The original Orient Express train route (from the Agatha Christie mystery), which began in 1883, was from Paris, France to Giurgiu, Romania via Munich and Vienna. The route changed many times and included London to the north, and Istanbul or Athens to the south.
ETA: Added Agatha because I ninja’d EH.
The three precognitively-gifted people or “precogs” in the 2002 futuristic crime-thriller movie Minority Report have the first names Agatha, Dashiell and Arthur, after noted mystery writers Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett and Arthur Conan Doyle.
ETA: No part of the movie takes place in Giurgiu, Romania.
A veteran of World Wars I and II, Dashiell Hammett was buried with military honors in Arlington National Cemetery in 1961. Enlisting in the Army in 1918, Hammett was a sergeant in the Motor Ambulance Corps. While serving, he contracted tuberculosis; a disease that affected him for the rest of his life.
In World War II, Hammett’s military duties were more active. Hammett, 48, picked up his military career in 1941, at the height of his fame as a writer. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Army as a private and was honorably discharged as a sergeant three year later.
Hammett fought against the Japanese in Battle of Attu, islands located off the coast of Alaska, which was part of the Aleutian Islands Campaign. This is the only World War II battle fought on incorporated United States territory. The battle lasted more than two weeks of hand-to-hand combat in arctic conditions.
At one point, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover attempted to block the Arlington burial but was overruled in that attempt.
Jackie Kennedy, only 64 when she died, is buried alongside President Kennedy, their son Patrick, and their stillborn daughter Arabella at Arlington National Cemetery.
Arabella is a lyric comedy or opera in three acts written by Richard Strauss. It was first performed on 1 July 1933 in Dresden, Germany. The opera received its premiere in the UK on 17 May 1934 at London’s Royal Opera House. Two decades later, on 10 February 1955, it was performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
The proscenium in the Royal Opera House of London is 14.80 m high by 12.20 m wide. A proscenium is the metaphorical vertical plane of space in a theatre, usually surrounded on the top and sides by a physical proscenium arch (whether or not truly “arched”) and on the bottom by the stage floor itself, which serves as the frame into which the audience observes from a more or less unified angle the events taking place upon the stage during a theatrical performance. The concept of the fourth wall of the theatre stage space that faces the audience is essentially the same.
1220 AM radio in Denver is KLDC. Their motto is “Serving God and Country”.
1220 is the date usually given for the completion of Chartres Cathedral, also known as the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres (French: Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres), a Gothic Catholic cathedral. The current cathedral was mostly constructed between 1194 and 1220, but work still went on until at least 1250. It is the last of at least five churches which have occupied the site since the town became a bishopric in the 4th century; the previous cathedral at the site burned down in 1194.
It is designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, which calls it “the high point of French Gothic art” and a “masterpiece”.
“God and Country” was for many years the catch-all term for religious awards in the Boy Scouts of America. More than 40 different denominations, sects and affiliations now take part in the program. (I earned the St. George Award, the Episcopal Church’s adult award, about a decade ago).
http://www.praypub.org/images/medals/0E1A3.jpg
ETA: The Roman Catholic Church is a participating denomination.
The largest religions in the world, by number of followers, are:
[ul]
[li] 2.2 Billion: Christianity[/li][li] 1.6 Billion: Islam[/li][li] 1.1 Billion: Hinduism[/li][li] 488 Million: Buddhism[/li][/ul]
Of Christianity, the largest denominations are:
[ul]
[li] 1.2 Billion: Catholicism[/li][li] 800 Million: Protestantism (includes Baptists, Lutherans, Pentecostals)[/li][li] 250 Million: Eastern Orthodoxy (includes Russian Orthodox Church, Romanian Orthodox Church)[/li][li] 86 Million: Oriental Orthodoxy (includes Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria)[/li][li] 85 Million: Anglicanism (includes Church of England, Church of Nigeria)[/li][li] 45 Million: Restorationism and Nontrinitarianism (includes Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses)[/li][/ul]
Similar to how the Roman Catholic Pope is Bishop of Rome and the spiritual successor to St. Peter, the Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church is also the Patriarch of Alexandria* and the spiritual successor to St. Mark.
*But lives in Cairo
On November 28, 1943, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin met at the Tehran Conference to discuss war strategy against the Axis powers. It was held in the Soviet Union’s embassy, being the second of the WWII conferences of the “Big Three” Allied leaders (the Soviet Union, the US, and the UK). The Cairo Conference was held six days earlier, and the Yalta and Potsdam conferences came later.
Miguel Cairo was a ballplayer who played for nine teams in his 17 year career. Julio Teheran has been a pticher for the Atlanta Braves for the past six years.
The Braves have called Boston, Milwaukee, and Atlanta home, and have had many team names through the years, including Red Stockings, Red Caps, Beaneaters, Doves, Rustlers, Bees, and Braves.
May 14, 1952, the Boston Braves went into extra innings against the Pirates, and fell behind in the tenth on Gus Bell’s homer. In the bottom of th etenth, George Crowe pinch-hit for the Braves and homered to retie the score, and they went on to load the bases, and earn a walk-off win on Pete Whisenant’s hit driving in Joe Garagiola. The announced attendance at the thriller was 1,106, the smallest crowd to see the Braves in their final year in Boston. On the season, the Boston Braves averaged 3,600 spectators per game.
The crow’s nest is a term used for a lookout point in a ship’s mainmast. Since the crow’s nest is a point far away from the ship’s centre of mass, any small movement of the ship is amplified and could lead to severe seasickness, even in accustomed sailors. Therefore, being sent to the crow’s nest was also considered a punishment.
In classic railroad trains, the box-like structure above the caboose, the cupola, was also called the crow’s nest. It was used for observation of the whole train when in motion.
The Crow’s Nest in Gloucester MA (http://www.crowsnestgloucester.com) was the bar and hotel used as a gathering place for Billy Tyne and his crew on the Andrea Gail, swordfishermen who perished in the ‘perfect storm’ of Halloween 1991. R.I.P., guys.
On March 26, 1812, The Boston Gazette printed a political cartoon using the word “gerrymander”—an eponym adopted from MA Governor Elbridge Gerry’s approval of a bill that created oddly shaped electoral districts in order to help incumbents win reelection.
ETA MA
In 1793, Elbridge Gerry was succeeded as Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Massachusetts’s 3rd district by Shearjashub Bourne of Barnstable, MA. Serving along with Bourne was Peleg Coffin.
[No, I did not make up these names.]
Basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith in Springfield MA, and volleyball was invented in 1895 by William Morgan in Holyoke MA.