Queen Mary II was the second queen named Mary for both England and Scotland. Her husband William was the third King William for England, and only the second King William for Scotland.
Jacobites do not accept the Glorious Revolution as valid. For them, Maria de Savoi, who comes from a line of Kings of Sardinia, was Scotland’s Queen Mary II. (Her gt-gt grandfather married the grand-daughter — and ultimate heiress — of England’s King Charles I.) Mary II’s grand-daughter, Maria Theresa of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, is the legitimate Mary III Queen of Scots; and in turn her grandson, Albrecht von Wittelsbach, eventual Head of the House of Wittelsbach, became King Albert I.
King Albert’s son, King Francis II of England and Scotland by Jacobite reckoning, is now 82 years old and has never married. The Jacobite throne will eventually pass to his grand-nephew Joseph Wenzel Maximilian Maria. The 21-year old Joseph is also heir to the Principality of Liechtenstein, which he would rule in personal union with England and Scotland.
Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan are the only two doubly-landlocked countries in the world.
Two Men And A Truck is a franchised moving company, headquartered in Lansing, Michigan, with franchises in 32 states in the United States, as well as the United Kingdom, Canada and Ireland. The company is the largest franchised moving company in the United States. It has more than 250 locations.
The word ‘franchise’ derives from an Old French word meaning ‘free’ which was related to the tribe called Franks — they were the only free men in Gaul. The Franks became so dominant (under Charlemagne etc.) that “Frank” was used a generic word for Western European during the Crusades. This word was adapted for use in Persia and India and made its way to Thailand where “Farang” now refers to any Westerner. (Note that it does not mean Caucasian: light-skinned South and West Asians are not Farangs; black-skinned Americans are.) Thus the English word ‘franchise’ and the Thai word ‘farang’ have the same ultimate root.
Farang (ฝรั่ง) is pronounced and spelled the same as the Thai word for guava.
British MPs and members of the House of Lords used to be able to “frank” a letter - by putting their signature on it, it would be delivered free by the postal system.
The word "free"as a part of a place name often refers to its origin as a place of refuge, free of political authority, for people seeking relief from suppression. But in some cases, it referred to a transit point where goods could be moved free of customs duties, akin to a duty-free shop.
In at least one case, it had still a different connotation. Freeport, Maine, the home of L L Bean, was named because its harbor was free of ice in winter.
The average human body hosts at least 30 trillion bacteria.
The average human body has 60,000 miles of blood vessels.
In English law, the doctrine of locus standi requires that a plaintiff have some connection with the matter being contested. In two cases in 1957 and 1996, Lord Denning ruled that “The court will not listen to a busybody who is interfering in things which do not concern him.” Similarly, there is a long-standing rule that a person must have an insurable interest in a property or person that they wish to insure.
Locus, or its plural loci, comes from the Latin for “place.” In planar geometry the word is used often when defining shapes and is equivalent to ‘the set of’. For example a circle is the locus of points equidistant from any given point. The point in thise case is the center of the circle, and the distance is the radius. An ellipse is the locus of points such that the sum of the distance from two points is a constant. In this case the two points are the foci of the ellipse.
Given a plane, points A and B in the plane, and positive r≠1, the locus of points P in the plane, with AP/BP = r forms a circle.
The Associated Press (AP) reported that the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was worse than BP and the government reported.
Associated Country Women of the World, one of the largest international development organisations for rural women, is headquartered in London.
Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great English poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor, lexicographer and thinker, is said to have remarked, “When one is tired of London, one is tired of life.”
The great doctor also remarked: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”
On 16 August 1951, in the Peanuts cartoon strip for that day, Violet Gray called Charlie Brown a blockhead for the very first time. Later, on 14 November 1951, Charlie Brown for the first time was unable to place-kick a football with Violet holding it. Violet was afraid of hurting her hand.
To exhaust the rest of the colors, red blackberries are white when they’re green.
A white dwarf star is quite dense. While it has about the same mass as the sun, its volume is about that of the earth.
In 1946, there was a referendum to determine the future of Newfoundland. There was a faction that supported union with the USA, but the American government said it was not interested. Had Newfoundland joined the USA, the USA, Canada and China, as the three largest countries after Russia, would now be about the same size, just 1.7% difference in their areas…