Different men become Prime Minister of Great Britain at the end of the British and American editions of the Jeffrey Archer political thriller First Among Equals.
E = mc[sup]2[/sup].
Square Enix is a Japanese video game manufacturer, known for, among others, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Kingdom Hearts.
Ninja’ed by Rick. Reformulating.
The Dragon Throne is the English term used to identify the throne of the Emperor of China. The term can refer to very specific seating, as in the special seating in various structures in the Forbidden City of Beijing or in the palaces of the Old Summer Palace. In an abstract sense, the “Dragon Throne” also refers rhetorically to the head of state and to the monarchy itself.
Laurence Yep’s young adult historical novel Dragonwings was inspired by the account of a Chinese immigrant who made a flying machine in 1909, and portrays early 20th century San Francisco, including the Earthquake, from a Chinese immigrant boy’s viewpoint. It was a 1975 Newbery Honor book.
The three honours tiles in the Chinese tile game Mah Jongg are dragons: Red Dragon, Green Dragon and White Dragon.
Aegon the Conqueror established the Targaryen dynasty in Westeros in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire book series (adapted by HBO as Game of Thrones) by conquering the Seven Kingdoms with his two sisters and their three dragons.
Many spoonerisms have been attributed to the Rev. William Archibald Spooner, but most are apocryphal, never uttered by Spooner himself but rather made up by colleagues and students as a pastime. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations lists only one substantiated spoonerism: “The weight of rages will press hard upon the employer” (instead of “rate of wages”). Spooner claimed in a 1930 interview that “Kinquering Congs Their Titles Take” (in reference to the hymn “Conquering Kings”) was his sole spoonerism.
Being a retired lawyer, I rather like this spoonerism (or sort of spoonerism):
The difference between a rooster and a lawyer is that a rooster clucks defiance.
Thomas Cromwell (played by English actor Mark Rylance in the acclaimed 2015 BBC miniseries Wolf Hall) was lawyer to both Cardinal Wolsey and then King Henry VIII, eventually rising to become Lord Chancellor.
After the restoration of the Stuart family to the English throne, Oliver Cromwell’s body was exhumed from its grave in Westminster Abbey. It was hanged in chains, and thrown in a pit, except for the head, which was exhibited for many years, then it eventually passed through several owners until it was reburied in an unknown location beneath the chapel at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1960.
In the Declaration of Breda, Charles Stuart set out his programme if he were restored to the throne. One of his promises was a general amnesty for all who had participated in the Civil Wars, excepting only the regicides, those who had participated in the trial and execution of his father, Charles I.
In July 1581, during the Eighty Years’ War, the town of Breda was captured by surprise by Spanish troops then under the command of Claudius van Barlaymont, whose sobriquet was Haultpenne. Although the city had surrendered upon the condition that it would not be plundered, the troops vented their fury upon the inhabitants. In the resulting mayhem, known as Haultpenne’s Fury, over 500 citizens were killed.
The Surrender of Breda, which depicts the capture of Breda in 1625, is considered one of the best of Diego Velázquez’s paintings. One of the figures in the background, on the far right, strongly resembles self-portraits of Velázquez. However, scholars have questioned whether the painter would have dared to include himself as a bystander at the historic military victory.
The San Diego Padres and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are the only Major League Baseball teams in California to originate from California; the Athletics are originally from Philadelphia (and moved to the state from Kansas City), and the Dodgers and Giants are originally from Brooklyn and New York City respectively.
The Brooklyn Dodgers were a National Football League team which operated from 1930 to 1943, were renamed as the Brooklyn Tigers in 1944, then suspended operations in 1945.
“The D-Day Dodgers” is a term for those Allied servicemen who fought in Italy during the Second World War, which also inspired a popular wartime soldier’s song. A rumor spread during the war that the term was publicized by Viscountess Astor, a Member of the British Parliament, who supposedly used the expression in public after a disillusioned serviceman in Italy signed a letter to her as being from a “D-Day Dodger.” The soldiers in Italy felt that their sacrifices were being ignored after the invasion of Normandy, and a “D-Day Dodger” a reference to someone who was supposedly avoiding real combat by serving in Italy, whereas the reality was anything but.
The USS Ancon was an ocean liner acquired by the United States Navy during World War II and converted to a combined headquarters and communications command ship. She was designated flagship for the Commander of the 8th Fleet Amphibious Forces in Northwest African Waters and served as the Headquarters for General Mark Clark during the invasion of Italy at Salerno.
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