A heavy snowfall hit the Washington, D.C. area just before the Jan. 20, 1961 inauguration of President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. The U.S. Army used flamethrowers to clear snow from some areas around the Capitol.
In 1977, Caroline Kennedy worked as a summer intern at the New York Daily News, earning $156 a week (~$600 in 2013 dollars adjusted for inflation), “fetching coffee for harried editors and reporters, changing typewriter ribbons and delivering messages.” Kennedy reportedly “sat on a bench alone for two hours the first day before other employees even said hello to her”; and, according to Richard Licata, a former News reporter, “Everyone was too scared.”
In “Alice’s Restaurant”, Arlo Guthrie told how he was sent to sit on the Group W bench at the New York draft office:
*Group W’s where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the Army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers!
And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean ‘n’ ugly ‘n’ nasty ‘n’ horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, “Kid, whad’ya get?” I said, “I didn’t get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage.” He said, “What were you arrested for, kid?” And I said, “Littering.”
And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, “And creating a nuisance.” And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench.*
The original Alice’s Restaurant referred to in the Arlo Guthrie song was just off Main St. in Stockbridge, Massachusetts; the most recent eatery to occupy the premises was Theresa’s Stockbridge Cafe, which billed itself as “The original Alice’s Restaurant”. According to its Facebook page it is currently closed for the season; Tripadvisor lists it simply as closed.
Stockbridge was first settled by English missionaries in 1734, who established it as a mission for the Mahican Indian tribe, also known as the Stockbridge Indians. The township was set aside for the tribe by English colonists as a reward for their assistance against the French in the French and Indian Wars. Although the Massachusetts General Court had assured the Stockbridge Indians that their land would never be sold, the agreement was rescinded. Despite the aid of the tribe during the Revolutionary War, the state forced their relocation to the west, first to New York State, then to Wisconsin.
The French and Indian Wars are referred to as the Seven Years War in Canada.
France was forced to give up most of New France, now known as Canada, as a result of losing the Seven Years War, but retained the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, just off the southwestern coast of Newfoundland. A little over 6000 people live there.
Gonzaga University’s recent basketball success has led to questions about its name. The school is named for Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, an Italian aristocrat who was heir to his father the Marquis of Castiglione. He gave up his title and inheritance to become a Jesuit priest, against the strong opposition of his father. He worked as a caregiver to plague victims in Rome and died of the plague in 1591, aged 23. He is now regarded as patron saint of AIDS victims and their caregivers.
The Black Death plague was reportedly first introduced to Europe via Genoese traders at the port city of Kaffa in the Crimea in 1347. After a protracted siege, during which the Mongol army under Jani Beg was suffering from the disease, the army catapulted the infected corpses over the city walls of Kaffa to infect the inhabitants. The Genoese traders fled, taking the plague by ship into Sicily and the south of Europe, whence it spread north. Whether or not this hypothesis is accurate, it is clear that several existing conditions such as war, famine, and weather contributed to the severity of the Black Death.
In C.J. Sansom’s alternative history novel Dominion, Nazi Germany, having driven back Soviet forces, has cleared Crimea of its native population by late 1952. The peninsula becomes a strongly-defended enclave of ethnic German settlers.
Dominion Energy, Inc., commonly referred to as Dominion, is an American power and energy company headquartered in Richmond, Virginia that supplies electricity in parts of Virginia and North Carolina. Dominion also operates the nation’s largest natural gas storage facility, amounting to more than 975 billion cubic feet of storage capacity.
President Abraham Lincoln, with his son Tad and a small party of U.S. Navy guards, visited the former Confederate capital of Richmond, Va. not long after its evacuation by the rebel government. He met with state legislators who wished to bring Virginia back into the Union, and visited the “Confederate White House,” taking the opportunity to sit in Jefferson Davis’s chair.
Soon after the fall of Richmond, Lincoln walked through the city. He was immediately recognized. Black citizens crowded around him and knelt before him. Lincoln, famously, told them “Don’t kneel to me. That is not right.” Less famously, but equally telling of the awe in which Lincoln was held, one black woman was later heard to tell her child that “a touch of Lincoln’s garment would cure his pain.”
The Honour of Richmond in northern England was one of the richest feudal holdings. The first Earl of Richmond was Alan Rufus, a connexion of William the Conquerer. The last Earl of Richmond was Henry Tudor. When he became Henry VII, the earldom merged with the Crown and has not been granted since.
Rufus M. Porter (1792-1884) started a new weekly magazine, Scientific American,in 1845, but 10 months later sold it to Orson Desaix Munn and Alfred Ely Beach. The magazine is still published under that name today.
The death of King William II of England is one of the enduring mysteries of Medieval England. William Rufus, as he was popularly known, succeeded his father, William the Conqueror, on the English throne. On 2 August 1100, William Rufus died when he was shot by an arrow while out hunting in the New Forest. It was accepted as an accident, but could have been an assassination. It has been suggested that his alleged slayer, Walter Tirel, was acting under orders from William’s younger brother, Henry, who abandoned his brother’s dead body in the forest, rode to Winchester and promptly seized the state treasury and throne as Henry I.
The artwork on the original playbill (and sleeve of the cast recording) of “My Fair Lady” is by Al Hirschfeld, who drew the playwright Shaw as a heavenly puppetmaster pulling the strings on the Henry Higgins character, while Higgins in turn attempts to control Eliza Doolittle.
The Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel (LCVP) or Higgins boat was a landing craft used extensively in amphibious landings in World War II. The craft was designed by Andrew Higgins based on boats made for operating in swamps and marshes. More than 20,000 were built.
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The Higgins Armory Museum was a non-profit museum located in Worcester, Massachusetts, dedicated to the display of arms and armor, and is now part of the Worcester Art Museum. The collection includes 24 full suits of armor, a gladiator helmet, and “Helmutt,” a dog mannequin dressed in reproduction boarhound armor.