Maine, not Florida, is the closest US state to Africa. It is also the only state to border exactly one other state (New Hampshire), although it borders two provinces (Quebec and New Brunswick). As an artifact of its former status as part of Massachusetts, it is the only other state to recognize Patriots’ Day, the anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord, as an official state holiday.
Africa straddles the equator, and is the only continent to extend from the northern temperate zone to the southern temperate zone.
Africa is home to a number of deserts, notably the Kalahari, the Namib and the Sahara, which is the largest hot desert in the world, and the third largest desert after Antarctica and the Arctic. Sahara is from an Arabic word meaning, not surprisingly, “desert”. Less well known is the semi-arid region between the Sahara Desert and the Sudanian Savanna, called the Sahel. This is another Arabic word that means ‘shore’ or ‘coast’, which may seem odd at first glance, but it describes the appearance of the greener regions’ contrast with the desert it borders.
The Sahara Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, now the SLS, hosted the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Telethon for 20 years. The 1960 version of Ocean’s 11 was filmed at the Sahara.
Jerry Lewis changes into a brand-new pair of socks four times a day. “I just like the feeling of brand-new,” he says. The Greek masks representing comedy and tragedy are stamped on his slippers.
Socks Clinton was the pet cat of U.S. President Bill Clinton’s family during his presidency. As an adopted stray cat, he was the only pet of the Clinton’s during the early years of the administration, and his likeness hosted the children’s version of the White House website. Socks was adopted by the Clintons in 1991 after he jumped into the arms of Chelsea Clinton as she was leaving the house of her piano teacher in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Sir Thomas More lived in a house in Chelsea, which at that time was in the country outside of London. His house had extensive gardens and grounds down to the River Thames. He would travel to the court by barge on the Thames.
The Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan is primarily residential, with a mix of tenements, apartment blocks, city housing projects, townhouses, and renovated rowhouses, but its many retail businesses reflect the ethnic and social diversity of the population. The area has a large gay population. Chelsea is also known as one of the centers of the city’s art world, with over 200 galleries in the neighborhood.
(I used to live in Chelsea.)
Theodore Roosevelt is the only President of the United States to have been born in Manhattan. George Washington was also first inaugurated in Manhattan.
Theodore Roosevelt was the first President to fly in an airplane. History records he was a model passenger, except he took too many chances, risking leaning out to wave at crowds. He absolutely loved it, and got to brag about it to schoolkids later.
According to the pilot: “I heard him say ‘war,’ ‘army,’ ‘aeroplane’ and ‘bomb,’ but the noise was so great I could not hear the rest.” Far-sighted man, that TR, given that the flight was in 1910.
As of the start of 1910, the Gregorian calendar was 13 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1918.
The Julian calendar is still used by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, leading to Ukrainian Christmas being two weeks later than everyone else in Saskatchewan.
Saskatchewan is the only province in Canada where the people do not have to change their clocks when there is a time change. The province stays on Central Time the entire year.
During his time as an American envoy to France, Benjamin Franklin, publisher of the old English proverb, “Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”, anonymously published a letter suggesting that Parisians economize on candles by rising earlier to use morning sunlight. This 1784 satire proposed taxing window shutters, rationing candles, and waking the public by ringing church bells and firing cannons at sunrise. Despite common misconception, Franklin did not actually propose Daylight Saving Time; 18th-century Europe did not even keep precise schedules. However, this soon changed as rail transport and communication networks came to require a standardization of time unknown in Franklin’s day.
The earliest evidence of rail transport was a 3 mile long Diolkos wagonway, which transported boats across the Corinth isthmus in Greece during the 6th century BC. Trucks pushed by slaves ran in grooves in limestone, which provided the track element. The Diolkos operated for over 600 years. But it was not until the invention of the steam engine that rail transport became important to a nation’s economy.
The modern city of Corinth derives its name from the city-state of antiquity. In 1858 the old city was totally destroyed by a magnitude 6.5 earthquake.
Nea Korinthos or New Corinth was then built a few kilometers away on the coast of the Gulf of Corinth. A magnitude 6.3 earthquake devastated the new city in 1928. It was then rebuilt on the same site only to have to be extensively rebuilt again after the Great Fire of 1933.
Corinth, Mississippi’s location at the junction of two railroads made it strategically important to the Confederate States during the American Civil War. Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard retreated to Corinth after the April 1862 Battle of Shiloh, pursued by Union Major General Henry W. Halleck. General Beauregard abandoned the town when General Halleck approached, letting it fall into the Union’s hands. Since Halleck approached so cautiously, digging entrenchments at every stop for over a month, this action has been known as the Siege of Corinth.
The Union sent Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans to Corinth as well and concentrated its forces in the city. The Second Battle of Corinth took place on October 3−4, 1862, when Confederate Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn attempted to retake the city. The Confederate troops won back the city for a very brief period but were quickly forced out again on the same day when Federal forces were reinforced and counterattacked.
In the early 1960s, the first successful human lung transplant and heart transplant surgeries were performed at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
Per historians, the gruesome sport of “blood eagle”, the Viking practice of pulling out a captive’s lungs through their back to watch them flap like wings, is probably a legend that began later.
Dublin was founded by Vikings as a trading centre. The name comes from the Gaelic term for a black pool (“Dubhlind/Duibhlind”) on the river Liffey, where the first settlement occured. Due to geography changes, the pool is now inland from the coast, in the gardens of Dublin Castle, which was the seat of the British government of Ireland.