n 2002, crime novelist Patricia Cornwell, in Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed, maintained that artist Walter Sickert was London’s most infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper.A psychological motivation for Sickert was said to be a congenital anomaly of his penis. Cornwell purchased 31 of Sickert’s paintings, and some in the art world have said that she destroyed one of them in a search for Sickert’s DNA, but Cornwell denies having done this. Cornwell claimed she was able to scientifically prove that Mitochondrial DNA from one of more than 600 Ripper-letters sent to Scotland Yard and mitochondrial DNA from a letter written by Sickert belong to only one percent of the population.
Having read this book, which I found on a bus seat, I maintain I was overcharged. If you take out Cornwell’s speculations, the book would be a pamphlet.
London, the capital of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, has a diverse range of peoples and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken within Greater London. Its estimated mid-2015 population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, and it accounts for 12.5 per cent of the UK population.
The Greater London Urban Area is a conurbation in south-east England that constitutes the continuous urban area of London and surrounding nearby urban towns as defined by the Office for National Statistics. It is the largest urban area in the United Kingdom with a population of 9,787,426 in 2011.
London broil is an American beef dish made by broiling or grilling marinated beef, then cutting it across the grain into thin strips. The origin of the name is obscure; the dish is not related to the city of London, England. In parts of central Canada, a ground meat patty wrapped in flank or round steak is known as a London broil. Some butchers will wrap the flank steak around a concoction of seasoned and ground or tenderized flank steak. Others sell a pork sausage patty wrapped in flank or top round steak labeled as London broil. Another variant, popular in Southern Ontario, is a London broil “loaf”, wherein the tenderized flank steak exterior is wrapped around minced and spiced veal as the filler. In some regions, bacon will be added between the flank steak and the veal grind.
In parts of the United States the breakfast mixed grill typically features a slice of ham, sausage links, bacon strips, eggs, home fries and buttered toast.
Meat from other animals, such as beef, lamb, chicken, goat, or turkey, may also be cut, cured, or otherwise prepared to resemble bacon, and may even be referred to as “bacon”. Such use is common in areas with significant Jewish and Muslim populations, both of which prohibit the consumption of pigs.
Offal, or variety meats, pluck or organ meats, refers to the internal organs and entrails of a butchered animal. The word does not refer to a particular list of edible organs, which varies by culture and region, but includes most internal organs excluding muscle and bone. As an English mass noun, the term “offal” has no plural form.
Besides offal and according to Countries by meat consumption, as of 2009 the USA leads the world in pounds of meat eaten annually per capita, with Kuwait in 2nd place:
Annual Pounds of Meat Eaten per Capita
(top seven)
265: USA
263: Kuwait
246: Australia
241: The Bahamas
238: Luxembourg
225: Austria
225: French Polynesia
(some other countries, below)
217: Argentina
212: Israel
210: Denmark
208: Canada
194: Germany
191: France
190: Iceland
188: The Netherlands
177: Sweden
170: Belgium
165: Finland
146: Norway
139: Russia
129: South Africa
128: China
119: South Korea
101: Japan
080: Iran
078: Seychelles
074: Philippines
056: Egypt
050: Syria
037: Kenya
031: Ghana
030: North Korea
019: Ethiopia
016: Sierra Leone
010: India
009: Bangladesh (yes, 9#)
Chitterlings (pronounced chittlins) is an economical dish, usually made from the small intestines of a pig. A common peasant food in medieval England, it remained a staple of the diet of low-income families right up until the late 19th century.
My maternal grandfather was fond of a version of the dish particular to Cheshire, which I ate once as a teenager around the late 1970’s. Once was enough.
The word balut is pronounced “bah-LOOT”, where ‘bah’ rhymes with ‘the’ (not ‘thee’ but ‘the’, as in “What the F###, Chuck?”) and ‘LOOT’ rhymes with ‘put’, as in “put that cookie back in the jar.”
Balut is a developing duck or chicken embryo still in its egg that is boiled and eaten from the shell. It originates and is commonly sold as street-food in the Philippines. The length of incubation before the egg is cooked is a matter of local preference, but generally ranges between 14 and 21 days. Balut is consumed in high amounts in countries in Southeast Asia; including Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, and China.
Although balut is globally recognized as a Filipino food, it is being consumed less and less in the Philippines. This is partly due to increasingly Western tastes, but also because balut is often associated with poverty.
Tom Paxton wrote the now classic Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation about the escalating war in Vietnam, and Talking Vietnam Pot Luck Blues, about the great agricultural advantage found by the American soldiers serving in Vietnam ("Great winding fields and forests of nothing but pot.). He never thought he’d write another song about the war, but after reading Ron Kovic’s memoir “Born on the Fourth of July,” he wrote a song based on the book.
Another Vietnam veteran and peace activist besides Ron Kovic was Brian Wilson. In 1987, Wilson was protesting at the Concord Naval Weapons Station in California. He and other protestors stood on the CNWS railroad tracks to try and block a weapons shipment train. The train did not stop and Wilson and the other protestors tried to jump out of the way. Wilson did not make it and both of his legs were severed below the knee.
Lyndon Johnson, who dramatically escalated U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War, was the first candidate in Texas history to campaign from a helicopter. He did so during his 1948 U.S. Senate campaign, which he won by a very narrow margin. Allegations of vote fraud that year persist to this day.
Aviation pioneer Igor Sikorski was inspired as a child by the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci, and the stories of Jules Verne. Sikorsky began to experiment with model flying machines, and by age 12, he had made a small rubber band-powered helicopter.
The Sikorsky Aircraft Company is headquartered in Stratford CT, about halfway between Hartford and NYC. The Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion helipcopter was originally developed in 1966 for the US Marine Corps. It is still in service.
The musical Miss Saigon, which has a major highlight of a helicopter being shown on the stage, has been performed by twenty-seven companies in twenty-five countries and 246 cities, and it has been translated into twelve different languages.
“Marine One” is the call sign of any Marine Corps aircraft carrying the President of the United States. It usually denotes either a large VH-3D Sea King helicopter or the newer, smaller VH-60N White Hawk.
Similarly, “Navy One” and “Army One.” From 1957 to 1976, Army One was usually a helicopter transporting POTUS. The Army and Marine Corps shared that helicoptering responsibility until 1976 when it became a Marine Corps responsibility.
There has only been one such aircraft for Navy One. In 2003, W landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in a Lockheed S-3 Viking. That plane has been retired and is on display at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola FL.
Army Two, Navy Two, Air Force Two, and Marine Two would be the call sign for their aircraft transporting VPOTUS (is the VPOTUS acronym even used? ETA2: yes).
ETA: the same applies to Coast Guard One and Coast Guard Two. As of 2016, there has apparently never been a Coast Guard One flight. Coast Guard Two was activated on September 25, 2009, when Vice President Joe Biden took a flight on CG 6019, an HH-60 Jayhawk helicopter, over the recently flooded Atlanta area.
Bullitt: I’ve been to that plant several times and walked though it’s shops and assembly lines…very impressive.
In play:
Pensacola, Florida is nicknamed “The City of Five Flags”, due to the five governments that have ruled it during its history: the flags of Spain, France, Great Britain, the United States of America and the Confederate States of America. Other nicknames include “World’s Whitest Beaches”, due to the white sand of Florida panhandle beaches, “Cradle of Naval Aviation”, “Western Gate to the Sunshine State”, “America’s First Settlement”, “Emerald Coast”, “Redneck Riviera”, “Red Snapper Capital of the World”, and “P-Cola”.