Certain musical instruments are sometimes said to play in a certain key, or have their music written in a certain key. Instruments that do not play in the key of C are known as transposing instruments. The most common kind of clarinet, for example, is said to play in the key of B-flat. This means that a scale written in C major in sheet music actually sounds as a B-flat major scale when played on the B-flat clarinet—that is, notes sound a whole tone lower than written. Likewise, the horn, normally in the key of F, sounds notes a perfect fifth lower than written
In 1942 at the age of 24, actor Robert Preston joined the United States Army Air Corps and served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. 9th Air Force. Preston is known for his role as a band instrument salesman in the 1962 musical, The Music Man.
In the original production (and the film) of The Music Man, the School Board was played by the 1950 International Quartet Champions of the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America (SPEBSQSA), the Buffalo Bills.
The AAFC (All-America Football Conference) Buffalo Bisons changed their name to the Buffalo Bills around the same time the Buffalo Bills quartet came into being. The AAFC Buffalo Bills folded after only 4 seasons. Meanwhile the quartet continued to perform and were popular. Ten years after the AAFL team folded, Buffalo gained an AFL franchise and named that team the Buffalo Bills. That team continues today as the NFL team.
Why are boneless chicken wings named after a buffalo? One of the more prevalent claims is that Buffalo wings were first prepared at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, by Teressa Bellissimo, who owned the bar with husband Frank. Several versions of the story have been circulated by the Bellissimo family and others:
Upon the unannounced, late-night arrival of their son, Dominic, with several of his friends from college, Teressa needed a fast and easy snack to present to her guests. It was then that she came up with the idea of deep frying chicken wings (normally thrown away or reserved for stock) and tossing them in cayenne hot sauce.
A cook preparing Buffalo wings Dominic Bellissimo (Frank and Teressa’s son) told The New Yorker reporter Calvin Trillin in 1980: “It was Friday night in the bar and since people were buying a lot of drinks he wanted to do something nice for them at midnight when the mostly Catholic patrons would be able to eat meat again.” He stated that it was his mother, Teressa, who came up with the idea of chicken wings.
There was mis-delivery of wings instead of backs and necks for making the bar’s spaghetti sauce. Faced with this unexpected resource, Frank Bellissimo says that he asked Teressa to do something with them.
Dominic Flandry is the central character in the second half of Poul Anderson’s Technic History science fiction. He first appeared in 1951. Flandry is a dashing field agent of the Imperial Intelligence Corps who travels the stars to fight off imminent threats to the empire from both external enemies and internal treachery.
In July 1919 Adolph Hitler was appointed Verbindungsmann (intelligence agent) of an Aufklärungskommando (reconnaissance commando) of the Reichswehr, to influence other soldiers and to infiltrate the German Workers’ Party (DAP).
Adolf Hitler, a starving young artist in 1913 Vienna, is killed by a time traveler from the future in Jerry Yulsman’s 1984 alternative-history novel Elleander Morning, thereby averting World War II.
Rainfall in some parts of South Dakota does not flow eventually into the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean, but northward via the Red Rive into Hudson’s Bay and to the Arctic Ocean, thereby creating an additional Condinental Divide, separating North America into three flowages.
The Crazy Horse Memorial in Custer County SD began in 1948 when the first rock was blasted away. Crazy Horse’s face was completed and dedicated in 1998. When finished, and its completion date is still TBD and far away, it will be much larger than Mount Rushmore. Its final dimensions are planned to be 641 feet wide and 563 feet high. By comparison, Crazy Horse’s head will be 87 feet tall. The faces on Mount Rushmore are 60 feet tall. The two monuments are about 15 miles apart, by road.
Crazy Horse was Oglala Dakota, and is probably best known for his participation at Little Big Horn, but as a young man he was one of the decoys that led soldiers into what became known as the Fetterman Massacre (along the Bozeman Trail in Wyoming), after the leader of the party, Captain William Fetterman. It was the worst military disaster ever suffered by the U.S. Army on The Great Plains.
On November 29, 1864, a 700-man Colorado Territory militia attacked a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho, killing an estimated 400 men, women, and children in what is now called “the Sand Creek massacre.” The tribes had been given permission to camp at Sand Creek, Colorado, where they were attacked.
Today is the 241st birthday of the United States Marine Corps. Happy Birthday to Marines everywhere.
“On November 10, 1775, the Continental Congress approved the resolution to establish two battalions of Marines able to fight for independence at sea and on shore. This date marks the official formation of the Continental Marines.”
The Cypress Hills Massacre occurred in Cypress Hills, North-West Territories, in the spring of 1873. Exact details were hard to come by, but a group of American and Canadian whiskey traders came to an Indian camp, arguing that the Indians had stolen some of their horses. The Indians denied it and offered to give two of their own horses as hostages until the missing horses were found, but the situation deteriorated. The whiskey traders opened fire and killed between 12 to 24 Indians, with one of the whiskey traders being killed in return fire.
The massacre increased the urgency for the federal government to establish order in the North-West. The next year came the March West of the North-West Mounted Police, the forerunner of today’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police. One of the first forts they established was Fort Walsh in the Cypress Hills.
Off-game:. Can you provide details of this? Under the principles established by the King’s Bench in Campbell v Hall in 1774, once there has been a grant of representative government to a British colony, the Crown can no longer legislate for that colony.
I’m not seeing how a patent granted by the Crown under the royal prerogative in the UK would give the organization legal status in the self-governing Dominions and colonies?
On-game:
The RCMP was formed in 1920. The RCMP is responsible for an unusually large breadth of duties. Under their federal mandate, the RCMP police throughout Canada. Federal operations include: enforcing federal laws including commercial crime, counterfeiting, drug trafficking, border integrity, organized crime, and other related matters; providing counter-terrorism and domestic security; providing protection services for the Monarch, Governor General, Prime Minister, their families and residences, and other ministers of the Crown, visiting dignitaries, and diplomatic missions; and participating in various international policing efforts.
One of the lesser known historic massacres was that of 34 Chinese gold miners in Hell’s Canyon on the Snake River in 1887. Several white men from Wallowa County attacked their camp, tortured and murdered the men and made off with their gold. Six men were later indicted; three of them escaped and the other three were acquitted at trial in Enterprise, OR. Details about the crime and disposition of the suspects remained largely unknown until 1995, when my cousin’s wife (who was a county clerk at the time) found trial documents in an unused safe in the basement of the courthouse.
The documents included a copy of the 1888 grand jury indictment; details of an escape from jail by the leader of the gang, Bruce Evans; a lengthy deposition by Frank Vaughan giving his version of how the murders occurred, and notes from the trial itself. Although the Vaughan deposition was self-serving —he pinned all the blame on Evans and the two others who fled prosecution—he acknowledged witnessing the shooting and provided additional important detail on what actually happened.
ETA: Not sure how I missed Bullitt’s post. I swear it wasn’t there when I started.
By virtue of a mixture of common law and a statute passed in the reign of Henry VIII, under English law a man could not marry his deceased’s wife’s sister. This became a point of considerable controversy during the Victorian period, even featuring in a song in Iolanthe:
It was not until passage of the Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act 1907 that men could marry… well, you know. Under ecclesiastical law, such a marriage was earlier not absolutely void but it was voidable at the suit of any interested party. Matthew Boulton married his deceased wife’s sister in 1760. He advised “Silence, secrecy and Scotland,” although they married in London; the marriage was opposed by her brother. Similarly Charles Austen, the younger brother of Jane Austen, married his deceased wife’s sister in 1820 and remained married to her until he died in 1852.
The right of a man to marry his deceased wife’s sister is directly proportional to how hot said sister is.
Play on. Don’t mind me. 