The Society of Writers to Her Majesty’s Signet is a Scottish professional association for solicitors. Although it does not have any regulatory functions, the Society acts to ensure high professional standards for Scottish solicitors.
The Worshipful Company of Mercers are the oldest liveried guild in the city of London, incorporated in 1394. They are a trade association for general merchants, and especially for exporters of wool and importers of velvet, silk and other luxurious fabrics
There have been thirteen warships named HMS London which served in the Royal Navy, the last of which was a Type 22 Broadsword-class frigate launched in 1984 and sold to Romania in 2002.
When Abraham Lincoln’s political rival James Shields challenged him to a duel in 1841, Lincoln, as the one receiving the challenge, had the right to choice of weapons. When he called for broadswords, this gave him, with his height and long right arm, an overwhelming advantage, and the duel was called off.
Duel is a 1971 television thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg in his full-length film directing debut. It stars Dennis Weaver as a terrified motorist stalked on a remote and lonely road by the mostly unseen driver of a mysterious tanker truck.
Sigourney Weaver has three Academy Award nominations: for Best Actress in Aliens and Gorillas in the Mist and for Best Supporting Actress in Working Girl.
Sigourney Weaver’s character in the Alien movies was usually just called by her last name, Ripley; her rank and full name was Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley. She was serving as third-in-command of the commercial starship USCSS Nostromo in the first movie.
From an old episode of Hollywood Squares:
Peter Marshall: According to the Dallas Morning News, is a person ever too old to get his teeth straightened?
Charley Weaver: Well now, that would be my second choice.
The Sesame Street band Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem consists of Dr. Teeth on vocals and keyboards, Animal on drums, Floyd Pepper on bass guitar, Janice on guitar, and Zoot on saxophone. In season five of the show, Lips joined the band on trumpet. Animal, Floyd, and Zoot also played in the Muppet Show pit band, performing the opening and closing themes and underscoring most of the Muppet Show performances. Lips and occasionally Janice appeared in the orchestra in later episodes. Though Lips made some appearances with the group after The Muppet Show ended production, the group later reverted to its original line-up. Also, the original pilot episode featured “Jim”, a Muppet caricature of Jim Henson on banjo.
Mayhem is an advertising character created by Leo Burnett Worldwide for Allstate Insurance. The character has been played by actor Dean Winters since the campaign was launched in April 2010. Almost all the commercials have the same format: To begi, a situation is set up with Mayhem explaining what is going on and hinting at what is about to happen. Once the end result is revealed, Mayhem warns that certain “cut-rate” policies are lacking in coverage, advising the viewers to get their insurance policies through Allstate.
Tommy Chong was introduced as Leo Chingkwake in season 2 of That 70’s show, was a reoccuring character in seasons 2-4, left and came back for seasons 7 & 8. The hippie owner of a Foto Hut at which Hyde once worked, Leo was an Army veteran who served in World War II, where he was awarded a Purple Heart. He disappeared from the series after season four, but is later referenced in season five’s “The Battle of Evermore” when the gang went on a mission to find him, but with no luck. He returned in season seven and remained on the series until the show’s end. In season 8, he got a new job working for Hyde at Grooves.
The phrase “born into the purple” is used as a metaphor for a background of wealth and privilege; however, in the Byzantine Empire it literally meant the birth of a son or daughter of the reigning emperor and his wife, the empress, in the Porphyry Chamber of the Great Palace of Constantinople.
I don’t get it.
In play:
The nearest translation of the titles of Aztec rulers before the Spanish conquest of the early 1500s is not “Emperor,” but “Revered Speaker.” Their capital city was Tenochtitlan, on the ruins of which Mexico City was built.
What other body part would ol’ Charley prefer to have straightened?
In play:
While human sacrifice was practiced throughout Mesoamerica, the Aztecs, if their own accounts are to be believed, brought this practice to an unprecedented level. For example, for the reconsecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs reported that they sacrificed 80,400 prisoners over the course of four days, reportedly by Ahuitzotl, the Great Speaker himself. This number, however, is not universally accepted.
The Bent Pyramid is an ancient Egyptian pyramid located at the royal necropolis of Dahshur, approximately 40 kilometres south of Cairo. It gets its’ name as it rises from the desert at a 54-degree inclination, but the top section is built at the shallower angle of 43 degrees. It has been suggested that due to the steepness of the original angle of inclination the structure may have begun to show signs of instability during construction, forcing the builders to adopt a shallower angle to avert the structure’s collapse.
When Donny Osmond was hosting the $100,000 Pyramid game show, one category that was not chosen was “Musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber”. Osmond was disappointed, as he holds the record for playing the lead in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat the longest.
Ah, thanks, I get it. Not very funny, but I get it.
In play:
Initial production designs for the movie Alien had the lethal eggs discovered by the crew of the USCSS Nostromo concealed in a strange pyramid, not a crashed alien starship.
Before being called Jefferson Starship, they were called Jefferson Airplane. Although the best known lead singer of Jefferson Airplane was Grace Slick, the original lead singer was Signe Toly, who left the band after giving birth (she felt she was no longer able to tour with the band). She eventually moved to Oregon, and had health problems for many years. She died on January 28, 2016, the same day that former Airplane band member Paul Kantner also died.
Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were both born in Kentucky, less than one hundred miles and one year apart. No other president has been born in Kentucky. In spite of Davis’s poor health for most of his life, including repeated bouts of malaria, battle wounds from fighting in the Mexican–American War and a chronic eye infection that made bright light painful, he outlived Lincoln by 24 years, dying at age 81 in 1889.
I recently read an article by a learned SDMBer that mentioned that Senator Seward and Senator Davis were good friends. On one occasion when Davis was confined to a dark room for some weeks because of his eye infection, Seward would come and visit him, telling jokes to cheer Davis up.
Later, Seward became Lincoln’s Secretary of State, dedicated to defeating Davis’s secessionist government.