Today marks 75 years since the attack on Pearl Harbor, “a day that will live in infamy”, December 7, 1941. On the same morning that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, (December 8, local time, because of the International Date Line) they also bombed Clark and Iba, US military airfields in the Philippines, and moved against the British at Hong Kong and on the Malay Peninsula. They also moved into Southeast Asia’s only independent country, Thailand.
On November 27, 1999, Helen Clark became the first woman to win the office of Prime Minister in a New Zealand election.
English-born Petula Clark made the top 40 with fifteen consecutive singles in the 1960s, including “Downtown”, which made number one. But she was also a beloved superstar all over the continent, making the charts with 13 hits in French, 11 in German, 7 in Italian and 4 in Spanish.
The Clark Bar uses a 1917 formula pioneered by Irish immigrant David L. Clark in Pittsburgh. It is a milk chocolate peanut butter bar that is similar to a Butterfinger, 5th Avenue or Zagnut. In 2016, the Clark Bar was part of a How It’s Made episode.
Rymans Auditorium, the original Grand Old Opry, is located on 5th Avenue, in Nashville, Tennessee.
Tour guides at Rymans Auditorium will often ask groups if there’s anyone who’s having a birthday that day or someday soon, and then lead the group in singing “Happy Birthday,” so that everyone can then claim to have sung from the stage of the Grand Old Opry.
The phrase “Grand Ole Opry” was first uttered on the air on December 10, 1927. At the time, the program Barn Dance followed the NBC Red Network’s Music Appreciation Hour, a program of classical music and selections from grand opera presented by classical conductor Walter Damrosch. On that particular night, Damrosch had remarked that "there is no place in the classics for realism."In response, Opry presenter George Hay said: Friends, the program which just came to a close was devoted to the classics. Doctor Damrosch told us that there is no place in the classics for realism. However, from here on out for the next three hours, we will present nothing but realism. It will be down to earth for the “earthy”.
Hay then introduced DeFord Bailey, the man he had dubbed the “Harmonica Wizard”, saying: For the past hour, we have been listening to music taken largely from Grand Opera. From now on, we will present the “Grand Ole Opry”. Bailey then stepped up to the mic to play “The Pan-American Blues,” his song inspired by the Pan-American, a premier L&N Railroad passenger train
Hay is not a specific grass used as an agricultural product, but rather a generic term for any vegetable matter that is grown, cut and stored for later use as feed for domesticated livestock. Hence, a “hayfield” is a plot of land whose yield is intended for that purpose, regardless of what is grown there, and a “hayseed” is any seed that can be sown for that purpose.
The “tow” in “towhead,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, refers to “the fibre of flax, hemp, or jute prepared for spinning.” Thus, a blond child, called a “towhead,” does not get the epithet from being a hayseed and having hair the color of hay.
Tow boats are the name given to craft operating on the Mississippi and other rivers in the United States that move barges full of cargo up and down the rivers. While they generally push the barges instead of towing them, the name “tow boat” is still used for these craft.
One of the best-known songs about the Mississippi River is “Ol’ Man River”, with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, from the 1927 musical Show Boat. In 2004, Paul Robeson’s version from the 1936 film of the musical finished at #24 on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema.
The Righteous Brothers, a so-called “blue-eyed soul” duo, did a credible version of “Ol’ Man River”, released on the album “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” in 1965.
When the Visigoths under Alaric sacked Rome in 410 AD, it sent shockwaves through the Empire. It was the first time Rome had been sacked since the Gauls had achieved that feat 800 years earlier.
St Jerome, at that time in Bethlehem, summed up the feelings of many when he wrote: “If Rome can perish, what can be safe?”
In the 2000 movie Gladiator, Russell Crowe, playing an ahistorical general of Rome confronting the evil emperor Commodus, says, “My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius. Commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true Emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.”
Standing over three feet tall and weighing 75 pounds, he Emperor Penguin is the largest qnd best known of 18 species of penguin. Some species of penguin are found in South America, as far north as the Equator, as well as sourhern Africa and Australia.
In March 1921, Crown Prince Hirohito, accompanied by a large retinue, set off for a tour of Europe. The event was unprecedented, for it was the first time a Crown Prince of Japan had visited abroad. Hirohito traveled in France, the Netherlands, Italy, and England, where his stay with the British Royal family impressed him. In 1926 he became Emperor of Japan (the formal enthronement wasn’t until 1928) upon the death of his father.
Six nations currently use the word Crown (in their language) as their unit of currency, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Faroe Islands and Czech Republic. In the past century, the term was also used in Austria, Hungary, Estonia, and by the British as the coin representing a quarter of a pound.,
“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” is one of the best known lines in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2. (Act 3, Sc 1, l. 31) It is spoken by the troubled Henry IV who is tired of dealing with rebellion and perhaps regrets having seized the throne from Richard II and then ordering him to be murdered.
The Queen Mother’s Crown is decorated with about 2,800 diamonds, most notably the 105-carat Koh-i-Noor in the middle of the front cross, which was acquired by the East India Company after the Anglo-Sikh Wars and presented to Queen Victoria in 1851, and a 17-carat Turkish diamond given to her in 1856 by Abdülmecid I, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, as a gesture of thanks for British support in the Crimean War. The Koh-i-Noor became a part of the Crown Jewels when it was left to the Crown upon Victoria’s death in 1901. It had been successively mounted in the crowns of Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary before it was transferred to The Queen Mother’s Crown.
Queen Noor of Jordan is one of a small number of US-born members of royal families. Now 65, she is the widow of King Hussein and the mother of four princes and princesses. She is the former Lisa Halaby, with an Arab father and Swedish mother, born and raised in Washington DC.