Opponents to the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867 called it “Seward’s Folly”, after Secretary of State William H. Seward, who did most of the negotiations, but many others praised the move for weakening both the UK and Russia as rivals to American commercial expansion in the Pacific region.
The purchase of Alaska, for $7.2 million, was made on March 30, 1867. For most of Alaska’s first decade under the US flag, Sitka was the only community inhabited by American settlers.
The Sitka Spruce is the state tree of Alaska. Its native range is the Pacific Northwest coast, where a number of trees over 700 years old and over 300 feet high are found. It was introduced to Britain in the 1830s and to Norway in the early 1900s and is extensively grown there.
Sitka spruce is of major importance in forestry for timber and paper production. The wood is light but strong; the Wright brothers’ Flyer was built using Sitka spruce, as were many aircraft before World War II.
Due to wartime restrictions on the availability of metals, the Hughes H-4 Hercules,the “Spruce Goose”, was built almost entirely of laminated birch, not spruce.
The C-130 Hercules is the longest continuously produced military aircraft at over 60 years, with the updated Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules currently being produced. The first C-130 entered service in 1956 with the U.S. Air Force and variations of the plane are in use around the globe.
I recently learned that the phrase “Seward’s Folly” did not appear until several years after Congress approved the purchase, as it happens.
In play:
The Israelis used four C-130 Hercules aircraft to carry out the daring raid on July 4, 1976 which freed 102 Israeli and non-Israeli Jewish hostages being held by terrorists in Entebbe, Uganda. Five Israeli commandos were wounded and one, the unit commander, Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, was killed. Netanyahu was the older brother of the current Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
After being mesmerised by the London performance of Les Miserables, cantor David "Dudu"Fisher, despite no prior acting experience, auditioned for the Hebrew production of Les Misérables. He played its leading role, Jean Valjean, in Israel from 1987 to 1990, and made local fame.
He played the role on New York City’s Broadway during the winter of 1993-1994, and later at London’s West End, where he was invited to perform before Queen Elizabeth II. At both venues, Fisher was the first performer excused from Friday night and Saturday performances, as he is an Orthodox Jew and was not able to perform because of the Sabbath.
Anne Hathaway lost 25 pounds to play the role of Fantine in the 2012 film version of Les Miserables. She dropped 10 pounds in three weeks before filming and an additional 15 pounds in just two weeks’ time during production. She admitted to eating almost nothing for the 13 days she was shooting, consuming only two thin pieces of oatmeal paste per day. Hathaway referred to the intense effects this starvation diet had on her body stating, “I couldn’t sleep. I was so starving, my body was keeping me awake at night, like was telling me, ‘Go look for food!’ I was kind of in this otherworldly, slightly ecstatic manic state all the time.”
The Oatmeal is a humor website created in 2009 by cartoonist Matthew Inman. Inman, who lives in Seattle, Washington, updates his site with original comics, quizzes, and occasional articles. The comics cover an eclectic range of topics, including zombies, cats, horse care, internet and English grammar.
if you’re curious: http://theoatmeal.com/
When young David Balfour first meets his miserly uncle Ebeneezer in Kidnapped, Ebeneezer is sitting down to his supper: oatmeal porridge and small beer, with the only cutlery being a horn spoon.
The instrument known as the “French horn” is actually German in origin, and the “English horn” has its origins mostly in Poland.
English Author Jane Austen was virtually blind at the end of her life possibly as a result of arsenic poisoning, according to recent research.
Tests on three pairs of tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses held at the British Library showed the author’s sight deteriorated considerably. At the time, heavy metals like arsenic were used in medicines that Austen, who had rheumatism, may have taken.
Library experts have suggested such poisoning may also have contributed to her early death at the age of 41.
However, there is no definitive proof that the glasses were actually used by Austen herself.
English author Patrick O’Brian, a great admirer of Jane Austen, gave his best-known character, Capt. Jack Aubrey, the same initials as her. Russell Crowe played Aubrey in the movie Master and Commander.
The ship that played the British Frigate HMS Surprise in the movie Master and Commander was originally built in 1970 as the Rose and is currently owned by the Maritime Museum of San Diego, who legally changed its name to the HMS Surprise.
The HMS Surprise replica in 2010 portrayed HMS Providence in the Disney adventure film Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, starring Johnny Depp, Ian McShane and Penelope Cruz.
On July 19, 1545, Mary Rose, the flagship of a British vice admiral, advanced to battle, foundered and sank in the Solent channel off the south coast of England with the loss of all except about 40 of her crew. The exact reasons for the sinking are not known, but it was believed at the time that the crew had been negligent and forgot to close the lower gunports after firing at French galleys, so that when she heeled over in the breeze she took on water and turned over. The battle was part of the Italian Wars fought between the fleets of Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England. [Ninja’d unless the word “the” counts.]
In 1884, the four remaining members of the yacht *Mignonette *were tried and convicted of murder and cannibalism for killing their crewmate Richard Parker, drinking his blood and eating him. Their boat had been lost in a storm, and they were some 700 miles from the nearest land. Their defense was necessity, but the case set a precedent that necessity did not give someone the right to commit murder.
The board game Monopoly originated in 1903 as a way to demonstrate that an economy which rewards wealth creation is better than one in which monopolists work under few constraints, and to promote the economic theories of Henry George and in particular his ideas about taxation. The current version was first published by Parker Brothers in 1935.
Actor Parker Stevenson became well known from starring with then teen heartthrob Shaun Cassidy in the The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries series
Parker Lewis Can’t Lose, a ripoff of the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, was a teen sitcom that originally aired on FOX from September 1990 to June 1993.