“Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)” sung by Looking Glass had already been a US chart hit two yeas before the Manilow song, so the original title of Brandy would have seemed duplication. Barry Manilow is not to be confused with Barry Mann, who recorded a couple of moderate hits and collaborated with Cynthia Weill as composer to several dozen more chart-busting songs, many o of whose titles are household words and are regular earworms.
Barry was a dog of a breed which was later called the St. Bernard that worked as a mountain rescue dog in Switzerland for the Great St Bernard Hospice. He has been credited with saving more than 40 lives during his lifetime, hence his byname “Menschenretter” meaning people rescuer in German. A monument to him stands in the Cimetière des Chiens near Paris.
The Cimetière des Chiens et Autres Animaux Domestiques is an elaborate pet cemetery, the burial site for dogs, cats, and a wide variety of pets ranging from horses to monkeys to lions and even fish.
(I’ve been there.)
Besides restrictions on eating certain animals, Islam teaches that dogs are unclean, and it is necessary to purify oneself after certain physical contact with a dog. Dogs can be owned by farmers, hunters, and shepherds for the purpose of hunting and guarding and the Qur’an states that it is permissible to eat what trained dogs catch.
On May 3, 1963, police in Birmingham, Alabama, used high-pressure water hoses and dogs on civil rights protesters.
There are three stages in the progression of sunrise and sunset, defined as Twilight. Civil Twilight begins once the Sun has disappeared below the horizon, and continues until it descends to 6 degrees below the horizon. That is followed by Nautical Twilight until it is 12 degrees below the horiaon, and then Astronomical Twilight until it is 18 degrees below the horizon. That interface is Dusk, after which Night begins, which remains uniformly dark until the next day’s sunrise begins.
The Ft. Sumter flag was lowered in surrender in 1861 at the beginning of the Civil War, and then raised again to mark the triumph of the United States, four years later to the day, on the same spot at the end of the war.
Thomas Sumter, for whom Ft. Sumter is named, was a brigadier general in the South Carolina militia during the American War of Independence, a planter, and a politician; he served in the US Senate, from 1801 to 1810. Sumter was nicknamed the “Carolina Gamecock” for his fierce fighting style against British soldiers after they burned down his house during the Revolution.
On December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded from the US. It was the first of eleven slave states to secede and led to the eventual creation of the Confederate States of America and the Civil War.
Ninety Six is a town found in South Carolina, United States. Nobody knows for sure why the town has its’ peculiar name; theories include that it was 96 miles to the nearest Cherokee settlement of Keowee, a counting of creeks crossing the main road leading from Lexington, South Carolina, to Ninety-Six. or that it was an interpretation of a Welsh expression, “nant-sych,” meaning "dry gulch.
Laxton, a small village in Nottinghamshire, England, is recorded first in 1086, in the Domesday Book, as Laxintone, which probably comes from Anglo-Saxon Leaxingtūn, meaning the “farmstead or estate of the people of a man called Leaxa”. The town of Lexington, Massachusetts (the first of the many Lexingtons in America) was probably named for this village.
The official name of King William’s Domesday Book was Liber de Wintonia. The Bastard’s subjects gave it its nickname, referring to the Day of Doom, because
[off-topic] Did you guys throw a party for Bullitt when he made his 5000th post two weeks ago?
[SPOILER]
The top places look pretty settled, but Annie-Xmas recently moved into 6th place. My own 15th place may be in jeopardy.
Who Posted?
Total Posts: 33,286
User Name Posts
Bullitt 5,000
Elendil’s Heir 4,122
ElvisL1ves 3,080
RealityChuck 2,274
Northern Piper 1,805
Annie-Xmas 1,447
Sampiro 1,446
jtur88 1,420
Siam Sam 1,339
Cunctator 1,332
astorian 1,241
Sternvogel 981
The Stainless Steel Rat 764
kunilou 605
septimus 562
gkster 512
Prof. Pepperwinkle 391[/SPOILER]
Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment was restored along with the Sistine Chapel vault between 1980 and 1994. During the course of the restoration, numerous pieces of buried details, caught under the smoke and grime of scores of years, were revealed. It was discovered that the fresco of Biagio de Cesena as Minos with donkey ears was being bitten in the genitalia by a coiled snake. Another discovery is of the figure condemned to Hell directly below and to the right of St. Bartholomew with flayed skin. It was, for centuries, considered to be male until removal of the “fig leaf” showed that it was female.
The use of the fig leaf to cover nudity dates back to the Biblical reference to Adam and Eve, who, to cover their nakedness, used fig leaves.
The edible fig is one of the first plants that was cultivated by humans. Nine subfossil figs of a parthenocarpic (and therefore sterile) type dating to about 9400–9200 BC were found in the early Neolithic village Gilgal I (in the Jordan Valley, north of Jericho). The find predates the domestication of wheat, barley, and legumes, and may thus be the first known instance of agriculture. It is proposed that this sterile but desirable type was planted and cultivated intentionally, one thousand years before the next crops were domesticated (wheat and rye).
On September 29, 1923, the British Mandate for Palestine came into effect. The civil Mandate administration was formalized with League of Nations’ consent covering two administrative areas. The land west of the Jordan River, known as Palestine, was under direct British administration until 1948. The land east of the Jordan was a semi-autonomous region known as Transjordan, under the rule of the Hashemite family from the Hijaz, and gained independence in 1946
The first Rural Free Delivery of US mail was in Charles Town, West Virginia, on October 1, 1896. By postal mandate, all rural areas were served by 1903. A carrier from the post office would drive the route every day, putting mail in the first rural mailboxes. Before that, rural residents had to travel into town to collect their mail at the local post office, or pay a private contractor to deliver their mail…
Huzzah for Bullitt!
John Brown, convicted for his role in attempting to trigger a slave insurrection at Harper’s Ferry, Va., was executed by hanging at Charles Town. John Wilkes Booth, actor and future assassin, was present for the event.
During Egypt’s Middle Kingdom, blind harpers performing music are depicted on tomb walls. Ancient Egyptians were not only interested in the causes and cures for blindness but also the social care of the individual some 4,000 years ago.
In the 2008 British drama Slumdog Millionaire, it is said that blind beggars in India make more money for their handlers than sighted ones, so some young orphans are purposefully blinded before being sent out on the street to beg. The movie’s accuracy and message have been criticized by many Indians.