The “Bennington Flag” (images) is identified by the large “76” in the canton, along with thirteen 7-pointed stars. It has 13 red and white stripes, but unlike the American flag, white stripes are outermost instead of red.
It was thought the flag was flown during the Battle of Bennington, in August 1777, but that has been disproved. It is more likely the flag was made and flown for the Battle of 1812.
Added: August 16th is a legal holiday in Vermont, known as Bennington Battle Day.
On August 16, 1954 the first issue of Sports Illustrated was published
On January 20, 1964 the first issue of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition was published (cover photo).
The Illustrated Man, published in 1951, was a series of short stories by Ray Bradbury. While the stories are all different, they’re tied together by the tattoos on a former circus freak show performer. Each of the stories in the book were published previously, with some of them being tweaked by the author to conform to the tattoo framework.
I like Groucho’s version better:
*…Lydia, oh! Lydia, say have you met Lydia
Oh! Lydia, the tattooed lady
She has eyes that folks adore so
And a torso even more so
Lydia, oh! Lydia, that “Encyclopedia”
Oh! Lydia, the Queen of tattoo
On her back is the Battle of Waterloo
Beside it the Wreck of the Hesperus too
And proudly above the waves
The Red, White and Blue
You can learn a lot from Lydia
She can give you a view of the world
In tattoo if you step up and tell her where
For a dime you can see Kankakee or Paree
Or Washington crossing the Delaware
Oh! Lydia, oh! Lydia, say have you met Lydia
Oh! Lydia, the tattooed lady
When her muscles start relaxin’
Up the hill comes Andrew Jackson
Lydia, oh! Lydia, that “Encyclopedia”
Oh! Lydia, the champ of them all*
The Battle of Ksar El Kebir, also known as Battle of Three Kings, took place in what is now Morocco on 4 August 1578. The Portuguese army was defeated and King Sebastian I was killed. As Sebastian had no heirs, his dynasty came to an end, and Portugal was integrated into the Iberian Union for the next 60 years in a dynastic union with Spain.
Portugal has the longest lasting borders of any European countries. No other country in Europe has been bounded by essentially the same borders for such a long uninterrupted time, since the 17th century.
The last King of Portugal was Dom Manuel II, who reigned for almost three years before the dissolution of the monarchy in the October 1910 revolution. Manuel lived the rest of his life in exile in Great Britain, where he befriended King George V.
Portugal is one of the 26 countries in the EU in the “Schengen Area”, the countries among which travelers can cross their mutual borders without border checks. The area is called Schengen after the Luxembourg town near where the treaty was signed. The Schengen Area consists of:
AUT: Austria
BEL: Belgium
CZE: Czech Republic
DNK: Denmark
EST: Estonia
FIN: Finland
FRA: France
DEU: Germany
GRC: Greece
HUN: Hungary
ISL: Iceland
ITA: Italy
LVA: Latvia
LIE: Liechtenstein
LTU: Lithuania
LUX: Luxembourg
MLT: Malta
NLD: Netherlands
NOR: Norway
POL: Poland
PRT: Portugal
SVK: Slovakia
SVN: Slovenia
ESP: Spain
SWE: Sweden
CHE: Switzerland
The inclusion of Greece in the Schengen list is somewhat pointless, since Greece does not share a land border with any other Schengen country. Only air and sea passengers entering Greece can do so without a border check.
In the 1950s, only about 30% of Greek adults could read and write. Now, the literacy rate is more than 95%.
Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis’s daughter Christina made clear that she disliked his second wife Jacqueline Kennedy, and after her brother Alexander’s death in a plane crash, she convinced Aristotle that Jacqueline had some kind of curse due to John and Robert Kennedy’s murders.
The Wikipedia page on the Kennedy Curse states it began in November 1941 with the lobotomy of Rosemary Kennedy. She was the oldest daughter and third child (after Joseph, jr., and JFK) of Joseph Kennedy. Rosemary Kennedy was often believed to have been intellectually disabled and had severe mood swings. Joseph Kennedy secretly arranged for her, at the age of 23, to have one of the first-ever prefrontal lobe lobotomies. At that time, about 80 lobotomies had been performed in the US. The lobotomy left her unable to walk or speak well, and as a result, Rosemary remained institutionalized until her death in 2005.
Joseph Kennedy ordered that lobotomy in secret, even to his wife. Rosemary’s mother did not know of the lobotomy until after it was done.
One cause for the supposed “Kennedy curse” cited by some authors is Joseph Kennedy’s criminal involvement in importing liquor during Prohibition. However, Daniel Okrent, author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, first public editor of The New York Times, editor-at-large of Time Inc., and managing editor of Life magazine, did extensive research to uncover Kennedy’s rumored ties to mobsters and bootleggers during Prohibition and didn’t find anything convincing. Instead he found that while Kennedy had imported liquor it had been done legally (albeit shadily and using legal loopholes) and that unsubstantiated rumors about Kennedy as a bootlegger, starting in 1960 during JFKs campaign, had come to be accepted as the truth.
The aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) is the second Gerald R. Ford-class carrier being built. Its commissioning is planned for 2020 and it is planned to replace the USS Nimitz (CVN-68). The USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) is scheduled to be commissioned this year, but no exact date has yet been set. The Ford will replace the USS Enterprise (CVN-65).
The previous aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67) was operational from 1968 to 2007.
No other ships were named for JFK, but there was a ship named for his older brother. The USS Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. (DD-850) was a Gearing-class destroyer launched in 1945 and decommissioned in 1973. It is preserved as a museum ship in Battleship Cove, in Fall River MA - about 50 miles south of Boston.
Fall River Legend is a ballet by American choreographer Agnes de Mille, considered by many to be her masterpiece. While the ballet tells the infamous story of Lizzie Borden, de Mille and composer Morton Gould reversed the outcome of court case, with Borden receiving a guilty verdict rather than an acquittal. De Mille herself believed that Borden was guilty of the murder of her father and stepmother.
Ninja’ed by gkster.
Borden, Inc., was an American producer of food and beverage products, consumer products, and industrial products. At one time, the company was the largest U.S. producer of dairy and pasta products. It was best known for its Borden Ice Cream, Meadow Gold milk, Creamette pasta, and Borden Condensed Milk brands, along with Elmer’s Glue and Krazy Glue. While the company divested all of it’s business by 2005, the name and the mascot (Elsie the Cow) are still used by some under license.
In 1885, Borden pioneered the use of glass bottles for milk. The glass milk bottle has been around for over 130 years.
Sir Robert Laird Borden was Prime Minister of Canada during WWI. Although a strong supporter of the British Empire, he insisted on measures to protect Canada’s autonomy in the war.
In particular, he insisted that Canadian troops were organised under Canadian command, eventually fighting together as the Canadian Corps, rather than being dispersed through British Army units.
Borden also led the fight for the Dominion Prime Ministers to have seats in the Imperial War Cabinet, rather than leaving all war-time decisions to the British.
Both of these measures actually contributed to the growth of Canadian self-identification as a separate nation from Britain, culminating in the Dominions signing the Treaty of Versailles as nations associated with the U.K.
