Wilma Rudolph was an American track and field sprinter, who competed in the 100 and 200 meters dash. Rudolph was considered the fastest woman in the world in the 1960s and competed in two Olympic Games, in 1956 and in 1960, where she won 3 Gold Medals. The Italians nicknamed her La Gazzella Nera (“The Black Gazelle”); the French called her La Perle Noire (“The Black Pearl”).
US Olympian Allyson Felix is the only female track and field athlete to ever win six Olympic gold medals. She is tied with Merlene Ottey (Jamaica, Slovenia) as the most decorated female Olympian in track and field history, with a total of nine Olympic medals.
Olympic Medal Totals to Date
Allyson Felix: 6 Gold, 3 Silver
Merlene Ottey: 3 Silver, 6 Bronze
Wilma Rudolph: 3 Gold, 1 Bronze
There have been at least six movies simply titled Gold, the next of which is a thriller about an unlucky man (Matthew McConaughey) who teams up with a geologist to find gold deep in the uncharted jungles of Indonesia. It is due to be released in the U.S. on Christmas Day.
In the gold rush to Alaska it was said that the women there were nice once you got to Nome.
There have been four ships in the U.S. Navy named the USS Alaska, the most recent of which is an Ohio-class Trident ballistic missile submarine commissioned in 1986 and still in service.
There are two ships named after US Navy Seabees: The USS Robert Stethem (who was murdered on TWA 847) and the USS Marvin Shields (who was the only Seabee to ever be awarded the Medal of Honor - in Vietnam).
On 14 Jun 1985, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad members hijacked a flight from Athens bound for Rome, on a flight segment for a flight that originated in Cairo and was bound for its final destination of Los Angeles. For three days, instead of reaching Rome, the flight was diverted to Beirut (which then was locked in a civil war), then to Algiers, then back to Beirut, then back to Algiers and then to Beirut again, its final stop. While on the Beirut tarmac, passenger and US Navy diver Robert Stethem was beaten, shot in the head, his body dumped from the airplane onto the tarmac, and then shot again as he lay lifeless on the tarmac.
USS Stethem (DDG-63), an Aegis Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, commissioned in 1995, was named in honor of Robert Stethem, passenger of TWA flight 847.
Robert Dean Stethem, 17 Nov 1961 - 15 Jun 1985, is resting at Arlington National Cemetery.
R.I.P, our brother.
Gillian Flynn’s novel Dark Places is about a triple homicide in a rural Kansas farmhouse on January 3, 1985, and the later lives of two survivors: Libby, the youngest daughter of the family, who escaped from the house, and Ben, the only son, convicted (perhaps wrongfully) of the crimes.
Errol Leslie Flynn was an Australian born actor who achieved fame in Hollywood. Flynn was an immediate sensation in his first starring Hollywood role, Captain Blood (1935). He also demonstrated an acting range beyond action-adventure roles in light contemporary social comedies. Flynn co-starred with Olivia de Havilland a total of eight times, and together they made the most successful on-screen romantic partnership in Hollywood in the late 1930s-early 1940s.
Olivia de Havilland turned 100 last July 1st. She lives in Paris, FR, and has lived there for the past 60 years.
Shakespeare’s Globe presented an all-male production of Twelfth Night in 2012, starring Mark Rylance as Olivia. As an “Original Practices” production, it explored casting, clothing, music, dance and settings possible around 1601. It came to Broadway for 3 months in 2013.
The sphericity of the Earth was established by Greek astronomy in the 3rd century BC, and the earliest terrestrial globe appeared from that period. The earliest known example is the one constructed by Crates of Mallus in Cilicia (now Çukurova in modern-day Turkey), in the mid-2nd century BC.
No terrestrial globes from Antiquity or the Middle Ages have survived. An example of a surviving celestial globe is part of a Hellenistic sculpture, called the Farnese Atlas, surviving in a 2nd-century AD Roman copy in the Naples Archaeological Museum, Italy.
Craits (sometimes spelled Crates or Creights) is a card game played by anywhere between two and five players. It was invented in the 1970s in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is derived from Crazy Eights. The name Craits is derived from Crazy Eights. Craits is similar to the marketed game Uno, which has its own specialized deck, and many cards assume the functions of Uno’s specialized cards.
Playing Cards are believed to have originated in China and then spread to India and Persia. From Persia they are believed to have spread to Egypt during the era of Mamluk control, and from there into Europe through both the Italian and Iberian peninsulas in the second half of the 14th century.
Thus, European playing cards appear to have an Islamic derivation. Some of the earliest surviving packs were hand painted works of art which were expensive and affordable only by wealthy patrons.
The site for what would become Cambridge, Massachusetts was chosen in December 1630, because it was located safely upriver from Boston Harbor, which made it easily defensible from attacks by enemy ships. Thomas Dudley, his daughter Anne Bradstreet, and her husband Simon, were among the first settlers of the town. The first houses were built in the spring of 1631. The settlement was initially referred to as “the newe towne”.
Newton , Massachusetts was settled in 1630 as part of “the newe towne”, which was renamed Cambridge in 1638. Roxbury minister John Eliot convinced the Native American people of Nonantum, a sub-tribe of the Massachusetts led by a sachem named Waban, to relocate to Natick in 1651, fearing that they would be exploited by colonists. Newton was incorporated as a separate town, known as Cambridge Village, in 1688, then renamed Newtown in 1691, and finally Newton in 1766. It became a city in 1873.
The first medical school at the University of California (UCSF) was started in 1873.
Chesley Burnett “Sully” Sullenberger, III and his wife Lorraine “Lorrie” Sullenberger reside in Danville, California
Tom Hanks plays Sullenberger in Sully, directed by Clint Eastwood, about the emergency water landing of US Airways Flight 1549 in New York on Jan. 15, 2009.
Two of Tom Hanks’s fellow officers in The Green Mile, played respectively by actors Jeffrey DeMunn and Barry Pepper, are named Harry and Dean Stanton. The film also includes a character called “Toot Toot,” played by actor Harry Dean Stanton. It was apparently a coincidence—the names came directly from King’s source material.