The Triumph Mayflower was a British post-war small luxury car noted for its razor-edge styling. It was built by the Standard Motor Company and sold by the Triumph subsidiary. 35,000 Mayflowers were manufactured in England and Australia from 1949 until 1953.
Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog is a character puppet puppeteered and voiced by Robert Smigel, best known for mocking celebrities. Triumph was identified in the early appearances as a Yugoslavian Mountain Hound, hence his distinct Eastern European accent (although Triumph himself insists it is a regular “dog accent”). As his name indicates, Triumph’s comedic style is almost exclusively insult comedy. Triumph often puffs a cigar, which usually falls out of his mouth when he starts talking. He debuted in 1997 on NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
For me to poop on.
The Vickers-Armstrongs Vanguard was a turboprop airliner introduced in 1959, at a time when jet airliners were becoming the norm. The Vickers Vanguard was not a successful passenger airplane. Only 44 were built, for TCA (Trans-Canadian) and for BEA (British European). TCA converted its Vanguards into cargo planes and called their planes the Cargoliner. BEA followed suit and called theirs the Merchantman. As a freight plane the Vickers Vanguard was modestly successful and continued to fly until 1996.
Well, back in its early development, when Vickers wanted to name their plane the Vanguard, the car company Standard-Triumph already had a car by that name. Standard-Triumph allowed Vickers-Armstrongs to use the name Vanguard, if in exchange Standard-Triumph could name a new car after one of Vickers-Armstrong’s airplanes. Vickers-Armstrongs agreed.
Vickers-Armstrongs was the parent company of Supermarine Aviation Works. Triumph decided to name their new car the Spitfire.
During its development, the Triumph Spitfire’s code name was “the bomb”.
Don Rickles, perhaps the best-known insult comic, began his career doing regular jokes, but while responding to his hecklers, it turned out that his audience enjoyed these insults more than his prepared material. Support from Frank Sinatra, whom Rickles once insulted by saying “Make yourself at home, Frank. Hit somebody!” Led to Rickles starring in Las Vegas and in a number of movies.
ETA: Godammit, Bullit, you )(*^&%^%^ me again!!!
Ignore this and play off of Bullitts while I go mope.
When Don Rickles, a frequent guest on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show”, made his final appearance there, he asked Carson “So what are you going to do now?” Carson shut him up by asking “The question is, what are *you *going to do now?”
And Quiet Flows the Don is one of the highlights of Russian literature during the 20th century, telling the story of the Don Cossacks during WWI and then the Revolution. It earned its author, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, the Nobel Prize in Literature, but there have been suggestions that he was not the true author.
“Triumph”, a novel by Philip Wylie, was a Nuclear war story involving a worst-case USA/Russia “spasm war” where both sides empty their arsenals into each other with extensive use of “dirty” bombs to maximize casualties, resulting in the main characters (in a very deep bomb shelter) being the only survivors in the entire Northern Hemisphere.
side note: I read this years ago. Unlikely today, but depressing.
ETA: Had to make one cosmetic change, but damn if I’ll be caught out twice.
Red October, the Russian Socialist Revolution of 25 Oct 1917 on the Julian calendar (also known as the Bolshevik Revolution), followed the revolution earlier in 1917 that saw the overthrow of the Czarist rule, the abdication of Czar Nikolas II (“Nikolas the Bloody”), and the dynastic end of the House of Romanov. Red October leaders included Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, and in 1922 led to the formation of the Soviet Union. The Russian word soviet means councils.
My good friend Paul Julian is the co-discoverer of the Madden-Julian Oscillation, a weather phenomenon in the Indian Ocean that enables meteorologists to more accurately predict global weather events such as El Nino.
The brother of former NFL head coach John Madden used to sell (car? life?) insurance in San Francisco in the early 1980s. His small office was dark, dingy, unkempt and disheveled. I found the place by letting my “fingers do the walking in the Yellow Pages,” like their jingle proclaimed, and it wasn’t until I arrived that I saw how run-down the place was. After a few minutes talking with him, I realized the physical resemblance to the Coach, whom I’d never met, and realizing his name was Madden too, asked if he was any relation.
I got my quote, thanked the man and left. I never bought from the guy, and continued to let my fingers do the walking elsewhere.
Rollie Fingers, the Oakland A’s reliever, was the first major league player in the modern era to revive a mustache. Before that, the last mustachioed player was Frenchy Bordegaray, who played until 1945.
There have been two warships named USS Oakland in the United States Navy. The contract for a third, a planned Independence-class littoral combat ship, was awarded in 2010.
Her native Oakland is the place Gertrude Stein referred to in her comment “There is no there there.” She meant that she could not find any trace of the neighborhood she had grown up in, among all the development. Thomas Wolfe discussed the theme in his novel You Can’t Go Home Again.
Unlike the typical author suffering from writer’s block, Thomas Wolfe was prolific. His editor, Maxwell Perkins, had him cut at least 60,000 words from the manuscript of his first (autobiographical) novel, *Look Homeward, Angel *. Based on his childhood in Asheville, NC, the novel offended a number of its residents, some of whom threatened to sue.
The commemorative sword presented to then-Lt. George Henry Thomas for service in the Seminole War is now in the collection of the Virginia Historical Society. The bicentennial of the Civil War hero’s birth is this July.
http://www.vahistorical.org/sites/default/files/uploads/VHE_ATP_GeorgeThomasSword.1900.1.jpg
Elendil’s Heir: Thanks, I’m a big fan of Old Slow Trot.
In play:
In the months approaching the United States Bicentennial celebration, Schoolhouse Rock, a series of educational cartoon shorts running on ABC between programs on Saturday mornings, created a sub-series called “History Rock,” although the official name was “America Rock.” The ten segments covered various aspects of American history and government. Several of the segments, most notably “*I’m Just a Bill” *(discussing the legislative process) and “The Preamble” (which features a variant of the preamble of the Constitution put to music), have become some of Schoolhouse Rock’s most popular segments.
And just because:
I’m just a Bill: I'm Just a Bill (Schoolhouse Rock!) - YouTube
The Preamble: - YouTube
I love Schoolhouse Rock, and Grammar Rock, and History Rock!!
Schoolhouse Rock premiered on 06 Jan 1973. It started because David McCall, half of the Madison Avenue advertising agency McCaffrey & McCall, noticed one of his sons had trouble in school remembering the multiplication tables, but knew the lyrics to then-current rock songs. The first one, that debuted in January 1973, was Three Is A Magic Number.
“Three is a Magic Number” was sung by Arkansas-born jazz singer Bob Dorough, who is still alive at age 93. Dorough was most successful in his career singing novelty songs, such as poetry set to music and songs for children, retaining cool jazz overtones… I first encountered him in the mid-50s, reading poetry on a jazz album called “Jazz Canto”.
ETA: Here’s Dorough reading Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “Dog”:
Not only did Bob Dorough sing Three is a Magic Number, he also wrote the song. Its lyrics include a biblical phrase.
*You get three as a magic number.
The past and the present and the future,
Faith and hope and charity,
The heart and the brain and the body
Give you three.
That’s a magic number.
*
From 1 Corinthians 13:13, “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” (KJV)
(That’s First Corinthians Donald, not One Corinthians.)