Hank Hill, the lead character in “King of the Hill” was not a native Texan. He was born in New York City. His mother told him she gave birth to Hank in the women’s restroom at Yankee Stadium during his father’s failed attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro during a rare American visit.
The North American Aviation T-6 Texan is a single-engined advanced trainer aircraft used during World War II and into the 1970s. The Texan first flew in 1935 and was last retired from the South African Air Force in 1995. Over 15,000 were built.
Converted single-seat North American Aviation T-6 Texans painted in Japanese markings represented Mitsubishi Zero fighters in the movies in A Yank in the R.A.F., Tora! Tora! Tora! and The Final Countdown.
On July 2, 1937, aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared during an attempt to make a circumnavigational flight.
The Japanese Navy pilots in late 1941 were the best and most-experienced naval aviators in the world. Most of their early successes were against poorly trained and poorly led Allied pilots. But once the proper tactics to counter the Zero’s weaknesses were emplaced in March/April 1942, even novice pilots were at almost equal odds. The Japanese Zero was a good airplane, but a poor combat warplane.
The Wind Rises is a 2013 Japanese animated historical drama film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli. It is a fictionalized biopic of Jiro Horikoshi (1903–1982), designer of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter plane.
The Maserati Ghibli was first produced from 1966 to 1973 as a V8 GT (grand tourer), then from 1992 to 1997 as a V6 twin-turbo coupé, and then from 2013 on as an executive car.
Grand-Bassam was the colonial capital of Ivory Coast, from 1893 to 1896, when the administration was transferred to Bingerville after a bout of yellow fever. The town remained a key seaport until the growth of Abidjan from the 1930s.
The term ivory is often taken to refer to elephant tusks, but ivory from the teeth and tusks of mammoth, walrus, hippopotamus, sperm whale, killer whale, narwhal, elk and wart hog is used as well. Some of the oldest objects made from ivory are made of mammoth ivory and date back nearly 35,000 years. Ivory was used by dozens of early civilizations as ornamentation and a symbol of riches. The ancient Greek and Roman civilizations used especially large amounts of ivory.
Mammoth ivory is still used today for jewelry. My wife has a bracelet made from mammoth tooth that was crafted by an Alaska Native.
The largest brain in the world today belongs to the sperm whale. The adult sperm whale brain is 8,000 cubic centimeters. The human brain is about 1300 cubic centimeters.
ETA/ninja: Sperm whale teeth are a source of ‘ivory.’
During the days of commercial whaling, sperm whales were so named because when the head was cut open it was found to contain a milky white substance, and the whalers thought the large square head was a huge reservoir for sperm. Scientists still do not understand the function of this oily fluid, called spermaceti. One common theory is that the fluid—which hardens to wax when cold—helps the whale alter its buoyancy so it can dive deep and rise again.
On January 14, 1975, British teenage heiress Lesley Whittle was kidnapped by Donald Neilson and subsequently murdered during a failed ransom collection attempt. Neilson imprisoned Whittle in a drainage shaft of a reservoir in Kidsgrove, Staffordshire.
Frank Sinatra Jer was kidnapped, at the age of 19, on December 8, 1963, at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe (room 417).He was released two days later after his father paid the $240,000 ransom demanded by the kidnappers. Barry Keenan, Johnny Irwin, and Joe Amsler were soon captured, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to long prison terms for kidnapping, of which they served only small portions. Mastermind Keenan was later adjudged to have been legally insane at the time of the crime and hence not legally responsible for his actions.
At the time of the kidnapping, Frank Sr. and the Rat Pack were filming Robin and the 7 Hoods. The stress of the kidnapping, in addition to the assassination of Sinatra’s close friend John F. Kennedy just a few weeks previous, caused him to seriously consider shutting down production completely, though the film was ultimately completed
Actor Tony Randall had a small, uncredited role as a criminal in Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964).
On July 21, 356 BCE (Proleptic Gregorian Calendar), the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was destroyed in an act of arson by a man named Herostratus. His name has become a metonym for someone who commits a criminal act in order to become famous.
The Library of Celsus is an ancient Roman building in the remains of Ephesus, Anatolia, now part of Turkey. The library was the third-largest library in the ancient world behind the libraries at Alexandria and Pergamum. The interior of the library was destroyed, either by an earthquake in 262 A.D. or by a fire during a Gothic invasion in that same year.
ETA (Not in Play): I have visited Ephesus, and if you’re interested in ancient city ruins, put it on your bucket list.
On September 17, 1176, Seljuk Turks thwarted war efforts of Byzantine forces in the Battle of Myriokephalon in Phrygia, preventing them from taking the interior of Anatolia.
King Midas, who in Greek mythology turned everything he touched into gold, was from Phrygia.
Although deservedly praised, the movie The King’s Speech erroneously showed Winston Churchill as being a stalwart support of the Duke of York, the future King George VI. In fact, Churchill was, before 1936, much closer to the duke’s older brother, Edward VIII, who would abdicate that year and leave the British throne to the duke.