As jazz was frequently banned in the Soviet Union and countries sympathetic to its views, Voice of America was often the only way people in those countries could listen to jazz, and Willis Conover’s politics-free broadcasts are widely credited for keeping interest in jazz active in Soviet satellite states. In addition, Conover’s clear, measured pronunciation when hosting the Jazz Hour is sometimes credited for leading to the development of Special English in 1959. The program aired until 2003, outliving Conover, who died in 1996.
James Davis Nicoll of Kitchener, Ontario, wrote the following epigram on the English language in 1990 on the usenet group rec.arts.sf-lovers. It has become rather famous.
Horatio Herbert Kitchener was a famous British senior officer and colonial administrator. Kitchener won fame in 1898 for winning the Battle of Omdurman and securing control of the Sudan, after which he was given the title “Lord Kitchener of Khartoum”. He was also Chief of Staff in the 2nd Boer War, Commander in Chief of the Army in India, and Consul General in Egypt. He was Secretary of State for War at the start of WWI, and died on 5 June 1916 when HMS Hampshire sank west of the Orkney Islands, Scotland. He was making his way to Russia in order to attend negotiations when the ship struck a German mine.
On October 14, 1939, a German submarine U-47 torpedoed and sank the British Royal Navy battleship HMS Royal Oak while the latter was anchored at Scapa Flow in Orkney, Scotland. Of *Royal Oak *'s complement of 1,234 men and boys, 833 were killed that night or died later of their wounds.
“Heart of Oak”, written in 1760, is the official march of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom. It is also the official march of several Commonwealth navies including the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal New Zealand Navy.
The oak in the song’s title refers to the wood from which British warships were generally made at that time. The “Heart of oak” is the strongest central wood of the tree.
Although the British won the Battle on the Fields of Abraham in 1759, it was not certain if they would be able to hold Quebec. Much depended on supplies. The French attacked the British in April, 1760, at Ste Foy, outside Quebec. In terms of casualties suffered, it was a French victory, but not sufficient to re-take Quebec.
Then in May 1760, a British supply fleet arrived at Quebec. The re-supply of the British forces, worn down by a phenomenally hard Quebec winter, ensured that the capture of Quebec would stand. The British forces moved west to Montreal, which was still under French control. The Governor of Montreal eventually surrendered, rather than fight another pitched battle in unfavourable circumstances, or suffer a lengthy siege. The Articles of Surrender for Montreal were harsher than those for Quebec city the previous year, and made it clear that the British intended to keep the province of Quebec.
Len Deighton’s World War II alternative-history novel SS-GB, published in 1978, opens with a one-page copy of the Articles of Surrender of the British government to the invading Wehrmacht.
Despite its conspicuous position and area off Africa, Madagascar was left alone by European colonial powers until nearly the 20th Century. France first invaded the island in 1883. Upon reaching the capital in September 1895, heavy bombardment of the royql palace led Queen Ranavalona III to surrender. After 14 years of effort, France annexed Madagascar in 1896 and declared the island a colony the following year, and held it for only 70 years.
The Colony of Maryland began as a proprietary colony of the English Lord Baltimore, who wished to create a haven for English Catholics in the new world at the time of the European wars of religion.
On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy, an “octoroon” from New Orleans, was arrested for refusing to leave the “whites-only” car on a train. The incident led to a famous US Supreme Court decision in 1896 that upheld segregation by race in or on public facilities, Plessy v. Ferguson.
In the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court 7-1 ruling, segregated public facilities were deemed to be “separate, but equal”. The lone dissent came from Justice John Marshall Harlan who was born and raised in Kentucky, a neutral state at the beginning of the Civil War but later became a solid Union state. Homer Plessy was born free and was, as ozziemaland stated, an “octoroon”. Plessy was 7/8ths European and 1/8th African. A Louisianan, Plessy was determined by state law to be black and thus was required to sit in a railroad car for Coloreds. On 07 June 1892 Plessy bought a first class train ticket in New Orleans and boarded the first class car. Asked to move to a car for colored people, Plessy refused. The train stopped at the corner of Press and Royal Streets, and Plessy was removed from the train and arrested for violating the Separate Car Act (the Louisiana Withdraw Car Act of 1890).
Plessy v. Ferguson was overturned in the unanimous 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Topeka Board of Education which ruled that “separate but equal” was unconstitutional, and specifically stated that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), is a landmark civil rights decision of the United States Supreme Court, which invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage.
The case was brought by Mildred Loving, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, who had been sentenced to a year in prison in Virginia for marrying each other. Their marriage violated the state’s anti-miscegenation statute, the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which prohibited marriage between people classified as “white” and people classified as “colored”. The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision determined that this prohibition was unconstitutional, overruling Pace v. Alabama (1883) and ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.
Loving County,Texas, is the least populous county in the US, with 82 inhabitants in the last census. The county was named after Charles Loving, one of the developers of the Goodnight-Loving Trail, of cattle-driving fame.
“Goodnight, Ladies” is a folk song attributed to Edwin Pearce Christy, originally intended to be sung during a minstrel show. Drawing from an 1847 song by Christy entitled “Farewell, Ladies”, the song as known today was first published on May 16, 1867.
The Chess piece known in English as the Bishop, had incarnations in previous versions of the game as elephant, crocodile, jester and archer… It is thought that the miter (angled slot) was there as early as the elephant, representing the tusks. The name of the piece in Spanish and Italian still reflects the elephant origin.
The Bishop is a Monty Python sketch from season 2 of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. “The Bishop” stars Terry Jones as a crime-fighting bishop attempting to stop several comical murders of various Anglican clergymen (played by John Cleese, Michael Palin, Graham Chapman and Eric Idle), always arriving a moment too late to be of assistance.
