The four major types of Scotch are Lowland scotch, Highland scotch, Speyside, and Islay. Very little lowland is produced these days and most blends are made from Highland distilleries. Islay is the “smokiest” type of scotch because it is still made with peat fires (others tend to use natural gas).
A person who might have had too much Scotch went to a poetry reading, which took place where there was only two-hour parking in the street outside. This person could see the street through the large windows and became worried when the reciter droned on and on. He thought he heard the reciter say—a mondegreen?—“Do not send to know for whom the truck tows; it tows for thee.”
English poet John Donne wrote, “…send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” Ernest Hemingway used a portion of the phrase as the title of one of his best-known books. It was also once quoted on Hill Street Blues, and a pun based on the beginning of the poem, “No man is an island,” was featured in the movie The Incredibles, as the name for Syndrome’s lair, Nomanisan Island.
Too much Scotch made me botch the mondegreen, which should have started with “send not to know…” (As Twain said, “Too much whiskey is just enough.”) (Most Brits would have used the word “whisky.”)
The original version of Paul Simon’s song “I Am a Rock”(with the lyric I am a rock, I am an island) was first released on The Paul Simon Songbook in 1965, and became, the A-side to Simon’s only single released from the album, backed with "Leaves That Are Green."Neither the album or the single was a commercial success. and the single is extremely rare to locate. Meanwhile, The Paul Simon Songbook, which for a long time Simon himself had disdained as an album, remained available only in the United Kingdom until 1981.
Leaves of Grass (as immortalized by Walt Whitman) are nearly always alternate and distichous (in one plane), and have parallel veins. Each leaf is differentiated into a lower sheath hugging the stem and an untoothed blade.
At the end of the American Civil War, poet Walt Whitman worked in the Attorney General’s Office, where he interviewed former Confederate soldiers for Presidential pardons. He worked there until 1872.
On August 17, 1915, Leo Max Frank was lynched in Marietta, Georgia. The Jewish-American factory superintendent had been convicted of the murder of one of his factory employees, 13-year-old Mary Phagan. Frank received a posthumous pardon in 1986 by the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles, which said that Frank’s trial was done “[w]ithout attempting to address the question of guilt or innocence.”
From Wiki:
In 1963, Willie McCovey of the Giants and Hank Aaron of the Braves finished in a tie for the National League home-run leadership. Both hit 44 home runs. Also, both wore uniform number 44, and both were born and grew up in Mobile, Alabama.
The Roc is an giant legendary bird of prey. The explorer Marco Polo described them thusly:
Everybody Hates Chris was an American sitcom based on the childhood on comedian Chris Rock. In one episode his mother Rochelle tells a woman sitting next to her on a bus to drop her boyfriend Shelton (but everyone calls him Spike) Lee, who is asking her to invest in a money he wants to make.
James Smith,a Scot who had immigrated from Quebec to New York, opened an ice cream shop called “James Smith and Son.” James Smith bought a cough drop recipe from a journeyman peddler named (wait for it) Sly Hawkins and in 1852 made his first batch of “Smith Brothers Cough Drops”. William and Andrew (the guys with beards) took over the business after their father died in 1866.
Christopher Sly is a character in the frame story of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. He is a drunken vagrant on whom a lord plays a practical joke, pretending to treat him like an aristocrat. A group of actors who visit the Lord’s house perform The Taming of the Shrew for Sly.
On November 25, 1034, Duncan became the King of Scots, following the death of Malcolm II at Glamis. He was the son of the second daughter of Malcolm. Macbeth, the son of Malcolm’s oldest daughter, was by-passed. Unlike the “King Duncan” of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the historical Duncan appears to have died a young— not old—man (about age 39).
At the peak of its production, the Duncan Yo-Yo factory produced as many as 60,000 yo-yos per day. In 1962, 45 million yo-yos were sold in one year.
President John F. Kennedy, campaigning in Chicago during the 1962 midterm elections, returned early to the White House, allegedly with a cold. This was only a cover story, however, as he really had to meet with national security aides to handle the then-still-secret Cuban Missile Crisis.
President John F. Kennedy wrote to Jean Daniel on October 24, 1963:
After the death of Cuban writer and nationalist leader Jose Marti, in battle against Spanish forces in 1895, one of his poems from the book, “Versos Sencillos” (Simple Verses) was adapted to the song “Guantanamera”. It has become a well-loved patriotic song of Cuba.
Radio y Televisión Martí is an American radio and television international broadcaster based in Miami, Fla., financed by the United States Government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which transmits newscasts and programs in Spanish to Cuba. Its broadcasts can also be heard and viewed worldwide through their website and on shortwave radio frequencies.
Named after the Cuban national hero and intellectual José Martí, it was established in 1983, with the addition of TV Martí in 1990. The 2014 budget for the Cuba broadcasting program is approximately US$27 million.