[del]Juliette Gordon Low, with some help from Sir Robert Baden-Powell, organized and assembled the first gathering of girls that would lead to the founding of Girl Scouts of the USA, in 1912 in Savannah GA. The group was initially known as the Girl Guides, after Low had previously formed a group of Girl Guides in Scotland in 1911.
Juliette Gordon Low’S birthday, 31 October, is celebrated annually by GSUSA as Founder’s Day. That is probably why we get their cookies that time of year.
For every bushel of wheat harvested in the USA, a bushel of topsoil goes down the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico. For corn, the ratio is more like two bushels of topsoil to one of corn. There are places in Iowa wherfe the first settlers fouind 12 feet of topsoil, and today their plows are hitting bedrock.
The Eads Bridge is a combined road and railway bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis, connecting St. Louis and East St. Louis, Illinois. The bridge is named for its designer and builder, James B. Eads. When completed in 1874, the Eads Bridge was the longest arch bridge in the world, with an overall length of 6,442 feet. The bridge is still in use today.
At the foot of the Eads Bridge, at the west end, on the south side - the St. Louis side, the side nearest the Gateway Arch - is a statue of Lewis and Clark in a small boat with their dog. At the usual height of the Mississippi River, the water is some 20 yards away and low, down the riverside reinforcing concrete. But when the river floods, the statue can become wet.
The statue is approximately 20 feet tall.
I’ve seen the river so flooded that the statue has been completely covered by the water.
In A Christmas Story, Ralphie desperately wants a “Red Ryder carbine-action, two hundred shot Range Model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time,” does not correspond to any model in existence nor even a prototype; the Red Ryder featured in the movie was specially made to match author Jean Shepherd’s story (which may be artistic license, but was the configuration Shepherd claimed to remember). However, the “Buck Jones” Daisy air rifle, immediately above the Red Ryder in the Daisy line, did have a compass and sundial in the stock, but no other features of the “Red Ryder” model.
In Canada, red is the colour of the Liberal Party; blue for the Conservative Party; orange for the New Democratic Party; light blue for the Bloc Québécois; and Green for the Green Party, of course.
When asked about what had inspired him creatively, Bob Dylan said it was a lyric by Scottish poet Robert Burns that had the greatest effect on his life. He named the 1794 song A Red, Red Rose, which is often published as a poem, penned by the man regarded as Scotland’s national poet.
According to some experts it was based on a song Burns heard a girl singing in the Scottish Highlands.
Highland Community College is the oldest college in Kansas, established in 1858 in Kansas Territory, three years before statehood… Despite its name, the college, located in the town of Highland KS, is very nearly the lowest point in Kansas, about 20 miles from the Missouri River bottoms in the northeast corner of the state.
Four slave states stayed in the Union - did not secede: from smallest to largest they were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. Missouri was the largest of the four, and this was the Final Jeopardy answer from one episode this week.
Kentucky’s geographic location made it a key state during the Civil War. A quote attributed to Lincoln makes the point: “I hope to have God on my side. But I must have Kentucky!”
Kentucky is the only state in the union that has an enclave, which cannot be reached without passing through the territory of another state. At the extreme western end of Kentucky, the enclave is surrounded by Missouri and Tennessee, and has a population of 18.
North America’s largest annual fireworks display is “Thunder Over Louisville”, the opening ceremony of the Kentucky Derby. It is usually held in April, two weeks before the Kentucky Derby.
The first “Thunder over Louisville” was in 1989, when Kentucky wanted to hold an opening ceremony for the Derby.
Secretariat won the 1973 Kentucky Derby with a still-standing track record of 1:592⁄5, running each quarter-mile segment faster than the one before it. The successive quarter-mile times were :251⁄5, :24, :234⁄5, :232⁄5, and :23, s still accelerating as of the final quarter-mile of the race. No other horse had won the Derby in less than 2 minutes before, and it would not be accomplished again until Monarchos in 2001.[
In Kentucky, the University of Louisville is home to a colony of white squirrels. Their presence on Brevard campus has been noted since the 1930s. The school established its own chapter of the"Albino Squirrel Preservation Society", which maintains contact with its members and interested parties through a Facebook group by that name. The university has an open policy to give away a free t-shirt to anyone who takes a photograph of a white squirrel on campus grounds and brings it to the administration offices.
The NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles were formed from the assets of the defunct Frankford Yellow Jackets franchise, named for their home neighborhood in Philly. On October 26, 1931, the Yellow Jackets defeated the Chicago Bears, 13–12, at Wrigley Field. This game marked the last time a Philadelphia-based NFL team would win an away game over the Bears until October 17, 1999, when the Eagles defeated the Bears 20–16 at Soldier Field. The 1928 Yellow Jackets win over the Packers marked the last time in 51 years a Philadelphia NFL team won a road victory over the Packers; the Eagles’ 1979 win at Green Bay finally ended that streak.
