Richard Boone worked as a Santa Claus at Holman’s Department Store in Pacific Grove, California before he starred in films and TV. In Have Gun Will Travel, he wore a black hat (rescuing Bullitt from the ninja)
NM, ninja.
Richard Boone’s character in HGWT was Paladin, and his business card had a chess knight figure on it. The original twelve Paladins were the largely fictional peers of Charlemagne. In later years the word’s meaning has been distilled to mean any heroic or brave figure.
Paladin’s first name in HGWT was never revealed. Some wags have said it was “Wire,” since his business card said:
Have Gun Will Travel
Wire Paladin
San Francisco.
Lombard Street in San Francisco is famous for its curves to mitigate the steepness of the hill. Lombard Street’s famous stretch is one way, eastbound, between Hyde and Leavenworth Streets, but two blocks to the south, Filbert Street’s same stretch between Hyde and Leavenworth, one way eastbound, is steeper at 31.5 degrees. It is fun to drive because its drop is dramatic, almost flat and level at the beginning, and then suddenly and quickly plunging to that 31.5 degree drop.
I like taking guests down the famous Lombard Street, then turning right onto Leavenworth and pointing out the steep hill to the right that includes Filbert Street, then wrap around to take the quick and surprising plunge down Filbert. Exciting!
The reason I added the black hat was so you wouldn’t be ninjaed.
In Play:
Oregon is America’s leading producer of hazelnuts, also known as filberts. Turkey produces about 20 times as much hazelnut as the US, and even Azerbaijan is ahead of the US in production of the nut.
Çatalhöyük, in the southern part of present-day Turkey, is the site of what is thought to be the largest city in 6500 BC, with a population of several thousand. About 3500 BC, the cities of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture in present-day Ukraine are thought to have been the largest of their time — they needed to be large and fortified for protection from the neighboring Indo-European speaking warriors.
Heinrich Schliemann, famed for excavating the site of ancient Troy, Hissarlik, in Turkey, was forced to leave school at age 14, due to his father’s financial troubles. Heinrich became an apprentice at Herr Holtz’s grocery in Fürstenberg. He later told that his passion for Homer was born when he heard a drunkard reciting it at the grocer’s.
Thanks for that.
In play: Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, one of his most famous piano sonatas, is officially his Piano Sonata No. 14.
In Emma, the mysterious arrival of a piano for Jane Fairfax is a major plot point. Who would have sent such an expensive gift anonymously?
Emma of Normandy, nicknamed ‘the Flower of Normandy’, was married to two Kings of England and was mother of two Kings of England, one by each of her husbands. William the Conqueror was the grandnephew of Emma, and this was the flimsy basis for his own genealogical claim to England’s throne.
The region of Normandy is roighly the same size as the state of Maryland.
The Chili Size is an open-faced sandwich invented at Ptomaine Tommy’s in Los Angeles, California, consisting of a toasted half a hamburger bun, a grilled hamburger patty, all covered with chili and topped with a slice of melted american cheese. The name originated from the size of the ladle used to put the chili on the sandwich. Ptomaine Tommy served a bowl of chili, or a hamburger smothered with chili. He had two ladles, a large and a small. When a customer ordered a bowl of chili, he got the large ladle. When he wanted the other, he usually said, “Hamburger size.” So Ptomaine Tommy put up one sign that said Hamburger Size 15¢ and another that said Chili Size 20¢. Somehow, over time this got switched around, and the “chili size” became associated with the chili plus hamburger. And now a “chili size” is a chili burger. The term is still mostly confined to the chili joints of Los Angeles.
The city of Chili, New York, is pronounced “chye-lye”. Which is not surprising, since it was orginally a part of the Town of Riga, which is pronounced “rye-ga”, unlike the capital of Latvia. The origin of the name Chili is disputed, with several theories offered. If Chili were in South Dakota, it would be the third largest city in the state.
nm, ninja’ed
“Lye” is commonly the alternative name of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) or historically potassium hydroxide (KOH). Today, sodium hydroxide is commercially manufactured and is one of the highest-volume industrial chemicals with worldwide annual production of 45 million tons in 1998.
Olives typically must be processed with lye and then pickled before they are edible, to remove the bitter glucoside oleuropein. Spanish green olives and California olives are treated with lye. Greek olives are not treated with lye. They are strong tasting because they are just packed in dry salt, or pickled in brine for 6 to 12 months (where they undergo a process of lactic fermentation), and finally packed in fresh brine.
In “Farewell to Nova Scotia”, a sailor laments that he is leaving Nova Scotia, travelling on the briny ocean deep. The song also refers to the mountains dark and dreary of Nova Scotia, which is a bit of an oddity, because Nova Scotia does not have mountains, at least not by western Canadian standards, but hey, song lyrics!
The state song of West Virginia, John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads”, mentions his nostalgia for the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah River, which are both notably not in West Virginia.
According to Wikipedia, the Shenandoah River has two forks approximately 100 miles long each, in Virginia and West Virginia.