The Northern Cardinal, one of America’s best known songbirds, occurs only east of the Rockies, except for a small part of the desert southwest. Along the Mexican border, the Pyrrhuloxia is more common – a closely related species very similar to the cardinal but of less striking color. Spell-check lists only birds of eastern American bias, while many western species go unrecognized, such as wrentit and phainopepla.
Northern Michigan University is a public university located in Marquette, in the Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. With an enrollment of about 9,000 undergraduate and graduate students, it is the Upper Peninsula’s largest university.
Ninja’d.
And it was a good one.
Northern Michigan University is not the most northerly university in the state. Michigan Tech is, in Houghton. But NMU is about 4 miles further north than Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie.
Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, with around 15,000 residents, is much smaller than it’s neighbor city Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, which has around 75,000 residents. This is due to more extensive industry developed in the Canadian city in the 20th century and an economy with closer connections to other communities than their U.S. counterpart.
In 1985, Colm Wilkerson collaborated with Andrew Lloyd Webber, originating the role of the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera at the Sydmonton workshop.He was offered the role for the show’s debut on the West End, but instead chose to play Jean Valjean in Les Misérables.
The London production of Les Misérables opened in October 1985, and transferred to Broadway in March 1987. Originally, the American Actors’ Equity Association refused to allow Wilkinson to play the part of Valjean in New York, due to its policy of hiring only American actors unless an actor outside America was an international star. At this, producer Cameron Mackintosh refused to open the show unless Wilkinson played Valjean, and Actors’ Equity relented. Wilkinson took the lead role despite the temporary setback. He won the Helen Hayes Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, and the Theatre World Award for his performance; he was nominated for the Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for Best Actor in a Musical.
In 1989, Wilkinson relocated his family to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, when he was offered the title role in the original Toronto production of The Phantom of the Opera playing at the Pantages Theatre. He has lived in Toronto ever since, and became a Canadian citizen in the early 2000s.
The premiere of The Barber of Seville, on February 20, 1816, was one of the great opera fiascos of all time. In addition to comical mishaps such as a cat wandering onto the stage and Don Basilio getting tangled up in his own robes, the audience was full of Paisiello fans who hissed and booed the young composer. Rossini fled the theater fearing for his life.
James Monroe, Democratic-Republican of Virginia, won a huge victory over Rufus King, Federalist of New York, in the U.S. presidential election of 1816, receiving 68.2% of the vote.
Rufus King of New York was born in Maine (not yet a separate state at that time) and attended the Constitutional Convention as a 31 year old delegate from Massachusetts. Despite his comparative youth and political inexperience, he was a key figure, being an energetic and persuasive orator, and after signing the Constitution was able to get it ratified in Massachusetts, by one vote. He moved to New York in the early 1800s; his home, King Manor, once a rural farm, still survives as a museum in a small park in now heavily urban Jamaica, Queens.
[I’ve been there; it’s an interesting little museum but overlooked because of King’s obscurity and the many many other sites in NYC]
Nobody was born in Texarkana, Arkansas, and most residents there not even born in Arkansas. The only maternity hospital to serve both cities of Texarkana (Texas and Arkansas) is in Texas, so there are very few Arkansas-born school children going to school in Arkansas’12th largest city.
There are two bands named The Nobodies: a new-wave band from Los Angeles and a punk band from Colorado Springs.
In Shakespeare’s Henry V, Henry rebukes his cousin Westmorland on the eve of Agincourt for wishing for more men, and rouses his men with the Crispin Day speech. It ends with:
In at least one case, the brother of the head of state of a sovereign country played the film role of the head of state of another. Raymond Massey, who was the brother of Vincent Massey, the governor-general of Canada, was nominated for an Oscar for his role in “Abe Lincoln in Illinois”.
On March 26, 1885, the Métis people led by Louis Riel began the North-West Rebellion. In 1870 Riel was forced go in exile to the Montana Territory. While a fugitive, he was elected three times to the House of Commons in Canada, although he never assumed his seat.
Massachusetts ratified the Constitution by a broader margin than that: History of the United States Constitution - Wikipedia
King George VI was the head of state of Canada in 1940; the Governor-General was and is the monarch’s representative.
In play:
The official name of the nation of the north of the United States of America is simply “Canada,” without reference to a kingdom, realm, dominion or other polity.
The official name of the country to the south, translated into English, is The United Mexican States. There are 31 of them, constitutionally free and sovereign, each with internal powers similar to those of the USA.
A person accused of a criminal offence anywhere in Canada has the right to be tried in English or French, whichever is the person’s native language.
[quote=“Elendil_s_Heir, post:33421, topic:527657”]
Massachusetts ratified the Constitution by a broader margin than that: History of the United States Constitution - Wikipedia
Duh! Dyslexia strikes again–I misread 187-168 as 187-186
In play
Sir Walter Scott’s “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” was a great success, making the poet famous. In particular, the following lines from the 6th Canto were frequently memorized and quoted:
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d
From wandering on a foreign strand!
Walter, the ‘grumpy old man’ ventriloquists’ dummy for Jeff Dunham, was modeled after he watched Bette Davis’ final appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, giving her honest, unfiltered candor to Walter.
On July 21, 1865, Wild Bill Hickok shot and killed Davis Tutt over a poker debt. It was one of the few recorded instances of a “quick draw” gun duel in America’s West. The story of the shootout in the town square of Springfield, Missouri, made Hickok a household name and folk hero.