And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, “O LORD, bless this Thy hand grenade that with it Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits, in Thy mercy.” And the LORD did grin and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats and large chu… [At this point, the friar is urged by Brother Maynard to “skip a bit, brother”]… And the LORD spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.
(Thas was hilarious – made my day)
Graham Chapman, who played that King Arthur who threw that grenade to kill the killer rabbit, was only 58 years old when he died of tonsil and spinal cancer. Chapman’s middle name was Arthur.
At Chapman’s memorial service, John Cleese eulogized,
"I guess we’re all thinking how sad it is that a man of such talent, of such capability for kindness, of such unusual intelligence, should now so suddenly be spirited away … Well, I feel that I should say, “Nonsense. Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard, I hope he fries!”
Fries, Virginia (pronounced “freeze”) was founded in 1900 by Colonel Francis Fries, a cotton mill owner from North Carolina looking for a location for a new mill.
Eight United States Presidents were born in Virginia: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, William Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Woodrow Wilson.
Presidents who have had first names ending with their last-name initial are Jim Madison, Jim Monroe, William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, and Jack Kennedy, which is more than 10% of all presidents. In the general population, only about 1% of Americans have such a name.
The 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, was passed during Woodrow Wilson’s term.
Warren G. Harding, a womanizer whose only known child was fathered out of wedlock, credited his victory in the 1920 election to his popularity with ladies. (It was the first election in which they voted.) A probably false but still very widespread rumor more than 90 years after his death is that he was poisoned by his wife, Florence.
NM
Teapot Rock is a distinctive rock formation in Natrona County in east-central Wyoming, along highway 259 and about 30 miles north of Casper WY. The Teapot Dome Oil Fields are located northeast of the rock. In 1921 and 1922, Harding’s Secretary of Interior Albert Fall accepted bribes from oil companies to lease these oil fields to them at low cost for US Naval petroleum reserves. Two other oil fields in California were included in the Teapot Dome Scandal: Elk Hills, and Buena Vista Oil Fields in Kern County. The Elk Hills Oil Fields are about 20 miles west of Bakersfield CA, and Buena Vista Oil Field is about 30 miles southwest of Bakersfield near Taft CA.
Fall became the first-ever Cabinet member to go to prison.
Warren Harding was the last president to have a US county named after him. Harding County, New Mexico, was organized the same day that President Harding was inaugurated. It may have, by a matter of minutes, been named for Harding before Harding even began his term as president.
To date, sixteen senators have also served as president of the United States. Three senators, Warren G. Harding, John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama moved directly from the U.S. Senate to the White House.
State, and Senator / President
VA: James Monroe
MA: John Quincy Adams
TN: Andrew Jackson
NY: Martin Van Buren
OH: William Henry Harrison
VA: John Tyler
NH: Franklin Pierce
PA: James Buchanan
TN: Andrew Johnson
IN: Benjamin Harrison
OH: Warren Harding
MO: Harry Truman
MA: John Kennedy
TX: Lyndon Johnson
CA: Richard Nixon
IL: Barack Obama
Two Canadian Senators have been Prime Minister: John Abbott, who was a caretaker after the death of Sir John A, and Mackenzie Bowell who was a disaster, triggering a Cabinet revolt.
The experiment has not been repeated.
There could have been two men with the same name to serve as president of the USA and prime minister of Canada. But president Franklin Pierce lived long enough that VP William King never became president. Nearly a century later, William Lyon Mackenzie King served 13 years as Canadian PM.
17 Governors have became President of the United States.
State and Governor / President (& #)
VA: 3 Thomas Jefferson
VA: 5 James Monroe
NY: 8 Martin Van Buren
VA: 10 John Tyler
TN: 11 James Polk
TN: 17 Andrew Johnson
OH: 19 Rutherfored Hayes
NY: 22 Grover Cleveland (22 & 24)
OH: 25 William McKinley
NY: 26 Theodore Roosevelt
NJ: 28 Woodrow Wilson
MA: 30 Calvin Coolidge
NY: 32 Franklin Roosevelt
GA: 39 Jimmy Carter
CA: 40 Ronald Reagan
AR: 42 Bill Clinton
TX: 43 George W. Bush
The Korg MA-30 Digital Metronome features duplets, triplets, and quadruplets with inner beats omitted,
The word metronome first appeared in English c. 1815. Galileo Galilei first studied and discovered concepts involving the pendulum in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The more familiar mechanical musical chronometer was invented by Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel in Amsterdam in 1814. Through questionable practice, Johann Maelzel, incorporating Winkel’s ideas, added a scale, called it a metronome and started manufacturing the metronome under his own name in 1816: “Maelzel’s Metronome.”
Israeli actor Chaim Topol, usually known by just his last name, is most identified with the role of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof which he portrayed in the film and for more than 40 years on stage, but other major roles include Hans Zarkov in Flash Gordon, Milos Columbos in For Your Eyes Only, and the title roles in Bertolt Brecht’s Galileo and the Israeli classic Salah- a comedy about an Iranian Jew who has trouble blending in when he moves to Israel with his large family.
Queen, who performed the theme song for Flash Gordon, gave Galileo a shout-out in “Bohemian Rhapsody”.
NM, ninja’d