Fort Lisa was established in 1812 in what is now North Omaha in Omaha, Nebraska by famed fur trader Manuel Lisa. The fort was associated with several firsts in Nebraska history: Lisa was the first European farmer in Nebraska; it was the first settlement by American citizens set up in the then-recent Louisiana Purchase; Lisa’s wife was the first woman resident of European descent in Nebraska.
There is a legend that a Scottish nobleman, Duncan Campbell, sheltered the murderer of his cousin. Sometime later, Campbell had a dream that the ghost of his cousin appeared to him and said that they would meet at Ticonderoga.
Campbell later died of wounds after an unsuccessful attack in the French Fort Carillon, called Ticonderoga by the British.
One of the darkest episodes in the historic Highland feud between the Campbell clan and the MacDonald clan is the Campbell massacre of the MacDonalds, including women and children, and in violation of the Highland custom of hospitality, at Glencoe in 1692.
Ranald MacDonald was an adventurer born in the Oregon Territory, went to sea, was shipwrecked in Japan, and was the first native English speaker to teach English to the Japanese, contributing to the Perry opening of Japan to world trade. He returned to Canada, and died in Washitgton state on a visit to his sister, where his grave is marked with a monument to his work. Not to be confused with Ronald McDonald.
On October 29, 1792, Lt. William Broughton, a member of Captain George Vancouver’s expedition, observed a peak in present-day Oregon, naming it Mount Hood in honor of British Admiral Samuel Hood.
The ship Tonquin, captained by Jonathan Thorn and part of the Astoria, Oregon party, was sunk in 1811 after attacking a tribe of Natives near Vancouver Island during an attempt to trade with them. Unhappy with what the Natives were demanding in trade goods, Thorn opened fire on them, killing many. As they sat in the harbor, the natives made overtures of wanting to resume trade, but once on board killed all but a small group of the ship’s crew, who barricaded themselves in the hold while the Indians were ransacking the ship.
That night, all but one of the crew decided to make a run for it in one of the ship’s boats, and were never heard from again. The remaining sailor waited until morning, and when he heard the sound of many people on the deck above, set off the ship’s powder store, obliterating the ship and an estimated 60-200 Indians. It is now known as The Battle of Woody Point.
Thorn or þorn (Þ, þ) is a letter in the Old English, Gothic, Old Norse and modern Icelandic alphabets, as well as some dialects of Middle English. It was also used in medieval Scandinavia, but was later replaced with the digraph th, except in Iceland, where it survives. The letter originated from the rune ᚦ in the Elder Fuþark and was called thorn in the Anglo-Saxon and thorn or thurs (a category of beings in Germanic paganism) in the Scandinavian rune poems. Its reconstructed Proto-Germanic name is Thurisaz. It is similar in appearance to the archaic Greek letter sho (ϸ), although both are historically quite unrelated.
When French scribes started working in England after the Norman Invasion, they had problems with some of the English letters that were not part of French. In some cases they substituted: y for þorn (leading to the spelled “ye” for “the,” even though it was always pronounced as “th”). Another complication was the sound of IPA value – a guttural like in the German “ich.” In order to signify the sound, they approximated it (to their ears) with “gh.” This is the reason there are so many pronunciations of words ending with “gh” – the guttural slowly was dropped and various pronunciations took it’s place. However, when the words were first written down, “-ough” always had the same pronunciation (roughly "ooo).
Took to long or research and RealityChuck ninja’ed me. Standby.
Norman is a small lunar impact crater on the Oceanus Procellarum, to the south and slightly west of the crater Euclides. It is 10km (6 miles) in diameter and 2km (1.2 miles) deep
Ruby Bridges , one of the first black children to attend an all-white school, was the subject of Norman Rockwell’s paintingThe Problem We All Live With. On July 15, 2011, 56 year old Bridges met with President Barack Obama at the White House, who told her, “I think it’s fair to say that if it hadn’t been for you guys, I might not be here and we wouldn’t be looking at this together.”
The Johnny Cash song “See Ruby Fall”, about a woman of questionable virtue, was inspired by Ruby Falls, a mountain tourist site near Chattanooga Tennessee, famous for its ubiquitous promotional bumper stickers proclaiming “See Ruby Falls”.
If one percent of the aluminum ions are replaced by chromium in ruby, the yellow-green absorption results in a red color for the gem. Additionally, absorption at any of the above wavelengths stimulates fluorescent emission of 694-nanometer-wavelength red light, which adds to the ruby’s red color and perceived luster.
The brightest and most valuable “red” coloring in rubies is called blood-red or “pigeon blood”. The term is used in Burma (ko-twe in Burmese) and may be of Chinese origin.
On March 30, 1918, forces of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and the Bolshevik Red Army suppressed a Muslim revolt in Baku, Azerbaijan, resulting in up to 12,000 deaths
The 1998 film The Red Violin is about a violin painted with the blood of the maker’s wife, an idea of the filmmaker, Francois Girard, who was inspired by one of the violins of Antonio Stradivari, the 1721 Red Mendelssohn, which features a unique red stripe on its top right side.
Baku is derived from the Persian name of the city “Bād-kube”, meaning “Wind-pounded city.”
Six million Jeopardy viewers did not know that Baku is on the Caspian Sea, and quickly ran and looked it up.
In the 1993 comedy Groundhog Day, acerbic weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) watches Jeopardy! with other guests at his B&B. One of the questions, which of course he knows from having seen the show many, many times before, is “What is Lake Titicaca?”
In Andean belief, Titicaca is the birthplace of the sun. Its name refers to the sacred carved rock found on the Island of the Sun in the middle of the lake. In addition, it’s the largest lake in South America and the highest navigable body of water in the world.