An appropriate trivia note for Tony Weekend:
Ben Vereen and Bettina Miller are the only actor and actress to win the Best Tony for Lead Actor/Actress in a Musical for playing the same role–The Leading Player in Pippin.
Winston Churchill, who was later to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, was summoned by King George VI to Buckingham Palace on the very day of Hitler’s Blitzkrieg invasion of France and asked to form a new government. Three days later the new P.M. went to the House of Commons hoping for their approval — but had nothing to offer except blood, toil, tears and sweat.
King George VI’s great-grandmother, Victoria, chose Ottawa as the capital for the united Province of Canada in 1857.
Blood, Sweat & Tears is a contemporary jazz-rock American music group, formed in 1967, one hundred ten years after Queen Victoria chose Ottawa as the capital for the Province of Canada, in New York City . Where the Tony Awards will be held tomorrow, Sunday June 12, 2016.
Jazz-rockers are apparently open to appeals to emotion, but eschew toil. Slackers!
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s School of Rock is up for four Tony Awards–Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, Best Original Score, and Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical.
I bet you a twenty dollar bill some other musical takes all four.
Queen Elizabeth’s first appearance on the Canadian twenty dollar note was in 1935, when she was nine. She was replaced by her father, George VI, on the twenty dollar note in 1937, but again appeared on it in 1954. She has been on every twenty dollar note since then.
PS - Kudos to Annie-Xmas for making the 30,000th post to this thread!
PPS - “missed it by that much!”
Various people including George Washington have appeared on the front of a U.S. Twenty Dollar bill, but Andrew Jackson’s such status set the longevity record of 92 years. That record will come to an end in 2020 when he is scheduled to be replaced with Harriet Tubman.
Thank you, but I certainly had to go around Robinson’s barn to do it. (Note: Robinson’s barn was originally “Robin Hood’s barn” meaning the entire forest. Nobody is sure about how it got changed).
In play: Despite the fact that Avenue Q totally shocked every prediction by winning the 2003 Tony Best Musical Award in a major upset against Wicked, no production was done outside of the US/Canada until 2006, when theatre producer Cameron McIntosh (currently working on the British production of Hamilton), produced a limited three month version in 2006 at the Noel Coward Theatre. Within the month, the ticket queues were around the block, and the production ran 1,179 performances through March 2009, then reopened in June 2009 at the Gielgud Theatre. After a further 327 performances, the show moved in March 2010 to the Wyndham’s Theatre,[29][30] where it closed on October 30, 2010 after a five-year run.
In Galveston, Texas, between Q Street and R Street, there is a street designated as Q-1/2 Street –
“Kew and a half”. It is a fully developed normal street, just the same as Q Street or R Street. I think a couple of other towns in the area, maybe Texas City, used a similar plan in their urban street naming culture.
To help returning WWII veterans enter the work-force quickly, Queen’s University ran a compressed engineering program, allowing veterans to gain their engineering degree in 3.5 years instead of the normal 4 years. Transition to civilian life was not easy, and about half of the 350 who enrolled dropped out.
The class graduated in 1948, and was officially listed as the Engineering Class of 48½.
“8-1/2” (Otto e Mezzo) was a classic film made by Italian director Federico Fellini. It won numerous awards including the Oscar for Best Foreign Picture in 1963. The title derives from Fellini’s count that it was movie “number 8-1/2” that he directed, counting several collaborations as a half a film. 8-1/2 starred Marcello Mastroanni, Amouk Aimee and Claudia Cardinale.
On 11 February 1963, The Beatles recorded their debut album, Please Please Me. They recorded it all in one day.
Songwriiter Roger Miller wrote and recorded “In the Summertime” in a few minutes. Miller had been hired in 1960 as a songrwriter for a recording studio, but hadn’t written a song in months. Thinking him a goldbrick, the boss told him to write a song or he’d be fired. He grabbed a guitat, told them to start the tape, and ad-libbed “In the Summertime” as he went along. It made #14 on the pop charts.
A lifelong cigarette smoker, Roger Miller died of lung cancer at the very young age of 56. In his hometown of Erick, Oklahoma, there is a Roger Miller Boulevard and also a Museum.
Yes, Annie-Xmas, congratulations! I went back and looked at 10,000 and 20,000, and both were posted by RealityChuck. Not sure if he knows, or remembers, that. Here they are, including Annie’s:
#10,000, on 2012-04-11, by RealityChuck: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=14957052#post14957052
#20,000, on 2014-06-23, by RealityChuck: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=17488533#post17488533
#30,000, on 2016-06-11, by Annie-Xmas: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=19397316#post19397316
Who will get #40,000, and when will that be?
Still in play:
The streets connecting to the north side of Bangkok’s Sukhumwit Road have odd numbers; streets on the south side have even numbers; but there are more streets off the north side, so the numbers don’t line up.
A simple arithmetic rule may help you navigate. Just subtract 1/3 of the northside soi number to estimate the even-numbered soi on the opposite side of Sukhumwit Road. Soi 15 is roughly opposite Soi 10, Ekhamai Road is Soi number 63 and is opposite Soi 42, and so on. Eventually the pattern breaks down, but it is useful all the way to Bang Chak. For example, the rule predicts that Soi 87 should be opposite Soi 58. It’s actually opposite Soi 56(*) but that error is fixed with a short walk.
[* - Roger Miller died [at age] 56]
At 198,000 mi[sup]2[/sup], Thailand is larger than California (163,000 mi[sup]2[/sup]) and smaller than Texas (268,000 mi[sup]2[/sup]). The name of its capital, Bangkok, may have been serived from Bang Ko, where Bang means ‘a village by a stream’. Today, Bangkok is known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon.
Its full name is quite long:
Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit
กรุงเทพมหานคร อมรรัตนโกสินทร์ มหินทรายุธยา มหาดิลกภพ นพรัตนราชธานีบูรีรมย์ อุดมราชนิเวศน์มหาสถาน อมรพิมานอวตารสถิต สักกะทัตติยวิษณุกรรมประสิทธิ์
It means,
City of angels, great city of immortals, magnificent city of the nine gems, seat of the king, city of royal palaces, home of gods incarnate, erected by Vishvakarman at Indra’s behest.
Ayutthaya was once the largest city in the world, but after that city was destroyed in the Burmese–Siamese War, its treasures were moved to the new Thai capital, the present-day Bangkok metropolis. Many fine statues of Buddha were housed in splendid new temples, and an old plastered Buddha was housed in a series of minor temples, and even a shed. But because of its large size, in 1954 it was decided to move the obscure and unloved statue into its own pagoda. The statue was unexpectedly heavy and was dropped; some of the plaster shattered.
It was discovered that the 5.5 ton statue was made of gold — about a sixth of a billion dollars worth of gold at today’s prices, even ignoring the statue’s sentimental value. It had been plastered over to conceal its value during the Burmese–Siamese War. The origin of the statue is unknown, although stylistic elements suggest it is very old. It may be the gold Buddha image mentioned in the 720 year-old Ram Khamhaeng stele, but even that stele is thought by some to be a fraud.