“Middle Earth” is one possible translation of the Mandarin name for China, “Zhong guo”, more commonly translated as “Middle Kingdom”. Its meaning is more like “country in the center of civilization”.
Nitpicks: It’s John, not Jonathan, and Reuel, not Reule.
The mandarin orange tree is more drought-tolerant than its fruit, which is also easily damaged by cold. It can be grown in tropical and subtropical areas.
The New York Mets orange and blue team colors are a combination of the colors of the former NY NL teams–The Brooklyn Dodgers blue and white and the NY Giants orange and black.
And, by coincidence, the New York Mets team colors are the same as those on the flag of the Dutch East India Company, which first colonized Manhattan.
The Dutch East India Company (VOC in Dutch) lost the New Netherlands colony to Britain when Peter Stuyvesant surrendered it to the capturing Royal Navy fleet. Stuyvesant then retired to his farm in the Bowery.
Ronald Reagan and John Denver were both known as “Dutch” to friends. In Denver’s case, that’s because his real last name was “Deutschendorf.”
Reagan was both an ally and a close personal friend of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who sent the Royal Navy to retake the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982. The Royal Navy’s flag at sea is known as the White Ensign. It is a red cross of St. George on a white field, with the Union Flag (or “Union Jack,” the British national flag) in the upper corner. Several former British colonies such as India, Australia and New Zealand today use variants of the White Ensign for their own navies.
The Royal Air Force’s operations to the Falklands were staged via Wideawake Airfield on Ascension Island. A wideawake is a tern that makes a raucous noise too early in the morning. For a time, the Royal Navy commissioned the entire island, one of its “stone frigates”, as HMS Ascension.
The First Sea Lord is the top uniformed officer of the Royal Navy, the equivalent of the U.S. Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations.
When the Royal Air Force was formed by combining the British Army’s Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service, the names of officer’s ranks were taken from the Navy and the names of enlisted ranks from the Army, to prevent any hard feelings.
The comedy troupe which eventually took the name “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” considered some other possibilities, including “Owl Stretching Time,” “Baron Von Took’s Flying Circus,” “Whither Canada?,” “Ow! It’s Colin Plint,” “A Horse, a Spoon and a Bucket” and “The Toad Elevating Moment.”
The Common Barn Owl (Tyto alba) doesn’t hoot. It gives what is referred to as a “shree” scream, which is very piercing.
Side note: if you’re interested in Barn Owls, there is a live streaming feed of four owlets (and their parents) in a nest box in California. Link.
In late 1975 President Gerald Ford was twice shot at while visiting California, 17 days apart, by women affiliated with Charles Manson’s cult.
Gerald Ford’s birth name was Leslie Lynch King, Jr. His parents divorced shortly after he was born (his father was abusive), and his mother remarried several years later. She renamed Ford after his stepfather, though he was never formally adopted by his stepfather.
The song “Strange Fruit” sung by Billie Holiday is a song based on lynch mob hangings in Southern States during Reconstruction.
*Strange Fruit * was copyrighted to Lewis Allan, the writing name of Abel Meeropol, a former member of the American Communist Party who, with his wife, adopted the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg after their electrocutions.
Reconstruction is generally thought to have ended in 1877, with the withdrawal of Federal troops from the South after the backroom-deal election of Rutherford B. Hayes, Republican of Ohio, to the American Presidency. The imposition of Jim Crow and the black codes followed not long after.
Strange Brew is both the name of a song performed by Cream, and a movie starring Bob & Doug McKenzie (Dave Thomas & Rick Moranis) of SCTV fame.
Former cowboy Glenn Strange spent decades playing small roles in TV and movie Westerns, but is best known for playing the Frankenstein monster in *** House of Frankenstein,*** ***House of Dracula ***and Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.
The plot of the Bob & Doug McKenzie movie Strange Brew is based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet.