Cool. I lived in Hartford a few years but never made it down to Stratford.
In play:
California has two Naval Museums, the Naval Museum of Armament & Technology in Ridgecrest, and the U.S. Navy Seabee Museum in Port Hueneme.
The Seabee Museum in Port Hueneme was actually visited by John Wayne, the star of the movie “The Fighting Seabees”.
In his career John Wayne wore many military uniforms.
John Wayne has played an Army soldier (Back to Bataan, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Longest Day, The Green Berets), a Navy sailor (They Were Expendable, Operation Pacific, Donovan’s Reef) and a Seabee (The Fighting Seabees) and a pilot (The Wings of Eagles), an Air Force pilot (Island in the Sky, Jet Pilot), a Marine (Without Reservations, Sands of Iwo Jima, Flying Leathernecks), and a Coast Guardsman (Sea Spoilers).
John Wayne has also played a Flying Tiger AVG pilot (Flying Tigers; AVG = American Volunteer Group), a Merchant Marine (Blood Alley), a Confederate Rebel (The Searchers), and he has even played a Roman Centurion (The Greatest Story Ever Told), a German Naval officer (The Sea Chase), and Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan (The Conqueror).
Mount Samat National Shrine is located near the summit of Mount Samat, an extinct volcano in the town of Pilár, on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines. The memorial shrine complex was built to honor the gallantry of Filipino and American soldiers who fought during World War II. On a clear evening the shrine’s 300 foot high cross is visible from Manila’s waterfront, 30 miles away.
In Tagalog the name Bataan is pronounced with three syllables, with the 2 consecutive as at the end of the word enunciated separately: Ba-ta-an.
The north-south peninsula of Bataan “hangs” downward from the Luzon Island land mass and juts southward into the water. Subic Bay lies to its west, and the larger Manila Bay lies to its east. To the south of the Bataan Peninsula lies Corregidor Island, at the mouth of Manila Bay.
The Naval Station at Subic Bay was built in 1885 by Spain. It was used by:
1885-1898: Spain
1899-1942: United States
1942-1945: Japan
1945-1992: United States
It was decommissioned in 1992.
Baguio City, a hill station located in Luzon Island, Philippines, was the venue of the 1978 World Chess Championship match between Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi.
In one of the most bad tempered and political matches in chess history, Korpov won the 32 game match by six victories to five, with the balance being draws.
Uniquely in the modern game, Korchnoi continued to play top level chess into his seventies. As late as January 2007 FIDE ranked Korchnoi at number 85 in the world at age 75, by far the oldest player ever to be ranked in the FIDE top 100. He died in June 2016 aged 85.
Two hit wonder Murray Head originated the hit songs “Superstar” from Jesus Christ Superstar and “One Night in Bangkok” from Chess. Because he was the only singer from JCS who agreed to accept the percentage deal of the record instead of the $2500 up front option, he became a very wealthy man.
Murray State University, is a four-year public university located in Murray, Kentucky, United States. With about 11,166 students, it has been recognized by U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Colleges” as one of the top regional universities in the U.S. for 24 straight years.
From 1986 to 2002, the Boy Scouts of America Scouting Museum was located in Murray KY. Since 2002 the museum has been located in Irving TX, next to the national headquarters of the Boy Scouts of America.
Writer Jacqueline Susann and her husband Irving Mansfield had one son together, Guy. Mansfield and Susann had one son together. Guy Mansfield was born on December 6, 1946. In an 1983interview with People magazine, Mansfield described his son how he found out his son was autistic:
He was the most delicious child in the world. Then one day when he was 3½ he came out of the park screaming and only said one line the rest of his life. One day Jackie had muttered, “Guy, when are you going to talk?” and was stunned when he blurted, “When I’m ready.” He never spoke again.
Jacqueline lost both a son, the newborn Patrick, who died of infant respiratory distress syndrome two days after birth, and her husband, President John F. Kennedy, less than four months apart.
There are only two U.S. presidents buried at Arlington National Cemetery: John F. Kennedy, who died in 1963, and William Howard Taft, who died in 1930.
Josiah Taft was originally known as Ensign Josiah Taft in the Uxbridge Militia, and later as Lieutenant, and then Captain Josiah Taft in the French and Indian War. He presided over the proceedings of the New England style open town meeting. It is later reported, that Josiah Taft became the largest taxpayer in the town of Uxbridge in 1756. In the fall of that year, Josiah and Lydia’s 18-year-old son, Caleb, became ill, while studying at Harvard, and died on September 19. Josiah went to Boston and Cambridge to bury Caleb. Josiah himself became ill after returning home, and died on September 30, at age 47. It was reported that he left a good estate with bonds and a will. This was immediately prior to an important vote on the town’s support for the war effort in the French and Indian Wars. Josiah’s untimely death opened the door for Lydia’s step into America’s history of women’s suffrage.
Given the important nature of the vote, the landowner and taxpayer status of Josiah’s estate, and the fact that young Bazaleel, Caleb’s younger brother, was just a minor, the townspeople voted to allow Lydia, “the widow Josiah Taft”, to vote in this important meeting. Lydia then received Josiah’s proxy to vote in this important town meeting. Lydia Chapin Taft then became the first recorded legal woman voter in America, casting her voted in an official New England Open Town Meeting, at Uxbridge, Massachusetts, on October 30, 1756.
William Howard Taft made only one speech during the presidential election of 1912- his nomination speech. He did almost no campaigning. This was attributed to several reasons: presidents who were also nominees traditionally did very little campaigning at that time, once Theodore Roosevelt announced he was running on a third party ticket it was assumed (correctly) Taft would not win and he had very few campaign donations, plus some biographers speculate a more personal reason: he didn’t want to be president again. His wife, Helen (called Nellie by her close friends and family) wanted to be First Lady more than Taft wanted to be president, and even after her stroke early in his first term she was far more concerned with his re-election than he was.
By almost all accounts he enjoyed being Chief Justice far more than he did President.
Washington Nationals baseball games feature the Presidents Race, in which mascots wearing costumes of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt, plus William Howard Taft, Calvin Coolidge (retired after 2015 season) and Herbert Hoover (to be retired after 2016 season) hold a fake footrace around the fiel. Their nicknames are George, Abe, Tom, Teddy, Bill, Calvin and Herbie. Taft was added according to a vote of the fans. Jefferson traditionally never won, but following fan outcry he went on a sudden and long winning streak.
In 1913, Teddy Roosevelt, for various personal reasons that included his failed attempt for a third presidential term, decided to accompany Brazilian explorer Cândido Rondon on an expedition to map the route of the unexplored River of Doubt (Rio da Dúvida) in the Amazon. The expedition turned into a disaster right from the start, with loss of boats and supplies along the land route to the headwaters. Roosevelt himself nearly died from a festering leg injury and the party was decimated by malaria and other problems common to the Amazon Basin. He was treated as a hero upon his return in 1914 to New York, but he never fully recovered, dying five years later. The river’s name was changed to Rio Roosevelt in his honor. The eponymous book by Candice Millard is an excellent read.
When Theodore Roosevelt died unexpectedly in 1919, his son Archie cabled his two brothers, Kermit and Ted: “The old lion is dead.”
South Dakota historian Doane Robinson conceived of the idea to create the sculpture on Mount Rushmore. He picked the four presidents, Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln.
The sculpting at Mount Rushmore ended on October 31, 1941, so this Halloween will mark the diamond/gold anniversary (75th).
Mount Olympus is the highest mountain in Greece and the second highest mountain in the Balkans. It has 52 peaks, the highest being Mytikas, meaning “nose”, which rises to 9,573 feet.