’s (half) uncle. Still a third rumor is that his mother was impregnated by a Jewish employer.
(Aside: I wonder if any of Hitler’s great-nephews have had Y chromosome testing to answer this.)
Arnold **Alois **Schwarzenegger, born in July 1947, won the Mr. Universe title at age 20 and went on to win the Mr. Olympia contest seven times. He later served two terms as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011.
Clarification: Nelson was the son of John D. Jr.
Nelson served as governor of New York 1959-1973.
He died in 1979, probably in flagrante in the arms of researcher Megan Marshak, to whom he is reported to have willed the apartment where his death took place.
The Earl Nelson is not directly descended from Viscount Nelson, the hero of Trafalgar.
Viscount Nelson died without legitimate issue, so his title died with him. To commemorate him, the British government (known in those days as “a grateful nation”) conferred the title of Earl Nelson on the Viscount’s older brother. The current Earl, is thus the many times-great nephew of Viscount Nelson.
Thank you.
I think Northern Piper was distracted by Nelson Pike’s addition, which I don’t think was a response, so to bring balance to the universe I’ll offer something from my post and Piper’s to reset:
In play:
Lake **Earl **is the largest coastal lagoon in California, and a navigable body of water partly within Tolowa Dunes State Park and partly within Lake Earl Wildlife Area in Del Norte County. Due to the remoteness and natural beauty of the landscape, the lake is often used for birders and is locally popular with duck hunters.
The lead characters on PBS’s Downtown Abbey are the Earl of Grantham, his family and household staff. There was a historical Earl of Grantham, but the title lapsed upon his death in 1754.
The second series of Downton Abbey included the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic. From January 1918 to December 1920, 500 million people were infected by the first of two pandemics of the H1N1 (Hemagglutinin and Neuraminidase) influenza virus. 50 to 100 million people died. By comparison, only 17,000 people died from H1N1 in 2010
On-Game:
Northanger Abbey was Jane Austen’s parody of the Gothic genre, popularised by Horace Walpole in The Castle of Otranto. Amongst other parodic elements, the mysterious document which the heroine seeks in the Abbey turns out to be a laundry list.
Off-game:
Distracted?!? Moi? Not at all!
“Governor of California” (Stainless Steel Rat) => “Nelson served as governor” (Nelson Pike) => “The Earl Nelson” (me).
The universe is unfolding as it should. 
A study published in Pediatrics Magazine finds that in 2012 and 2013 17,230 children under age 6 got into trouble with laundry detergent pods. Most — nearly 80 percent — of the children were reported to have ingested a pod. Nearly two-thirds of the children were between 1 and 2 years old.
Tide laundry detergent was first introduced in US test markets in 1946 as the world’s first heavy-duty detergent, with nationwide distribution accomplished in 1949. Tide claimed it was “America’s Washday Favorite.” Authority was quickly gained in the U.S. detergent market, dwarfing the sales of Ivory Snow; and accelerating the demise of two of its main competing products, Rinso and Gold Dust Washing Powder.
Nothern Piper: I stand abashed (actually, I’m sitting and only mildly embarrassed, but you get the idea…
In Play:
Unlike Earth and the Moon, Jupiter’s moon Io’s main source of internal heat comes from tidal dissipation rather than radioactive isotope decay. The vertical differences in Io’s tidal bulge, between the times Io is at periapsis and apoapsis in its orbit, could be as much as 300 feet, or the length of an American football field. The amount of energy produced by these titdal forces is up to 200 times greater than that produced solely from radioactive decay.
A mere bagatelle!
In-play:
Io is one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter. The other three are Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. They are all named after one of Zeus’s many lovers.
Galileo actually wanted to name them after members of the Medici family, but the names proposed by the German astronomer Simon Marius, who independently discovered the moons at the same time as Galileo, eventually won out.
In Greek legend, Ganymede was a handsome youth brought to Mt Olympus by Zeus; in some versions he is willing while in others he is kidnapped.
Shakespeare uses the name in As You Like It for his heroine Rosalind in male disguise.