World B. Free was an all-star basketball player in the NBA.
B. Traven, the author of “Treasure of the Sierra Madre”, is widely presumed to be one of two Germans, Otto Feige or Ret Marut, and even those two may be the same person.
A cordillera is an extensive chain of mountains or mountain ranges. The American Cordillera consists of an almost continuous sequence of mountain ranges that form the western “backbone” of North America, Central America, South America and extemding to Antarctica. In North America the American Cordillera includes the Brooks Range in Alaska, the Rockies in Canada and the US, and the Sierra Madre Occidental and Sierra Madre Oriental of Mexico.
It is possible to drive across the United States without rising more than 5,000 feet in the cordillera. Mile marker 320 west of Wilcox, Arizona, is the highest point on I-10, just below 5,000 feet elevation. The Continental Divide on I-10, in New Mexico, is 4,585 feet.
In Palm Springs CA, I-10 is named the Sonny Bono Memorial Freeway. Sonny Bono was Mayor of Palm Springs from 1988-1992, and then from 1995-1998 he was a US Representative.
Sonny Bono died after slamming into a tree in a skiing accident near Lake Tahoe.
World-famous dancer Isadora Duncan died in 1927 when her long windblown scarf wrapped around the rear wheel of a sports car she was riding in, jerked her out of the car, and broke her neck. It was a French Amicar, not the Bugatti that has often been portrayed.
Amilcar.
The French fleet that assisted Gen. George Washington in hemming in Lord Cornwallis and the British army at Yorktown in late 1781, leading to their eventual surrender, was commanded by Admiral Francois-Joseph Paul, Comte de Grasse. De Grasse was later honored by the naming of a U.S. Navy destroyer after him.
The Charles de Gaulle is the flagship of the French Navy (Marine Nationale) and the largest western European warship currently in commission. She is the tenth French aircraft carrier, the first French nuclear-powered surface vessel, and the first and so far only nuclear-powered carrier completed outside of the United States Navy.
Interesting trivia!
The five most powerful navies in the world (as of this 2014 article, The Five Most-Powerful Navies on the Planet | The National Interest), are;
- United States
- China
- Russia
- United Kingdom
- Japan
During the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian Baltic Fleet was almost destroyed at the Battle of Tsushima Strait, in May 1905. The decisive defeat, in which only 10 of 45 Russian warships escaped to safety, convinced Russian leaders that further resistance against Japan’s imperial designs for East Asia was hopeless.
When the battleship USS Arizona was destroyed by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, 23 sets of brothers were killed.
The USS Arizona is not commissioned but still has a flag flying over it as it is a military cemetary.
Mária Katalin Horony, better known as Big Nose Kate, was born in Pest, Hungary in 1850; her family immigrated to Iowa, and she was orphaned at age 15. She had a checkered career as dance-hall girl, prostitute, brothel operator, and baker. She is best known as the long-time mistress of the gunfighter John Henry “Doc” Holliday. Big Nose Kate died in Prescott, Arizona, jut five days before her 90th birthday.
Women of the frontier had no trouble becoming successful, as their charms were in great demand. One gold rush writer describing the Yukon said “There wasn’t an ugly woman in Dawson, but some were just barely pretty”.
*Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he’d often say in his homely way that “he’d sooner live in hell.”
On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn’t see;
It wasn’t much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.*
The City of Dawson, in the Yukon Territory, lies on the Yukon River and is 60 miles east of the Alaska state line. The “Top of the World Highway” connects Dawson YT to Jack Wade AK, 90 miles to the west. The Klondike Highway connects Dawson YT to Whitehorse YT, 300 miles to the south southeast. The Taylor Highway connects Dawson YT to Tok AK, 200 miles to the southwest and through Jack Wade AK.
Dawson YT is different from Dawson Creek BC, which lies near the eastern border of British Columbia and Alberta. Dawson Creek BC is about 1,200 miles southeast of Dawson YT.
Added: Both Dawson YT and Dawson Creek BC are named after George Dawson (1849-1901), the explorer and geologist from Nova Scotia who mapped much of the surrounding area.
Missed the edit window to include this -
This plaque honoring Dawson is in Dawson City YT: George Mercer Dawson - Wikipedia.
Jack London’s To Build a Fire tells the story of a man returning to camp near the Yukon River on a day so cold that spit freezes before it reaches the ground. The man gets his feet wet and needs to build a fire…