The very first, and to date the deadliest, fatal aviation accident involving a Boeing 767, and the deadliest aviation accident in Thailand, was one owned by retired Formula 1 Champion Nikki Lauda. Lauda Air flight 004, en route from Bangkok THA to Vienna AUT, crashed in May 1991. All 223 passengers and crew died.
One of the earliest forms of literature is Nikki bungaku, a genre of Japanese diary literature. While diaries began as records imitating daily logs kept by Chinese government officials, private and literary diaries emerged and flourished during the 9th-12th centuries.
On May 31, 1669, Samuel Pepys recorded his last entry in his diary, one of the most important primary sources for studying the English Restoration period. His eyesight had become too bad. The diary was not published until the 1800s. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of great events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War, and the Great Fire of London. Although he had no maritime experience, he rose by patronage, hard work, and a talent for administration to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under King Charles II and King James II.
How can it be, when Canada appears on the list twice?
In play:
King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland was popularly known as “the Merry Monarch,” in reference to both the liveliness and hedonism of his court and the general relief at the return to normality after over a decade of rule by Cromwell and the Puritans. Charles’s wife, Catherine of Braganza, bore no live children, but Charles acknowledged at least twelve illegitimate children by various mistresses.
Oops, brain hiccup! It was supposed to be:
The four largest countries in the world by size are Russia, Canada, the United States, and China. Russia is almost twice as big as Canada.
New Brunswick’s Petitcodiac River formerly had the highest tidal ***bore ***in North America at over 2 meters in height, but causeway construction between Moncton and Riverview in the 1960s led to subsequent extensive sedimentation which reduced the bore to little more than a ripple. After considerable political controversy, the causeway gates were opened on April 14, 2010, as part of the Petitcodiac River Restoration Project and the tidal bore began to grow again
The Fellowship of the Ring spends some time traveling south on the Anduin River in Middle-earth after leaving Lothlorien, the Elven-realm of Celeborn and his wife Galadriel.
On May 31, 1216, Mongol forces, with permission from Genghis Khan, fought a combined army of Kiev, Galich, and the Cumans at the Kalchik River in present-day Ukraine, the conflict being called the Battle of the Kalka River. At the conclusion, the defeated European troops surrendered in exchange for a promise of safe conduct. However, the Mongols executed them instead.
The Petitcodiac River feeds into the north end of the Bay of Fundy which is known for its high tidal changes. Along the south side of the Bay of Fundy is Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, where the tidal changes drive the only tidal electricity generating station in North America.
Before the advent of liquid detergent, the average American by one estimate owned fewer than ten outfits, wearing items multiple times (to keep them from getting threadbare too fast) before scrubbing them by hand using bars of soap or ground-up flakes. To come up with a less laborious way to do the laundry, executives at Procter & Gamble began tinkering with compounds called surfactants that penetrate dirt and unbond it from a garment while keeping a spot on a shirt elbow from resettling on the leg of a pant. When the company released Tide in 1946, it was greeted as revolutionary. “It took something that had been an age-old drudgery job and transformed it into something that was way easier and got better results,” says Davis Dyer, co-author of Rising Tide, which charts the origins of the brand. “It was cool, kind of like the iPod of the day.” Procter & Gamble, naturally, patented its formula, forcing competitors to develop their own surfactants. It took years for other companies to come up with effective alternatives.
Surfactant is a blend or morpheme of the words surface acting agent. Soap is a surfactant - soap makes water “wetter” by reducing its surface tension.
The constellation Aquarius (Latin for “water carrier”) is found in a region of the sky often called the Sea because of the many constellations located there which have watery associations, such as Cetus the whale, Pisces the fish, and Eridanus the river.
The Kitty Hawk–class supercarrier, USS Constellation (CV-64), was the only US Naval vessel authorized to display its designation number in red, white, and blue.
On February 15, 1898, The US Navy battleship USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana, Cuba, killing more than 260. Sent to protect US interests during the Cuban revolt against Spain, the Maine exploded suddenly, without warning, and sank quickly, killing nearly three-fourths of her crew. The cause and responsibility for her sinking remained unclear after a Naval board of inquiry investigated. Nevertheless, popular opinion in the US, fanned by inflammatory articles printed in the “Yellow Press” by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, blamed Spain. The phrase, “remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain,” became a rallying cry for action that led to the Spanish–American War later that year.
Although Maine was within the territory of the 13 original states, it did not become a state u ntil 1820, becoming the 23rd star on the US flag. Before 1820, Maine was a disjunct district of Massachusetts.
The most easterly point in all the United States is in Maine. The name of that place is West Quoddy Head ME. Maine is the only state in the United States whose name has one syllable, and Maine is the only state that shares its border with only one other state.
President Jimmy Carter’s second Secretary of State was Ed Muskie, Democrat of Maine. He had been Hubert Humphrey’s running mate in 1968, and had run for President but lost in the primaries to George McGovern in 1972.
NM
John Kerry is the 68th person to hold the office of Secretary of State since it was created in 1789. Six Secretaries of State were also Presidents of the United States, but none since 1849.
The Secretaries of State who were also Presidents of the United States are:
#1 1790-1793 Thomas Jefferson
#5 1801-1809 James Madison
#7 1811-1817 James Monroe
#8 1817-1825 John Quincy Adams
#10 1829-1831 Martin Van Buren
#17 1845-1849 James Buchanan
Recent Secretaries of State who have also ran for Presidents of the United States unsuccessfully (so far) include:
#68 2013-now John Kerry
#67 2009-2013 Hillary Clinton
#58 1980-1981 Edmund Muskie
The Muskie is the common name for one of the largest game fishes, and the largest member of the pike family. The name ‘muskie’ is short for Muskellunge, which occurs in glacial lakes of eastern North America, and for game fishermen, must be over 30 inches to be kept and the record catch weighed 61 pounds… Its name in French is the etymology of the town of Maskinonge, Quebec.