July 9 Avenue, located in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, is the widest **road **in the world. The avenue has up to seven lanes in each direction and is flanked on either side by parallel streets of two lanes each. The avenue’s unusual width is because it spans an entire city block, the distance between two streets in the checkerboard pattern used in Buenos Aires.
The older streets of Salt Lake City are notably wide, at 132 feet (8 perches), because Brigham Young ordered that a wagon and team be able to turn around in any of them. That allowed the city to later adapt to the automobile almost seamlessly, although it remains pedestrian-hostile.
While the Great Salt Lake is the saltiest major lake in the United States, the world has much saltier lakes, for example Lake Assal (with surface elevation negative 155 meters the lowest land point in Africa) and the Dead Sea (with surface elevation negative 430 meters the lowest land point on Earth).
Lake Assal, whose water inflow comes from deep fissures connecting it to the ocean, is a major source of commercial salt. To protect its unique environment there is a plan to declare it and a nearby volcano a World Heritage Site.
The Dead Sea, whose water comes from the Jordan River, is much larger than Lake Assal, but is also threatened by over-exploitation. Its waters are known for their healing powers, and its minerals are used to make cosmetics. The Dead Sea is also a multi-billion dollar commercial source of chemicals like potash.
The world’s lowest road, Highway 90, runs along the Israeli and West Bank shores of the Dead Sea at 393 m (1,289 ft) below sea level.
The Palestinian West Bank has a 40 km coastline with the Dead Sea. It is estimated that this would support a $900 million chemical industry (“almost equivalent to the contribution of the entire manufacturing sector of Palestinian territories today”) but this industry has not developed “due to restricted access, permit issues and the uncertainties of the investment climate.”
Westbank First Nation is a self-governing nation in the Okanagan region of the Canadian province of British Columbia and is one of seven bands that comprise the Okanagan Nation Alliance. Westbank First Nation’s land base totals 5,306 acres, separated into five land parcels.
Because of a perceived association with Satanism and occultism, many United States schools in the late 1990’s sought to prevent students from displaying the five pointed pentagram on clothing or jewelry. In public schools, such actions by administrators were determined to be in violation of students’ First Amendment right to free exercise of religion in 2000. The encircled pentagram (referred to as a pentacle by the plaintiffs) was added to the list of 38 approved religious symbols to be placed on the tombstones of fallen service members at Arlington National Cemetery on April 24, 2007. The decision was made following ten applications from families of fallen soldiers who practiced Wicca. The government paid the families $225,000 to settle their pending lawsuits.
The Okanagan, together with the Tlingit, the Haida and other aboriginal peoples of the Pacific Northwest, have legends that show the raven as the creator of light and as a trickster figure.
According to websites on the pentagram/pentacle, Native American art uses the symbol.
All four of the first U.S. Army casualties buried at Arlington National Cemetery during the Civil War had the first name “William.”
When Prince William succeeds to the throne, he will likely use the regnal name of William V. That name is unusual amongst the English/British monarchs because of the long gaps between its use.
While William II directly succeeded William I in 1087 and reigned until 1100, after his death there was no king by that name for 589 years, until William III became king.
After William III died in 1702, there was no king named William until William IV succeeded in 1830, 128 years later.
William IV died in 1837, so it is at least a gap of over 180 years until Prince William becomes William V.
The oldest son of King Robert II of Scotland was christened John, but took the regnal name Robert III when he assumed the throne, partly to reinforce his descent from his admired great-grandfather King Robert the Bruce, but also to disassociate himself from the hated King John Balliol.
This causes a little confusion since it gave the King the same name as his brother, Robert of Albany, who was a prominent Scottish leader who served multiple times as Regent of Scotland.
On November 17, 1292, John Balliol became King of Scots despite the counter efforts of his rival Robert de Brus, known as “Robert the Bruce” or “Bruce.” In 1320, the Scottish magnates and nobles submitted a Declaration of Arbroath to Pope John XXII, declaring Bruce as their rightful monarch and asserting Scotland’s status as an independent kingdom. In 1324, the Pope recognized Bruce as king of an independent Scotland.
During his tenure at Saturday Night Live, John Belushi’s excessive drug and alcohol use affected his performances, and caused him to be fired and re-hired a number of times by producer Lorne Michaels. In Rolling Stone Magazine’s February, 2015 appraisal of all 141 SNL cast members to that time, Belushi received the top ranking. “Belushi was the ‘live’ in Saturday Night Live,” they wrote, “the one who made the show happen on the edge … Nobody embodied the highs and lows of SNL like Belushi.”
Alec Baldwin’s next SNL hosting gig will be his 17th, breaking the tie for the record with Steve Martin.
The Baldwin Locomotive Works was an American builder of railroad locomotives. It was originally located in Philadelphia, and later moved to nearby Eddystone, Pennsylvania. It stopped producing locomotives in 1956 and went out of business in 1972, having produced over 70,000 locomotives, the vast majority powered by steam.
On September 27, 1825, the Stockton and Darlington Railway opened in northeastern England. It was the first public railway to use steam locomotives, although the efficiencies of that introduction were not proved for many years.
The Reverend W. Awdry created the story of Thomas the Tank Engine, a steam engine, to amuse his young son in 1943. The first book of his stories, The Three Railway Engines was published in 1945, and by the time Awdry stopped writing in 1972, The Railway Series numbered 26 books. The stories became a popular TV series that premiered in the UK in 1984 and in the US in 1989.
On September 27, 1983 Richard M. Stallman announced the GNU Project to provide a free and open alternative to Unix. This soon evolved into the Free Software Movement. In 1989 he founded the League for Programming Freedom.
GNU is an acronym for Gnu’s Not Unix.
The black wildebeest, or gnu, is depicted on the coat of arms of the Province of Natal in South Africa. Over the years the South African authorities have issued several stamps displaying the animal and the South African Mint has struck a two cent piece with a prancing black wildebeest.
The Province of Maryland was granted to George Calvert (and then his son Cecilius) as a “County Palatine,” a status which gave its proprietor much discretion (and in particular removed it from any control by Parliament). The earliest major cities in Maryland were St. Mary’s City and Anne Arundel’s Town. Baltimore was built later and named after the Irish Barony held by the Calvert family. That Barony, in turn, derives its name from the Gaelic place-name “Baile an Tí Mhóir.”