On February 23, 1739, the identity of Dick Turpin was revealed by a letter he wrote to his brother-in-law from his prison cell in York Castle, which letter fell into the hands of authorities on this date. Turpin had a career in England as a highwayman,** horse** thief, and killer. He became a legend after his execution in ballads and popular theater, and later in film and television.
There have been three professional boxers with the surname Turpin.
Randy Turpin knocked out Floyd Pateson to win the world middleweight championship in 1951.
Dick Turpin was the first black boxer to win a British championship.
Najai Turpin was a professional boxer who appeared as a conestant on an American survivor TV show, then took his own life.
The original recording of the song “The Boxer” is one of Simon and Garfunkel’s most highly produced, and took over 100 hours to record. The iconic crashing sound in the refrain was recorded by setting up a drum kit in front of an elevator shaft, which provided the proper reverb.
During a New York City concert in October 2010, Paul Simon stopped singing midway through “The Boxer” to tell the story of a woman who stopped him on the street to tell him that she edits the song when singing it to her young child. Simon told the audience that she removed the words “the whores” and altered the song to say, “I get no offers, just a come-on from toy stores on Seventh Avenue.” Simon laughingly commented that he felt that it was “a better line.”
Paul Simon served in the US Congress for 22 years, a familiar figure in a bow tie, horn rimmed glasses, and oversized ears. At the age of 20, he borrowed $3,000 to buy the newspaper in Troy, Illinois, and became the youngest editor-publisher in the USA.
Al Franken regularly played U.S. Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) on Saturday Night Live (droning “They tell me I should get rid of the glasses and the bow tie…”), and later was elected to the Senate in his own right, representing Minnesota as a Democrat.
Only two Canadian Prime Ministers sat in the Senate: Sir John Abbott and Sir Mackenzie Bowell.
Neither were particularly successful. Abbott was essentially a caretaker for his eventual successor, Sir John Thompson.
Boswell succeeded Thompson on the latter’s sudden death at Windsor Castle, and was himself forced out of office by a Cabinet revolt, replaced by Sir Charles Tupper.
In 1942, Earl Tupper invented what was the first in a line that eventually became known as Tupperware.
Tupper’s self-referential formula is a formula that, when graphed in two dimensions at a specific location in the plane, can be “programmed” to visually reproduce the formula itself. Defined by Jeff Tupper in 2001, it is used in various math and computer science courses as an exercise in graphing formulae.
On June 11, 1955, Formula One cars driven by Pierre Levegh and Lance Macklin collided during the 24 Hours of Le Mans sports car endurance race. The flammable magnesium body of the Levegh’s Mercedes quickly ignited in the accident. The combination of the fire and flying car parts killed 83 spectators with over 100 injured. Levegh also died. The race was continued in order to prevent the spectators from leaving, which would have blocked all access roads and the ambulances.
The Roman wall in the old town of Le Mans is one of the best of its type still extant in France. The 3/4 mile long construction is laid out with 12 towers wrapping around the immaculately preserved and restored Old City. There are only two longer ancient Roman walls left, in Rome and Istanbul (not Constantinopole).
France still retains a small foothold off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, as a result of the 1763 Treaty of Paris, which ended to the Seven Years’ War. The islands have a current population of just over 6,000.
Marie Skłodowska Curie shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and with physicist Henri Becquerel. She won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win twice, the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences, and was part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes.
The young heroine of the Christmas children’s classic The Nutcracker is named Clara in some versions, and Marie in others.
The Nutcracker variations have passed inernationally through the hands of four of the greatest names in literature and performing arts. The story “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” was originally written by the German E T A Hoffman. An adaptation, by the French Alexander Dumas was then set to ballet by the Russian Peter Tchaikovsky, and most people now know only of the Suite that the American Walt Disney immortalized in his film Fantasia.
Tchaikovsky was not comfortable with his voice being recorded for posterity and tried to shy away from it. One one occasion, Julius Block asked the composer to play something on a piano or at least say something, so it could be recorded. Tchaikovsky refused. He told Block, “I am a bad pianist and my voice is raspy. Why should one eternalize it?”
In Sharon O’Connor’s Menus and Music Series, #5 is the Nutcracker Sweet, and it’s the only cookbook in the series with no menus, just dessert recipes. And a recording of Tchaikovsky;s Nutcracker Suite.
Sharon, Connecticut, is in the northwest corner of the state. It is bounded on the north by Salisbury, on the east by the Housatonic River, on the south by Kent, and on the west by Dutchess County, New York. At the time of the 2010 census, the town had a total population of 2,782. It was in the shops of the Hotchkiss Company located in Sharon that the Hotchkiss explosive shell for rifled guns was invented, which led to the expansion of the company and its eventual move to Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Sharon Gless, of “Cagney and Lacey”, was the last actor in Hollywood to be a studio contract player, due to her 1974 10-year exclusive contract with Universal Studios.
On October 6, 1927, The Jazz Singer (the first prominent talking movie) opened. Al Jolson, on whose life the play and screenplay were based, sang six songs—he was an American singer, film actor, and comedian who was dubbed “The World’s Greatest Entertainer.”