Yorktown, Virginia is named for the ancient city of York in Yorkshire, Northern England. It was founded in 1691 as a port on the York River for English colonists to export tobacco to Europe. Yorktown was the site of the decisive victory in the American Revolutionary War. The Siege of Yorktown was fought from 28 September to 19 October 1781.
The starship in early drafts of Gene Roddenberry’s visionary sf TV show Star Trek, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this month, was the USS Yorktown. The latest movie in the franchise, Star Trek Beyond, prominently features a Starbase Yorktown.
Okay, I will play this here: It has been said of *STAR TREK *that “the red shirt guys are the ones who die”, or, if a crewperson of the Enterprise dies, he typically wears a red shirt. In the first episodes of the first season, the first guys to die were not wearing red shirts. They wore gold or blue shirts. In the first six episodes that is true. It wasn’t until episode 7 in the first season that the first red shirts die. In the episode titled What Are Little Girls Made Of? (episode 7, season 1), a guy named Matthews was the very first to die in a red shirt. The second, Rayborn (Rayburn?), also in a red shirt, died soon after.
Happy 50th Birthday, STAR TREK!
A “redshirt” in US college sports is an athlete who has a scholarship but delays playing for a year. Students have five years to fulfill their four years of eligibility, so some take a year off, continuing to attend classes and practice with the team, but are ineligible to appear in any games.
The draconic year, draconitic year, eclipse year, or ecliptic year is the time taken for the Sun (as seen from the Earth) to complete one revolution with respect to the same lunar node (a point where the Moon’s orbit intersects the ecliptic). This period is associated with eclipses: these occur only when both the Sun and the Moon are near these nodes; so eclipses occur within about a month of every half eclipse year. Hence there are two eclipse seasons every eclipse year. The average duration of the eclipse year is
346.620075883 days (346 d 14 h 52 min 54 s) (at the epoch J2000.0).
This term is sometimes erroneously used for the draconic or nodal period of lunar precession, that is the period of a complete revolution of the Moon’s ascending node around the ecliptic: 18.612815932 Julian years (6798.331019 days; at the epoch J2000.0).
In a deleted scene from Star Wars: A New Hope, Luke Skywalker’s childhood friend Biggs Darklighter told Luke he was leaving Tatooine to serve on the starship Rand Ecliptic, and hoped to join the Rebel cause against the Empire.
“My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Comment only: interesting. Ayn Rand’s words sound, perhaps, a little selfish to me.
Still in play:
Atlas Van Lines is an American moving company formed in 1948 by a group of local transfer and storage firms. It has about 500 agents worldwide. The company is based in Evansville, Indiana.
Former Fort Wayne, Indiana mayor Harry Baals made the most of his name, once using a campaign button with the slogan “I’m Proud of my Harry Baals”. The city had so much trouble keeping the street signs for Harry Baals Drive from being stolen that they renamed the street, and regretfully decided not to name the city’s Government Center after him.
Although born an American, Sir William Cornelius Van Horne, KCMG, played a crucial role in the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Canada’s first teams-continental railway. He eventually became the President of the CPR and was knighted.
The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George (Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George or KCMG) is a British order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George, Prince Regent, later King George IV, while he was acting as regent for his father, King George III.
It is named in honour of two military saints, St Michael and St George.
In the political satire Yes Minister, Jim Hacker MP is told an old joke by an aide about what the various British knighthood post-nominals stand for.
Woolley: In the service, CMG stands for “Call Me God.” And KCMG for “Kindly Call Me God.”
Hacker: What does GCMG stand for?
Woolley: “God Calls Me God.”
Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels was published in 1726. On the surface, the book appears to be a travel log, retelling the adventures of Lemuel Gulliver, on the four most incredible voyages imaginable. The first adventure, Gulliver’s journey to Lilliput, is the most familiar to readers. Primarily, however, Gulliver’s Travels is a work of satire, attacking (among others) the British court and nobility, intellectuals, religious factionalism, politics, and philosophy.
As a branch of philosophy, aesthetics is the “critical reflection on art, culture and nature.” It addresses the nature of art, beauty and taste, enjoyment, emotional values, perception and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more precisely defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste. It divides into art theory, literary theory, film theory and music theory. An example from art theory is to discern the set of principles underlying the work of a particular artist or artistic movement such as the Cubist aesthetic. The philosophy of film analyzes films and filmmakers for their philosophical content and explores film (images, cinema, etc.) as a medium for philosophical reflection and expression.
I-O psychology, industrial and organizational psychology, is the study of human behavior in the workplace and applies psychological theories and principles to organizations and individuals in their workplace. I-O psychology is also called occupational psychology, work psychology, WO psychology, IWO psychology and business psychology. The roots of I-O psychology trace back nearly to the beginning of psychology as a science, when Wilhelm Wundt founded one of the first psychological laboratories in 1876 in Leipzig, Germany.
The town of Leipzig was first documented in 1015 in the chronicles of Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg as ‘urbs Libzi’ (Chronikon VII, 25), and endowed with city and market privileges in 1165 by Otto the Rich. The Leipzig Trade Fair, started in the Middle Ages, became an event of international importance and is the oldest remaining trade fair in the world.
Former Oakland Raider center Jim Otto was one of only 20 players to play for the entire 10-year existence of the American Football League.
Oakland International Airport is one of three international airports in the San Francisco Bay Area. The other two are San Fransisco International Airport and San Jose International Airport. It is a focus city for Southwest Airlines, with over 120 daily departures on peak-travel days of the week.
Burt Bacharach wrote the music for the song Do You Know The Way to San Jose before Hal David wrote its lyrics. David had a special interest in San Jose, having been stationed there while in the Navy.