As part of the bicentennial celebration of the Battle of Waterloo, in 2015 Belgium minted a 2 Euro coin depicting the Lion monument over a map of the field of battle. France officially protested this issue, while the Belgian government noted that the French mint sells souvenir medals at Waterloo. After 180,000 coins were minted but not released, the issue was melted. Instead, Belgium issued an identical commemorative coin in the non-standard value of 2½ Euros, legally only valid within Belgium.
The title of the Simon & Garfunkel album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme names three members of the mint family (Lamiaceae). Parsley is the odd-man out, being in the Apiaceae family along with carrots, anise and celery.
The Denver Mint is a branch of the United States Mint that struck its first coins on February 1, 1906. The mint is still operating and producing coins for circulation, and is the single largest producer of coins in the world.
On an episode of Gilligan’s Island, multimillionaire Mr. Howell made out his will and left Gilligan some real estate–the city of Denver, Colorado.
Bob Denver played Gilligan.
Ginger and Mary Anne are the only surviving castaways from Gilligan’s Island.
The self-imposed castaways from HMS Bounty eventually ended up on Pitcairn Island, where they survived the British search for them. There are still some 50 descendants of the mutineers on the island. The wreck of the scuttled Bounty is still visible under water in Bounty Bay. It was rediscovered in 1957 by National Geographic explorers.
The books of the Bounty trilogy - Mutiny on the Bounty, Men Against the Sea, and Pitcairn’s Island - were written by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, who both flew in the Lafayette Escadrille although they did not actually meet until after the war. Both men moved to Tahiti to do research for earlier books on the South Seas, and ended up staying there, Nordhoff for twenty years, Hall for life.
The Hawaiian Islands were first settled as early as 400 C.E., when Polynesians from the Marquesas Islands, 2000 miles away, traveled to Hawaii’s Big Island in canoes. Later settlers came from Tahiti, 2700 miles away, around 900 years later.
Captain James Cook was killed on the Kona Coast of the island of Hawaii. It was his third world exploration voyage and he and his crews had survived much hardship. On this voyage, he had spent a month in Hawaii, but a mast broke right after departing and he returned to repair it. Tensions arose between the crew and the islanders, and peaked when a group of islanders took one of Cook’s small boats. Cook made the mistake of trying to kidnap King Kalaniʻōpuʻu to ransom the boat and was killed along with four Marines by a group of Hawaiians on the beach.
Thomas Cook & Son, originally simply Thomas Cook, was a company founded by Thomas Cook, a cabinet-maker, in 1841 to carry temperance supporters by railway between the cities of Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Birmingham. While now under different management, it is still one of the most famous tour organizations in the world.
The Earl of Derby and the Earl of Bunbury were two English horsemen who decided to start a sweepstakes race for colts. They flipped a coin for the honor of naming the race; the Earl of Derby won and the race was given his name. I’d he had lost, they’d be running the Kentucky Bunbury every May.
On June 4, 1913, Emily Davison was fatally injured when she was trampled by King George V’s horse at the Epsom Derby. She was a militant activist who fought for women’s suffrage in Britain, being jailed on nine occasions and force-fed 49 times. She is best known for stepping in front of King George V’s horse Anmer, suffering fatal injuries as a result. Thousands of suffragettes accompanied her funeral coffin and tens of thousands of people lined the streets of London.
The character of Mrs. Banks, played by Glynis Johns in the 1964 Disney musical film Mary Poppins, sings the song “Sister Suffragette” in celebration of the women’s suffrage movement.
Louise McKinney was the first woman elected to a provincial or national legislature in the British Empire, being elected to the Legislature of Alberta in 1918, as a result of the women’s suffrage movement.
[Nitpick: Sir Charles Bunbury, not the Earl of Bunbury. No relation to John Worthing’s friend Mr Bunbury, of course. 
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Helen Louise Taft (née Herron) was one of the more formidable First Ladies of the United States. She sat in on her husband’s cabinet meetings, arranged for Washington’s famous cherry blossoms, attended both the Republican and Democratic conventions in 1912, and so on. It is said that her skills and energy as a lobbyist advanced her husband’s career. His ambition was just to be a Supreme Court Justice — he got his wish, as Chief, … after a detour to the White House!
[Nitpick of the Nitpick: The putative Mr. Bunbury’s friend John Worthing was actually christened Ernest Moncrieff. (Presumably he also has a middle name, perhaps John, since every luxury that money could buy had been lavished on him.)
Lady **Louise **Windsor is the elder child and only daughter of Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, and Sophie, Countess of Wessex. She is the youngest granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. At the time of her birth, Lady Louise was eighth in the line of succession to succeed her grandmother, but is now eleventh after the births of her brother James, and first cousins once removed Prince George and Princess Charlotte.
England’s King Charles I’s sister was the maternal grandmother of King George I, whose sister was the mother of King Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia. Thus all three of these Kings inherited the mtDNA of King James I’s wife, Anne of Denmark. This Anne’s gt-gt grandmother, BTW, along the purely uterine line, was Anne Jagellon. Anne Jagellon was the daughter of a King of Poland and his wife, Elizabeth von Habsburg. (Elizabeth’s father was a Holy Roman Emperor. Her mother was Elizabeth of Bohemia, also daughter of a Holy Roman Emperor.)
Louise Wilhelmina of Hesse-Cassel, wife of Denmark’s King Christian IX, was the mother of both King George I of Greece and King Frederick VIII of Denmark. One of their sisters was the mother of Czar Nicholas II; another sister was the mother of King George V of England. George’s sister in turn was the mother of Norway’s King Olav V. Thus these five Kings all inherited the mtDNA of Louise Wilhelmina of Hesse-Cassel. Louise’s gt-gt-gt-gt-gt grandmother along the purely uterine line was Anna Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, wife of a (cadet) Duke of Saxony.
King George III of England’s gt-gt grandmother, along the uterine line, was this same Anna Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Anne Marie’s gt-grandmother along the uterine line was Christine of Hesse. The uterine gt-grandmother of King Carl X of Sweden was a sister of this same Christine of Hesse. (Another sister was the mother of a sovereign Duke of Wurttemberg. Yet another sister was the maternal grandmother of a sovereign Prince of Orange.)
But Wait! Christine of Hesse’s maternal grandmother was Barbara Jagellon, sister of the very Anne Jagellon in the first paragraph. Thus Kings Charles I, George I, George III, and George V of England, along with a Czar of Russia, a King of Prussia, a King of Greece, a King of Denmark, a King of Sweden, and a King of Norway (along with numerous sovereign Dukes and Princes) all inherited the mtDNA of Elizabeth von Habsburg.
Remarkable coincidence? One almost wants to speculate that a real-life Bene Gesserit was operating to preserve this uterine line! :smack:
Two daughters of Queen Victoria, Princess Alice and Princess Beatrice, were carriers of hemophilia and spread the disease to the royal families of Hesse, Prussia, Russia, Battenburg and Spain. The last of Victoria’s hemophiliac descendants, her great-grandson Waldemar of Prussia, died in 1945. Unlike many hemophiliacs born in the 1800s, he survived to age 56. He died in a clinic in Tutzing, Bavaria because of the lack of blood transfusion facilities. He and his wife fled their home in light of the Russian advance, arriving in Tutzing, where Waldemar was able to receive his last blood transfusion. The American Army overran the area the next day, 1 May 1945, and diverted all medical resources to treat concentration camp victims, preventing Waldemar’s German doctor from treating him. Waldemar died the following day, on 2 May.
Waldemar Levy Cardoso, who died in 2009, age 109, was the last living Marshal of the Brazilian Army. He was also at the time of his death the last surviving veteran of the Brazilian Revolution of 1930, the oldest World War II veteran and last surviving World War I veteran from Brazil.
Pietro Forquet is the only surviving member of Italy’s original Blue Team which dominated contract bridge’s world championships during the 1950’s, 60’s and early 70’s. Benito Garozzo is another surviving member, though he joined in 1961 becoming Forquet’s regular partner, so wasn’t on the original team.
Benito Garozzo is widely considered the greatest card player ever. The late American expert Grant Baze recalled discussing bridge problems with Blue Team stars Forquet and Belladonna (each of whom is also among the greatest bridge players ever), and sometimes hearing “This problem is too difficult, we are going to have to ask Benito.”