There have been six U.S. Navy warships named USS Independence, the most recent of which is a Littoral Combat Ship commissioned in January 2010.
The New Jersey Lottery operated a special “Bicentennial Lottery” on July 4, 1976 (Independence Day) in which the winner received $1,776 per week (before taxes) for 20 years (a total of $1,847,040).
In the original *Rocky *film, heavyweight champ Apollo Creed celebrates the bicentennial by offering a local pug from Philadelphia a shot at the title. Creed enters the ring dressed like George Washington, then Uncle Sam.
The term “Uncle Sam” is reputedly derived from Samuel Wilson, a meat packer from Troy, New York who supplied rations for the soldiers during the War of 1812. There was a requirement at the time for contractors to stamp their name and where the rations came from onto the food they were sending. Wilson’s packages were labeled “E.A – US.” When someone asked what that stood for, a coworker joked and said, “Elbert Anderson (the contractor) and Uncle Sam,” referring to Sam Wilson, though it actually stood for United States.
On April 21, 1836, Mexico’s President Antonio López de Santa Anna was asleep and his army was standing down just before the Battle of San Jacinto in Mexican Texas. The Mexican leader thought Texan forces led by Sam Houston were retreating. Shouting “Remember the Alamo!” the Texan forces reversed direction and attacked, winning the battle decisively in 18 minutes. Santa Anna rode off on horseback but was taken the next day and traded for a cessation of hostilities and a partitioning of the territory. Intermittent conflicts continued, however, for nine more years until Texas was annexed by the US—thereby triggering the Mexican–American War.
Alamogordo, NM was named after a grove of fat cottonwood trees in the Pecos River area. “Gordo” means large/fat and “Alamo” is a cottonwood in Spanish.
The United States Department of Agriculture sizing for chicken eggs is based by weight per dozen. The most common U.S. size is “Large” and is the egg size commonly referred to for recipes.
The following minimum egg masses (including shell) have been calculated on the basis of the USDA sizing:
Jumbo: 70.9 g
Extra-Large: 63.8 g
Large: 56.7 g
Medium: 49.6 g
Small: 42.5 g
Peewee: 35.4 g
There is no universally agreed plural for egg-laying, duck billed, venomous “platypus” in the English language. Scientists generally use “platypuses” or simply “platypus”. Colloquially, the term “platypi” is also used for the plural, although this is technically incorrect and a form of pseudo-Latin; the correct Greek plural would be “platypodes”.
A gyro or gyros is a Greek dish made of meat cooked on a vertical rotisserie, traditionally pork or chicken. It is usually served wrapped in a flatbread such as pita, with mustard, tomato, onion, and tzatziki sauce among other garnishments.
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) and PITA (Pain In The Ass) are both pronounced pee-ta. Which explains a lot.
In Canada, the Criminal Code prohibits gambling, but makes a number of exceptions. One of those exceptions is to allow an executor to divide up groups of unique items in the estate by lot, when the heirs cannot agree who should get which item.
Although the practice in Canada is to italicize collections of statutes such as the Criminal Code, that is not so in the United States, as with the United States Code, the Ohio Revised Code, etc.
Thomas Edison suffered from deafness and he taught his fiancée, Mary Sitwell, Morse code. He proposed by tapping out the message in her hand. She answered in the same way. After their marriage (her first, his second), they often spoke to each other in Morse code.
“Code” appears to have a different meaning in the US and Canadian legal systems. In Canada, a “code” is a comprehensive statute dealing with a particular subject matter. Like other statutes the name of this type of code is capitalized: Criminal Code, Civil Code of Quebec, The Saskatchewan Human Rights Code.
A collection of statutes appears to be called a “code” in the US, but not so in Canada. In Canada, the term “Revised Statutes” is used, without italics, such as the “Revised Statutes of Canada, 1985.”
On January 3, 1976, the multilateral International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, part of the International Bill of Human Rights, came into effect. It had been adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 16, 1966. Five countries on whose behalf the Covenant has been signed—but which have not ratified it—are: Comoros, Cuba, Palau, São Tomé and Príncipe, and the US. The Obama Administration has continued official US resistance to the Covenant. The Heritage Foundation, a think tank, has argued that signing it would entail the introduction of unwise policies such as universal health care.
The Covenant is a James Michener novel dealing with the history of South Africa.
Mount Michener, with a 8,350-foot peak, is a mountain on the eastern border of the Canadian Rockies in Alberta, Canada. It was named in 1982 after Daniel Roland Michener who was the Governor General of Canada from 1967-1974. Its previous names were Eye Opener Mountain and Phoebe’s Teat.
It is not so very difficult to understand how the resemblance of some mountains to certain parts of the female anatomy led to the peaks being given feminine names, as in the case of Pheobe’s Teat. Similarly, the Tetons range in Wyoming is believed to have been named either by the French on the basis of the French word for breasts or in honor of the Teton Sioux Native Americans who inhabited the region.
In Greek mythology, Phoebe is the daughter of Uranus and Gaia and the grandmother of Apollo.
One unique feature of New York’s Apollo Theater during Amateur Nights was “the executioner”, a man with a broom who would sweep performers off the stage if the highly vocal and opinionated audiences began to call for their removal. Vaudeville tap dancer “Sandman” Sims played the role from the 1950s to 2000; stagehand Norman Miller, known as “Porto Rico” (later played by Bob Collins) might also chase the unfortunate performer offstage with a cap pistol, accompanied by the sound of a siren.