In 1937 Margaret Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for “Gone With the Wind”. Three days later the airship Hindenburg exploded over Lakehurst, NJ.
Three weeks after the Hindenburg disaster, the Golden Gate Bridge opened.
The week after the Golden Gate Bridge opened, on June 3, 1937, the Duke of Windsor (formerly King Edward VIII) married Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson of Baltimore, after her second divorce became final. He had abdicated from the throne on December 11, 1936 when it became apparent that he could not marry Wallis and remain King.
Four days after the king married a commoner, Jean Harlow died at 26, of kidney disease. There wasn’t another shocking string of historic events until November 2016.
Three weeks after Jean Harlow died, Amelia Earhart disappeared forever.
Despite ample evidence to the contrary, four books have been published claiming that Amelia Earhart survived her last flight and lived in New Jersey under the name Irene Craigmile Bolam. After the first book, Amelia Earhart Lives, was published in 1970, Ms. Bolam filed a lawsuit and provided extensive documentation of her identity, including her pilot’s license from 1937. She was briefly a pilot and had met Earhart; in addition, a number of mutual friends had known both women. The publisher McGraw-Hill pulled Amelia Earhart Lives from the market shortly after it was released and court records indicate they made an out of court settlement with Ms. Bolam.
After Ms. Bolam’s death in 1980. three additional books were subsequently published that continued to proclaim that she and Amelia Earhart had physically been one and the same human being, most recently in January 2016.
I delivered a phone book to the current residents of the house where Amelia Earhart grew up as a child. Children looked out the window at me when I threw it on the porch. The house is in Atchison, Kansas, also made famous for being the A, which was formerly, before merger, a part of the name BNSF. Also immortalized in the 1940s song title “Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe”.
In the parody show Forbidden Broadway, creator Gerard Alessandrini, who usually only spoofs long running shows, could not resist spoofing Anna Karenina, which closed after 46 performances, with The Ashkebad, Tbilsi And Kiev Express:
Then you’ll hear that mournful whistle blow.
My lingerie will wrap around the wheels below.
All the way to old Siberia
One the Ashekbad
The Ashekbad
The Ashkebad, Tbilsi And Kiev Express
The Central Pacific Railroad Grade (CPRG) is a 4-wheel drive, high clearance vehicle route that can be driven today. It follows part of the initial 1869 Transcontinental Railroad route for 90 miles through northern Utah that was laid by the CPRR, the Central Pacific Railroad. Also known as the Transcontinental Railroad National Back Country Byway, it is managed by BLM. the US Bureau of Land Management. Part of this CPRG traces the path where on 28 April 1869 the CPRR laid a record 10 miles of track in one day.
Per-capita consumption of primary energy in the Faroe Islands is about 60% higher than that in continental Denmark.
The Kingdom of Denmark comprises Denmark proper and two autonomous constituent countries in the North Atlantic Ocean: the Faroe Islands and Greenland. Greenland is the world’s largest island. Three-quarters of Greenland is covered by the only permanent ice sheet outside of Antarctica, and with a population of about 56,480 (as of 2013), it is the least densely populated country in the world.
The US Virgin Islands were originally the colonial property of Denmark. This year, they celebrate the centennial of their sale to the USA in 1916.
In the US Virgin Islands, voters did not participate in the November 8, 2016 US general election because it is a territory and not a state. However they participated in the primaries. The Republican convention took place on March 10, 2016, and the Democratic Caucus took place on June 4, 2016.
On July 13, 1793, Charlotte Corday assassinated Jean-Paul Marat, a leader in both the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, by stabbing him in his bathtub. Four days later she was executed by guillotine. An autopsy proved she was a virgin.
The only Sura or chapter in the Qur’an named after a woman is Maryam. Maryam is the Aramaic and Arabic form, and Miriam is the Hebrew form, of Mary, the virgin mother of Jesus Christ.
In Europe, the use of the given name Mary in its many forms was variable over the centuries and in particular regions. It was rarely used in England in early Medieval times, the most popular name in 1350 being Alice. It was popular in medieval Galicia but not in the rest of Spain until the 1600s. In England, it also gained in popularity around that time and by 1690 it was the most common female name. In the US, Mary was the most common name given to girls every year from the beginning of record-keeping (at least back to 1800) through 1961 (except for a six-year dip to #2, behind Linda)
Gary Larson is so admired by many in the scientific community that he even got a species of owl lice named after him: Strigiphilus garylarsoni - Wikipedia
ETA: Larsons’s The Far Side never made a joke about medieval Galicia, as far as I can recall.
On May 1, 1753, Carl Linnaeus’ Species Plantarum was published. He introduced the system of naming species called binomial nomenclature which is still used for plants as well as for all other biological entities, and is credited with having begun the scientific branch known as botany.
Former US Marine Gene L. Coon wrote several episodes of STAR TREK (TOS). He also wrote STAR TREK (TOS) episodes under the pseudonym Lee Cronin. Episodes he wrote include “The Devil in the Dark”, “Arena”, “A Taste of Armageddon”, and “Space Seed” where Khan Noonien Singh led the crew of the sleeper ship, SS Botany Bay.
Traditionally, all Sikhs take the same last name: Singh, derived from the Sanskrit word for “lion.”