In Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck wrote “Texas is the only state that came into the Union by treaty. It retains the right to secede at will. We have heard them threaten to secede so often that I formed an enthusiastic organization—The American Friends for Texas Secession. This stops the subject cold. They want to be able to secede but they don’t want anyone to want them to.”
Texas-born Austin Jackson is only the second MLB baseball player born in a state in which both his first and last names are the names of counties in that state. The first was George Scott, from Mississippi.
Over the course of a long career, George C. Scott played a notorious miser (A Christmas Carol), an American general (Patton and Dr. Strangelove), a military school superintendent (Taps), a marine biologist (The Day of the Dolphin) and a mentally-disturbed man who thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes (They Might Be Giants), among other roles.
There’s argument that his role in Taps, that general was a little misguided.
George C. Scott is a Marine (not was, once a Marine always a Marine y’know). He served from 1945 to 1949 and got out as a Sergeant. He was assigned to HQMC at 8th & I where his primary duties included serving on the Honor Guard for services at Arlington National Cemetery.
Semper Fi, George, say hello to Chesty for me.
The bar run by the United States Marine guard for the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, is called “Chesty’s” in honor of General Chesty Puller.
I know this because I worked in Abu Dhabi for 4 years and drank a few beers there.
Cool.
US Marine and actor Tim Colceri starred in Full Metal Jacket and was originally cast to play Drill Instructor Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, but when Director Stanley Kubrick heard R. Lee Ermey spout of a tirade of insults as a training tape, he gave the role to Ermey. Colceri then became a helicopter gunner.
Ermey, a USMC Staff Sergeant, was awarded an honorary promotion to Gunnery Sergeant by the Marine Corps.
The Corps of Commissionaires is the name of two organisations in the UK and Canada formed after WWI to give jobs to veterans.
Originally Commissionaires served as low-grade security officers at the entrances to public buildings but they have gradually expanded to a number of services where veterans’ experience provides a good grounding for low/level security matters.
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The US Army Corps of Engineers’ history can be traced to 16 June 1775. Colonel Richard Gridley became General George Washington’s first Chief Engineer. In World War II, the Manhattan Project was directed under the Corps of Engineers. Major General Leslie Groves was with the Corps of Engineers.
Commodore George Dewey started the decisive Battle of Manila Bay in the Spanish-American War by telling the captain of his flagship, USS Olympia, “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley”.
The island of Corregidor is located strategically at the entrance to Manila Bay. During the Spanish occupation of the islands, it served as a Customs checkpoint for ships heading to Manila and takes its name from the Spanish “corregir”, to check.
A commissionaire appears and even has some lines in the Sherlock Holmes story “The Blue Carbuncle.”
In play:
George Dewey, who handily defeated the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Manila Bay, is buried at the Washington National Cathedral. His grave, which I recently saw when I toured the Cathedral, displays the U.S. flag and a four-star admiral’s flag.
Manila’s waterfront boulevard, overlooking Manila Bay, was for many years named Dewey Boulevard, to honor Admiral Dewey. During the Japanese occupation of World war two, it was renamed Heiwa Blvd. Since the late 1960s it has been known as Roxas Blvd. in honor of Philippine president Manuel Roxas.
During the Philippine–American War, 1899-1902, the first President of the Philippines, Emilio Aguinaldo, was captured by American General Frederick Funston. It was also during this war that the new .45ACP pistol was developed and deployed for the US forces. This pistol would serve as the standard-issue sidearm for the US military until it was replaced in October 1986 by the Beretta M9. The .45 pistol was designated as the M1911 and is often referred to as "a 1911. Today 1911s remain popular among gun owners, and 1911s can be chambered in several calibers.
After the Spanish–American War of 1898 in the Philippines, the U.S. army used waterboarding, called the “water cure” at the time, against captured independence fighters. It is not clear where this practice came from; it probably was adopted from the Filipinos, who themselves adopted it from the Spanish. President Theodore Roosevelt privately rationalized the instances of “mild torture, the water cure” but publicly called for efforts to “prevent the occurrence of all such acts in the future”. In that effort, he ordered the court-martial of General Jacob H. Smith on the island of Samar, “where some of the worst abuses had occurred”. When the court-martial found only that he had acted with excessive zeal, Roosevelt disregarded the verdict and had the General dismissed from the Army. Roosevelt soon declared victory in the Philippines, and the public lost interest in “what had, only months earlier, been alarming revelations”.
While the song John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt is of obscure origin, some evidence places its roots with vaudeville and theatre acts of the late 19th century and early 20th century popular in immigrant communities. Some vaudeville acts during the era, such as the work of Joe Weber and Lew Fields, often gave voice to shared frustrations of German-American immigrants and heavily leaned on malapropisms and difficulties with the English language as a vehicle for its humor. Further, “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” shares many characteristics with “My Name is Jan Jansen”, a song that can trace its origin to Swedish vaudeville in the late 19th century.
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The word “malapropism” comes from the character Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s play, The Rivals. She often misused words, saying, “Illiterate him quite from your memory” when she should have said, “Obliterate”.
New York Yankee catcher and Baseball Hall of Famer Yogi Berra often misused words in sayings that became known as Yogi-isms. For example, “Baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical.”
Lawrence P. Berra should not be confused with Lavrenti P. Beria, referenced a couple of days ago. Beria was a member of the hated Stalin regime, and Berra, his contemporary, was a member of the hated Yankees.
The legend of Faust, a man who sells his soul to the devil, has several variants. The motive for the Faustian bargain may be knowledge, power, or a search for new experiences. In a recent version, Douglas Wallop’s novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant (which was made into the musical Damn Yankees) the motive is hatred for the Yankees.
George Abbott’s last theatre credit was as book writer, consultant and script revisionist for the 1994 revival of Damn Yankees. Not bad for a man born in 1887. He died in January of 1995.