Some African languages, such as Zulu and Yoruba, have their own words for clockwise and counterclockwise, which do not reference clocks, and which predate the existence of clocks in their culture. Their word for ‘clock’ is more recently borrowed from colonial European languages.
Speaking of clocks, and time, the phrase in a New York minute refers to a very short period of time or an instant. Legend has it that the phrase originated in Texas in the late 1960s. The phrase was popularized by Johnny Carson who joked that a New York minute was the time between a traffic light turning green and the car behind one’s car honking
In a criticism of multiculturalism, Nobel literature awardee Saul Bellow said to an interviewer: “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans? I’d be glad to read him.”
Bellow taught at New York University, Yale, Princeton, and University of Chicago. He found Chicago to be more representative of what he saw as American values than New York.
The first blood bank in the United States was created in Chicago in 1937.
The first Food Bank in the US was created in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1967, by John Van Hengel, whose grandmother was one of my teachers in high school.
In Star Trek canon, the Phoenix was the first warp-capable human spacecraft. Its maiden voyage beyond Earth led to First Contact with the Vulcans. A later Nebula-class starship of the same name was involved in a major border incident with the Cardassians.
There are 21 deserts in the world, and four of these deserts are in North America. Phoenix sits in one of these – the Sonoran Desert. Phoenix’s home state of Arizona is the only state in the USA to have a section of all four of the North American deserts within its borders: the Great Basin Desert (centered mostly in NV), the Sonoran Desert (centered mostly in SW AZ), the Chihuahuan Desert (centered in southern NM and SW TX), and the Mojave Desert (centered in southern NV and SE CA).
Mount Desert Island in Maine was a popular retreat for wealthy families of the “Gilded Age”. The Rockefellers, Morgans, Fords, Vanderbilts, Carnegies, and Astors spent their summers at estates on the island; Nelson Rockefeller was born at his family’s summer home in Bar Harbor.
The easternmost point in the lower 48 states is a place called West Quoddy Head, Maine - interestingly enough.
Across the Moei River from Myawaddy, Myanmar (see #30232) there was a sign writing “The Westernest point in Thailand” — rather peculiar since the border there is one of the more eastern parts of the western border, and hardly the westernest (assuming that’s a word). Using Google images I see the sign has apparently been replaced with one somewhat more intelligible.
The Olde Peculiar is a village pub in Staffordshire, established in 1700.
Two nights at the Olde Thyme Inn Bed & Breakfast in Half Moon Bay CA was how my newlywed wife and I started our honeymoon, 14 years ago last week, before taking a road trip drive up the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington to our ultimate destination, Whistler BC, CAN. But alas, Yelp reports that the Olde Thyme Inn Bed & Breakfast is now permanently closed. Too bad, as it was a lovely B&B.
Interstate 5 runs from the Mexican border at San Ysidro, CA through Oregon and ends at the Canadian border that Blaine, WA.
Children’s author Beverly Cleary was born Beverly Atlee Bunn, on a farm in in McMinnville, When she was six years old, her family moved to Portland, Oregon, where she grew up. Born on April 12, 1916, she recently celebrated her 100th Birthday.
The battleship USS Oregon sailed from San Francisco to the Florida coast in 66 days in early 1898, considered a remarkable feat at the time, as hostilities loomed between the United States and the Spain Empire. The lengthy voyage is credited with increasing support for the eventual construction of the Panama Canal.
During Christopher Columbus’ lifetime, Jews in Spain became the target of fanatical religious persecution. On March 31, 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella proclaimed that all Jews were to be expelled from Spain. The edict especially targeted the 800,000 Jews who had never converted, and gave them four months to pack up and get out.
The Jews who were forced to renounce Judaism and embrace Catholicism were known as “Conversos,” or converts. There were also those who feigned conversion, practicing Catholicism outwardly while covertly practicing Judaism, the so-called “Marranos,” or swine.
Columbus is the capital of Ohio, and the University of Miami in Oxford, Ohio is one of only four schools that had both a Super Bowl-winning QB and a US President. In chronological order those schools are:
- 1977, Navy: 1972, Roger Staubach; 1977, Jimmy Carter
- 1981, Stanford: 1929, Herbert Hoover; 1981, Jim Plunkett
- 2002, Michigan: 1974, Gerald Ford; 2002, Tom Brady
- 2006, Miami: 1833, Benjamin Harrison; 2006, Ben Roethlisberger
Caroline Scott Harrison, wife of President Benjamin Harrison. was fascinated by history and preservation. In 1890 she helped found the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), and served as its first President General.
The children’s rhyme “Queen, Queen Caroline washed her hair in turpentine, turpentine to make it
shine” may refer to Caroline of Ansbach, wife of George II of England, or to Caroline of Brunswick, wife of George IV.
Unmarried girls/women in Iceland always bear a surname that ends with “-dottir”, and their brothers have the same name ending with “-son”. That was traditionally observed in other Scandinavian counries, but is no longer the case in the other countries.