FDR was the first president to appear on television.
But when he was a boy, FDR met President Grover Cleveland. President Cleveland told him, “My little man, I am making a strange wish for you. It is that you may never be president of the United States.”
Grover’s disease often starts quite suddenly. There are intensely itchy spots on the central back, mid chest and occasionally elsewhere. Frequently, it follows sweating or some unexpected heat stress. The itchy eruption lasts an average of 10–12 months. It is characterized by papules and papulovesicles with excoriations occurring on the chest, back, lower sternum, arms, and thighs
The Five Cities Area of California’s central coast and San Luis Obispo County is a fairly isolate string of five small cities in the Pismo Beach area. From north to south, the five cities are:
The motto of the Five Cities Area is, “The Clam Capital of the World.” The Pismo clam was named for the long, wide beach where so many were once found. They were once so abundant they were harvested with plows on the beach.
Map, Five Cities, near San Luis Obispo, NW of Los Angeles: Google Maps
Finding the way to the ever-elusive Shell Beach is one of the recurring themes of the 1998 neo-noir sf adventure Dark City, directed by Alex Proyas and starring Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly and William Hurt.
Jennifer Connelly was born in Cairo NY - pronounced “care-oh”. Cairo is in the Catskill Mountains and was originally named Canton, although it is not clear why the name was changed.
Woodstock NY lies in the Catskills.
The City-class of Western river ironclads during the Civil War included the USS Cairo, named after the Southern Illinois river town. The town’s name is locally pronounced “KAY ro.”
The part-parody of the classic westerns, Blazing Saddles, starred Gene Wilder and Cleavon Little. Wilder played Jim, “The Waco Kid” and was the white friend of the black sheriff played by Little. In the filming of the movie, during most of the shooting, actor Slim Pickens voluntarily slept outside with his rifle in order to get a feel for his character.
R.I.P., Gene, and thank you.
Since I am not sure if Bullitt was playing off of Elendil’s post or just honoring the death of a very funny man, so I will play off both of them. And RIP Gene Wilder.
In play:
You can get from Downtown Chicago, Illinois to Waco, Texas without driving by taking the Chicago Metro to Midway airport, flying to Dallas-Ft. Worth, taking the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (Orange line) to the West end station walk 5 blocks to the Greyhound station and take a Greyhound bus to Waco.
I was doing both, playing off of ‘western’ and also folding in a tribute to Wilder.
In play: the Waco Suspension Bridge is a brick, single span suspension bridge across the Brazos River. Completed in 1870, it contains nearly 3 million locally-produced bricks. Its main span is 475’ long and it was the first major suspension bridge in the state of Texas.
Today, the bridge is open to foot traffic only, and it is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Washington-on-the-Brazos (also known as Washington) is an unincorporated area along the Brazos River in Washington County, Texas, United States. Founded when Texas was still a part of Mexico, the settlement was the site of the Convention of 1836 and the signing of the Texas Declaration of Independence.
3/6/36 is the date the Alamo fell: 06 March 1836. Just over one month later, on 4/21/36, the Battle of San Jacinto was fought, and won, by General Sam Houston in the decisive battle of the Texas Revolution. On 12/29/45, Texas became the 28th state of the Union. Texas was the second of two states admitted in 1845. Florida was admitted in March.
Houston Street in New York City is pronounced HOW-ston; the first syllable rhymes with cow. It is named not for Sam Houston but for Revolutionary war patriot William Houstoun. His wife, Mary Bayard, was an heiress from a landowning family that named many of the streets in lower Manhattan and had links with the Stuyvesants of 1600s New York.
Couch Street in Portland, OR is pronounced “kootch”, not like the furniture item. The street, like many in this city, is named for a Civil War figure, in this case General Darius N. Couch, who fought in the Mexican-American War, the Second Seminole War, and as a general officer in the Union Army.
In the September 1847 Battle of Chapultepec of the Mexican-American War, the United States Marine Corps helped capture and hold Mexico City. The first stanza commemorates this, as we sing, “From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli.”
In the 1847 Battle of Chapultepec, six young cadets, ranging in age from thirteen to nineteen, died defending their military academy at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City during the Mexican-American War, known in Mexico as the “Insurgency from the North.” President Truman said of them, “Brave men do not belong to any one country.” According to historical accounts, as the cadets fought to the death, one of them, Juan Escutia, wrapped himself in the Mexican flag and threw himself from the ramparts to keep it from being captured by the attacking army.
The six cadets are celebrated in Mexico as Los Niños Héroes (in English: Boy Heroes)
Although the Mexican tricolour (green, white, red) flag has been continuously used for a longer time than the Italian one, at the time of the Mexican flag’s adoption, the similarly toned Italian tricolour had already been used briefly in Europe, for example by the Cisalpine Republic, but it had different proportions from the modern Italian flag.
Both flags use the same colors (green, white and red), but the Mexican flag has darker shades of green and red. These flags present a different aspect ratio: the Italian flag aspect ratio is 2:3 (1 to 1.5), more squarish in shape, while the Mexican flag aspect ratio is 4:7 (1 to 1.75), resulting in a longer shape.
The national flag of the United States is shaped in a rectangle whose ratio of width to length is somewhat unique - it is 10:19, or, not quite a 1:2 aspect ratio. Only three other countries’ national flags have an aspect ratio of 10:19, and those are Liberia, Marshall Islands, and Micronesia.
The flags of many countries have an aspect ratio of 1:2, including Canada, and the UK. For Mexico, the aspect ratio is 4:7. Mexico is the only country whose flag’s aspect ratio is strictly 4:7.
Wikipedia has a page listing the aspect ratios of each country’s flag: List of aspect ratios of national flags - Wikipedia
For a rectangle, the aspect ratio denotes the ratio of the width to the height of the rectangle. A square has the smallest possible aspect ratio of 1:1.
Examples:
4:3 = 1.3: Some (not all) 20th century computer monitors (VGA, XGA, etc.), standard-definition television
√2:1 = 1.414…: International paper sizes (ISO 216)
3:2 = 1.5: 35mm still camera film, iPhone (until iPhone 5) displays
16:10 = 1.6 (not shown above): Commonly used widescreen computer displays (WXGA)
Φ:1 = 1.618…: Golden ratio, close to 16:10
5:3 = 1.6: Super 16 mm, a standard film gauge in many European countries
16:9 = 1.7: Widescreen TV
2:1 = 2: dominoesTrafalgar Square in London was known for generations for its thousands of feral pigeons; feeding them was a popular activity dating back to the Victorian era. In 2001 the sale of bird seed in the the square was stopped and other measures were introduced to discourage the pigeons including the use of Harris hawks and other birds of prey. Supporters continued to feed the birds but in 2003 the mayor, Ken Livingstone, enacted bylaws to ban feeding them in the square and the flock is largely gone. Nelson’s column commemorating the victory at the Battle of Trafalgar was repaired from years of damage from pigeon droppings at a cost of £140,000.