Al Jolson was born Asa Yoelson in a village in Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire.
The award-winning Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle 1974 science fiction novel The Mote in God’s Eye is about first contact between the Second Empire of Humanity and aliens in the Mote Prime star system.
The Treaty of Paris 1783 is sometimes said to have ended the first British Empire, since the American colonies were such a significant part of the Empire. It was followed by the British expansion into Africa, Asia and the Pacific, which some historians have called the second British Empire.
On December 7, 1815, Michel Ney, Marshal of France, was put to death by a firing squad in Paris for having supported Napoleon.
Despite the advice of aides that the date was inauspicious, President Lyndon Johnson moved into the White House on Dec. 7, 1963, just over two weeks after the assassination of his predecessor, John F. Kennedy, in Dallas.
There have been three Vice-Presidents named Johnson. Two of them succeeded to the presidency upon the assassination of the President. The third was the only Vice-President chosen by the Senate under the terms of the 12th Amendment.
In the 12th century, Middle English began to develop, and literacy began to spread outside the Church throughout Europe. In addition, churchmen were increasingly willing to take on secular roles. By the end of the century, at least a third of England’s bishops also acted as royal judges in secular matters.
Of the hundreds of skyscrapers built in the 20th century over 50 stories high, none have been voluntarily demolished. The tallest to be taken down is the 49-story Singer Building in New York, which was built in 1908. Implosion is rarely used on tall buildings, with Detroit’s 29-story Hudsons deartment store being the tallest example so far. At last count, there are 639 buildings in the USA over 500 feet high, with at least one in 55 cities.
On December 31, 2011, the New Century Global Center opened in Chengdu, China, as the building with the largest amount of floor area in the world—18,900,000 square feet (1,760,000 square meters). [More than 2-1/2 times the size of the Pentagon, for comparison.]
The Roman calendar originally had ten months, with December being the last (tenth) month, as the name implies.
Traditionally, the days between the end of December and the beginning of March were not applied to any month, but King Numa is said to have added the months of January and February to the calendar to include those days.
The Merchandise Mart in Chicago opened in the month of May, 1930, and was then the largest building in the world, with over 4-million square feet of floor space. Which is more than half the floor space of the Pentagon, which opened two decades later…
It’s not clear what the names of the first four months of the Roman calendar signified.
• Martius (March) is traditionally associated with Mars, the god of war, since campaigning would begin in the spring.
• Aprilis (April) may be from “aperio” (“to open”), meaning the earth is open to the fresh seed;
• Maius (May) may come from Maia, the goddess of growth;
• Iunius (June) may come from Iunior (Junior).
After those puzzling four names, Romans gave up on figurative names and went for pedestrian, numerical names based on the position of the month in the calendar: Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November and December (based on the terms for Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth).
Marc Antony is said to have re-named Quintilis in favour of Julius Caesar, and the Emperor Augustus re-named Sextilis for himself.
Numa added his two new months at the end of the year, which still began with March.
The new month Ianuarious is thought to have been named for the two-faced God Ianus, who was the god of openings and closing, beginnings and endings, appropriate for one of the last months of the year.
Februarius is thought to have been named for februum, a thing used for ritual purification, because most of the public events in February related to the dead or closure, appropriate for the last month of the year.
It’s not clear when the beginning of the year was moved to January. It may have been one of Caesar’s reforms as part of the Julian calendar.
American author E.L. Doctorow’s 2005 novel The March deals with the March to the Sea led by U.S. Army Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in late 1864, and its aftermath. Sherman, Gens. U.S. Grant and Judson Kilpatrick, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and the President and Mrs. Abraham Lincoln all appear in the novel, but the central characters - escaped slaves, U.S. infantrymen, civilian photographers, Southern refugees and a pair of Confederate deserters - are all fictional.
The Romans did not count days in the month as a simple number, as we do, but backwards from one of three fixed points in the month: the Kalends, the Nones, and the Ides. The Kalends are always the first of the month. The Nones fell on the 7th day of the long months (March, May, Quinctilis, October), and the 5th of the others. The Ides fell on the 15th if the month was long, and the 13th if the month was short.
Nones is a term sometimes used to refer to those who are unaffiliated with any organized religion. This use derives from surveys of religious affiliation, in which “None” (or “None of the above”) is typically the last choice. Polls show that in the United States, “nones” are the only “religious” group that is growing as a percentage of the population.
FWIW, I am a “None”
A none might become a posslq; see:
And a none might also be a PSSSLQ:
“None” (derived from Latin for “ninth”) is one of the canonical hours, around mid-afternoon, where prayers are said and a psalm read.
There is a nautical tradition that waves grow larger and larger in a series up to the largest wave, the ninth wave, at which point the series starts again. Scientific disciplines associated with the ocean have generally determined that there is no basis for this supposition, but many boaters and surfers still assume it is true.
There is increasing evidence that we have entered the “Sixth Wave” of mass extinctions of species, and the first one attributable to the actions of a single species rather than natural events.