Patrick O’Brian wrote 20 Aubrey-Maturin books between 1969 and 1999. What would have been his last such book was published posthumously and unfinished with the short title 21 in 2004.
The countries in the world where alcohol is generally available and the drinking age is 21 are the United States, Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka, Palau, Tonga, Solomon Islands and Micronesia.
Tonga became a protected state under a Treaty of Friendship with Britain on 18 May 1900. The treaty posted no higher permanent representative on Tonga than a British Consul. Although under the protection of Britain, Tonga maintained its sovereignty, and remained the only Pacific nation never to have given up its monarchical government. OTnga became a fully independent nation in 1970.
Elizabeth Wolfgeamm was the lead singer on several hits by The Jets that made it to the top of the miusic charts in the 1980s. The original band consisted of the eight oldest children of Maikolo “Mike” and Vaké Wolfgramm, who were originally from the South Pacific island kingdom of Tonga. The family has 17 children, 15 by birth and two by adoption, and lived in Minneapolis.
The United States has states with North, South, and West in their names, but no state with East, a fact Asimov used as a plot point in one of his Black Widower stories.
There are also American cities named North Bend WA, West Bend WI and South Bend IN, but no East Bend, except a very small town in North Carolina.
Horseshoe Curve is a three-track railroad curve on the Norfolk Southern Railway’s Pittsburgh Line in Blair County, Pennsylvania. For every 100 feet, the tracks at the Horseshoe Curve bend 9 degrees and 15 minutes with the entire curve bending 220 degrees. The curve is 2,375 feet long and, at its widest, about 1,300 feet across.
The Altoona Curve are a minor league baseball team based in Altoona, Pennsylvania, named after nearby Horseshoe Curve (but also alluding to the curveball, a kind of pitch). The team, which plays in the Eastern League, is the Double-A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates major-league club. I’ve seen them play, the stadium PA system is so loud, they’ve lost lawsuits against the noise and were forced to buy out nearby property owners.
The Horseshoe Pass is a mountain pass in Denbighshire, north-east Wales. The A542 road from Llandegla to Llangollen runs through the pass, and travels in a horseshoe shape around the sides of a valley, giving the pass its name.
This route dates from 1811, when a turnpike road was constructed across the area. It is not uncommon for sheep to gather in the road, sometimes causing problems for drivers. The road is also frequently closed in winter due to snowfall or landslides.
The Sheppey is a measure of distance equal to about 7⁄8 of a mile (1.4 km), defined as the closest distance at which sheep remain picturesque. The Sheppey is the creation of Douglas Adams and John Lloyd, included in The Meaning of Liff, their dictionary of putative meanings for words that are actually just place names. It is named after the Isle of Sheppey in the UK.
Long Island NY is the 149th largest island in the world. The Long Island of Scotland is a name rarely used for Lewis and Harris Island, which is the largest island of Scotland. It is part of the Outer Hebrides island group, and it is the third largest island in the British Isles behind Great Britain and Ireland.
Whidbey Island in Washington State claims to be the longest island in the lower 48 states. This claim is indefensible since it is only 48 miles long, and three other islands are longer: Long Island, NY, 118 miles; Padre Island, TX, 78 miles, and Hatteras Island, NC, 50 miles.
Phuket, Thailand’s largest island, has about the same land area as Elephant Island, located near the Antarctic Peninsula. By coincidence Thailand’s 2nd-largest island has a name which translates as ‘Elephant Island.’
Do not confuse either with Elephantine Island, now part of the city of Aswan, Egypt, which was the site of the only Jewish Temple ever built outside Judaea-Israel.
The Channel Islands of California are eight islands off the coast of Santa Barbara, in the Santa Barbara Channel. In 1980 five of the islands, San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, Anacapa, and Santa Barbara, were made into Channel Islands National Park (or, CINP). Santa Catalina Island is the only one of the eight islands with a significant permanent civilian settlement—the resort city of Avalon, and the unincorporated town of Two Harbors.
The Channel Islands are grouped into the Northern and the Southern Groups. The Northern Group, by county north-to-south, and by size, are
- 96.5mi[sup]2[/sup] Santa Cruz, in Santa Barbara County (part of CINP)
- 83.1mi[sup]2[/sup] Santa Rosa, in Santa Barbara County (part of CINP)
- 14.6mi[sup]2[/sup] San Miguel, in Santa Barbara County (part of CINP)
- 1.1mi[sup]2[/sup] Anacapa, in Ventura County (part of CINP)
The Southern Group consists of:
- 1.0mi[sup]2[/sup] Santa Barbara, in Santa Barbara County (part of CINP)
- 22.8mi[sup]2[/sup] San Nicolas, in Ventura County
- 75.0mi[sup]2[/sup] Santa Catalina, in Los Angeles County
- 56.8mi[sup]2[/sup] San Clementa, in Los Angeles County
Some of the University of California, Santa Barbara’s dormitories are named after the Channel Islands. UCSB dorms include Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Nicolas, San Miguel, and Anacapa.
The UCSB campus is located on the Riviera. Chronologically, UCSB is the third general-education campus of the University of California, after Berkeley and UCLA.
The first Toyota Avalon rolled off the assembly line in Georgetown, Kentucky, on February 21, 1994, as a 1995 model.
The 1907 Brush Runabout was the first car designed with a counter-clockwise running engine, which made it safer for a right-handed person to hand-crank. Before electric starters, hand-cranking a car was a complicated and dangerous procedure, with broken arms the most common automobile injury.
Morgan Freeman, who is left handed, was injured in an automobile accident near Ruleville, Mississippi, on the night of August 3, 2008. His left shoulder, arm, and elbow were broken in the crash, and he had surgery on August 5, 2008. Doctors operated for four hours to repair nerve damage in his shoulder and arm.
Sorry, screwed up.
“Freemen-on-the-land” are a loose group of individuals with the belief that they are bound by statute laws only if they consent to those laws. They believe that they can therefore declare themselves independent of the government and the rule of law, holding that the only “true” law is their own interpretation of “common law”. This belief has not kept them out of jail on numerous occasions, however.