Houston’s, a casual restaurant chain, is owned by Hillstone Restaurant Group.
According to an NPR News story I heard a few years ago, Houston, Texas is the only city of its size without any zoning restrictions.
Richard Friedman formed his first band, King Arthur & the Carrots, while a student at the University of Texas at Austin. The band, which poked fun at surf music, recorded only one single in 1966 (“Schwinn 24/Beach Party Boo Boo”).He formed his second band, Kinky Friedman and The Texas Jewboys, in 1971 which many took to be a play on the name of the famous band Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. In keeping with the band’s satirical nature, each member had a comical name: in addition to Kinky there was Little Jewford, Big Nig, Panama Red, Wichita Culpepper, Sky Cap Adams, Rainbow Colours, and Snakebite Jacobs
The memoir “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” by Harriet Jacobs, was published in 1861. For decades, it was believed to have been written by white abolitionist Lydia Maria Child, since Jacobs wrote it pseudonymously with Child’s help, and an African American woman was believed incapable of the level of writing in the book.
In her memoir, Jacobs outlines her journey from slavery to freedom and exposes the sexual harassment and abuse to which enslaved women were subjected. It is available on Project Gutenberg and on amazon kindle (at no cost)
There are only three other cities that would qualify as “of its size”, so that rather dilutes the distinction.
We return you now to our regularly scheduled trivia.
Lydia Maria Child wrote “Over the River and Through the Woods.”
Across the River and Into the Trees is a novel by American writer Ernest Hemingway. It opens with aging Colonel Richard Cantwell duck hunting in Trieste, Italy. It then presents his life in a lengthy flashback, with Cantwell thinking about a young Venetian woman, Renata, and his experiences during World War I.
All three Kings of England named Richard died violent deaths.
“Across the Wide Missouri” was a traditional American song of unknown origin, usually titled “Oh Shenandoah”,a name that appears to have been used beginning in the 1920s, but versions of the song date back at least to fur trappers in the early 1800s. It was used as a title of Bernard DeVoto’s landmark 1947 book chronicling the history of that era, and then four years later, a movie starring Clark Gable.
Clark Gable, costar of Gone with the Wind, about the Civil War and its impact on the people of the South, was born in Cadiz, Ohio. George Gordon Meade, commander of the U.S. Army of the Potomac at the Battle of Gettysburg, was born in Cadiz, Spain.
The Gordon Riots in London in 1780 were triggered by protests against a 1778 act which reduced the legal disabilities of Catholics in England. The riots were named for Lord George Gordon, the President of the Protestant Association. The rioters caused extensive property damage to Catholic chapels, the Bank of England, and the home of Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chancellor. They also badly damaged two prisons, Newgate and the Clink, freeing many prisoners who were never recaptured.
ninja’d
Restore Our Alienated Rights (ROAR) was an anti-desegregation busing organization formed in Boston, Massachusetts by Boston School Committee chairwoman Louise Day Hicks in 1974. Using tactics modeled on the civil rights movement, ROAR activists led marches in Charlestown and South Boston, public prayers, sit-ins of school buildings and government offices, protests at the homes of prominent Bostonians, mock funerals, and even a small march on Washington DC. By 1976, with the failure to block implementation of the busing plan, the organization declined.
The earliest promulgation of Rights predated the Magna Carta by six centuries. The Constitution of Medina (622 AD) in Arabia instituted a number of rights for the Muslim, Jewish and pagan communities of Medina, establishing freedom of worship for non-Muslims, the security of women, a system for granting protection to individuals, and a judicial system. All of which are still in force in Islamic countries.
What follows is the body of a letter I wrote to the editors of The New Yorker on April 20, 2015:
JILL LEPORE’s article on “The Meaning of Magna Carta” downplays the current significance of that document beyond what is prudent. She fails to take notice of the restriction of amercements in Article 20—in particular the clause reading, in translation, “A free man shall not be amerced for a trivial offense except in accordance with the degree of the offense.” That restriction is of utmost importance today when state and local governments seek to solve their growing financial problems by seizing buildings and vehicles as amercements for possession of small amounts of marijuana or other drugs. (Wikipedia’s entry for “Amercement” collects cases in point from several states.) In the case of Den v. U.S., the Supreme Court held that the Constitution’s assurances of “due process” incorporate the standards of Magna Carta.
The phrase “Jack and Jill”, indicating a boy and a girl, was in use in England as early as the 16th century. A comedy was performed at the Elizabethan court in 1567-8 with the title Jack and Jill and the phrase was used twice by Shakespeare: in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which contains the line: “Jack shall have Jill; Nought shall go ill” (III:ii:460-2) and in Love’s Labour’s Lost, which has the lines: “Our wooing doth not end like an old play; Jack hath not Jill” (V:ii:874–5), suggesting that it was a phrase that indicated a romantically attached couple, as in the proverb “A good Jack makes a good Jill”.
The Jack in a deck of playing cards is unique to English language cards. In most languages, the letter V is used as the index on a card named Valet or a variation thereof. On Russian cards, this is represented with a B, of the Cyrillic alphabet.
The Valet de chambre was a court appointment introduced in the late Middle Ages, common from the 14th century onwards. At the most prestigious level it could be akin to a monarch or ruler’s personal secretary. For noblemen pursuing a career as courtiers, it was a common early step on the ladder to higher offices.
It is illegal to paint a ladder in Alberta, Canada. I think it must have been once in some states in the USA, too, because as a child my dad told me it is illegal to paint a ladder. I suspect the rationale might be that painting over the surface of a wooden ladder might hide a structural defect that would make it unsafe. Such laws would predate the concept of an aluminum ladder, which did not exist until the mid-20th century.
TLTE:
In California, “wood ladders shall not be painted with other than a transparent material.” . 3276(e)(4),(5)
So maybe it is illegal to paint one everywhere/.