Princess Caroline of Monaco is married to Prince Ernst August of Hanover, current claimant to the deposed House of Hanover. He is a descendant of King George III of the United Kingdom, and of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. His aunt, Frederica of Hanover, was Queen of the Hellenes, and his cousin, Sophia, is the Queen of Spain.
King George III did not even bother to read the “Olive Branch Petition” from the Continental Congress in late 1775, seeking a peaceful resolution of the many issues troubling colonial relations, but called its writers traitors and instructed his ministers to put down the rebellion with overwhelming force.
The Olive tree of Vouves in the village of Ano Vouves in Crete, Greece is probably one of the oldest olive trees in the world; estimates vary from 2,000 to 4,000 years old. it still produces olives today. Branches from the tree were used to weave victors’ wreaths for the winners of the 2004 Athens Olympics and the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Before meeting Popeye, Olive Oyl had a number of her relatives named after other oils, including her brother, Castor Oyl, their mother, Nana Oyl (after “banana oil”, a mild slang phrase of the time used in the same way as “horsefeathers”, i.e. “nonsense”), their father, Cole Oyl, and Castor’s estranged wife, Cylinda Oyl; more recently, Olive’s nieces Diesel Oyl and Violet Oyl have appeared in the cartoons. Also among Olive’s family are her two uncles, Otto (Auto) Oyl and intrepid explorer Lubry Kent Oyl.
Popeye the Sailor first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip, Thimble Theatre, in January 1929. The comic was already successful, having had a 10-year run, but Popeye soon became the focus of the comic, which is still running under the name of it’s squinty-eyed hero.
And here’s that first appearance: http://popeye.com/files/2014/01/Popeye_1st-appearance_SMALLER.jpg
When Monopoly tokens were first used in 1937, the thimble was one of the eight metal game pieces used to mark a player’s position on the board. However, the thimble, the boot and the wheelbarrow are being replaced in the new versions of the board game in August 2017 with a Penguin, a Rubber Duck, and a T-Rex.
“Scotty” is the nickname of the T-Rex found in Eastend, Saskatchewan in 1994. It is one of the most complete R-Tex specimens ever found.
The initial pieces, a tooth and a bone from the tail, were found by a school principal on his first day of assisting palaeontologists from the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, who were conducting an initial dig in the area.
The Scotty nickname is said to come from the expensive bottle of Scotch that the palaeontologists bought to celebrate the discovery.
Back in play: a Google image search on “scotty” yields many early results for Star Trek’s (TOS) fictional character, Montgomery Christopher Jorgensen “Scotty” Scott, who was played by the late actor James Montgomery “Jimmy” Doohan. James Doohan was a fellow artilleryman (yeah!) who saw his first combat assignment, according to Wkpd, in WWII on D-Day assaulting Juno Beach. He was injured by friendly fire, shot 6x by another a fellow Allied soldier. His right middle finger had to be amputated, and later during his acting career he did his best to hide that. It is, however, noticeable in an image as he holds an armful of “Tribbles”.
Thank you, James Montgomery “Jimmy” Doohan, sir, for your service as part of the Greatest Generation. Montgomery Christopher Jorgensen “Scotty” Scott has been recently played, since 2009, by actor Simon John Pegg (né Beckingham). And done quite well, I will add.
And, my very overdue thank you goes to Elendil’s Heir and septimus for these:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=19845951#post19845951
and
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=19846777#post19846777
Bullitt, good to see you back and looking forward to more interesting trivia from you!
In play:
The given name James has a great range of translations and variants, some of which are unrecognizable to English speakers. James is the English form of the Late Latin name Iacomus which was derived from Ιακωβος (Iakobos), the New Testament Greek form of the Hebrew name Ya’aqov (Jacob) In Spanish there are several forms including Jaime, Tiago, Santiago and Diego; in French it is Jacques, in Scotland it is Seumas and Ireland it is Seamus. Dutch variants of Jacobus include Cobus, Coos, Jaap, Kobe, Kobus, and Koos. One Danish and Norwegian variant, short for Jacob, is Ib.
Thanks, gkster, I’ll do my best to add to the good trivia here.
The Epistle of James is the 59th book, of the 66 books, in the bible. When memorizing the 66 books in order, the Epistle of James leads a sequence of six books often memorized as “1-2-3”, because the six books, and all are General Epistles, are:
(the 1)
The Epistle of James
(the 2)
The First Epistle of Peter
The Second Epistle of Peter
(the 3)
The First Epistle of John
The Second Epistle of John
The Third Epistle of John
Or, more quickly, 1-2-3 are James, 1st & 2nd Peter, 1sr, 2nd & 3rd John. There are 22 epistles, or didactic letters in the bible. James’ is believed by many biblical scholars to be the brother of Jesus, or “James the Just.”
Epistolary novels, where the story is told through “epistles” or letters between characters, or through journal/diary entries, have been popular for centuries, with some outstanding early examples being “Les liaisons dangereuses” by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Dracula by Bram Stoker. More recent epistolaries include The Color Purple by Alice Walker and The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. Worries that the genre would disappear due to the decline of writing letters on paper are unfounded; contemporary epistolary novels (such as The Princess Diaries) include emails, texts and IMs.
Despite the popular image of Dracula having a stake driven through his heart to kill him, Mina’s narrative describes his decapitation by Jonathan Harker’s kukri while Quincy Morris simultaneously pierced his heart with a Bowie knife.
The term beheading means the deliberate act of decapitating a person. According to Wkpd, Saudi Arabia is the only country that continues to behead its offenders regularly as a punishment for crime.
*Deadheading *is the act of removing spent flowers or flowerheads for aesthetics, to prolong bloom for up to several weeks or promote rebloom, or to prevent seeding.
On June 16, 1916, Irish author James Joyce began his relationship with Nora Barnacle, and subsequently used the date to set the actions for his 1922 novel Ulysses. The book chronicles the peripatetic appointments and encounters of a fictional character named Leopold Bloom in Dublin in the course of an ordinary day (June 16, 1904).
Juneteenth is a holiday that commemorates the June 19, 1865 announcement of the abolition of slavery in Texas, and more generally the completion of emancipation of African-American slaves throughout the Confederate South. Celebrated on June 19, the word is a combination of “June” and “nineteenth”.
According to Juneteenth.com, Juneteenth became an official state holiday in Texas on January 1, 1980.
Apocryphally, the first May 4th Star Wards reference was on May 4, 1979, the day Margaret Thatcher took office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. An online news article from the Danish public broadcaster says her political party, the Conservatives, placed a congratulatory advertisement in The London Evening News, saying “May the Fourth Be with You, Maggie. Congratulations.”
Boba Fett was introduced in the 1978 TV showStar Wars Holiday Special. In it, on Wookie Life Day, Chewbacca, accompanied by Han Solo, is headed home to see his family. Along the way, the duo are chased by two Star Destroyers, but they escape into hyperspace.
Meanwhile, on Kashyyyk (referred to as Kazook), Chewbacca’s family is preparing for his return. Hoping to find the Millennium Falcon, his wife, Malla, runs a computer scan for starships in the area, but is unsuccessful. Malla contacts Luke Skywalker, who, along with R2-D2, is working on his X-wing starfighter. Luke tells her that he does not know what happened. Malla contacts Saun Dann, a local human trader. He tells her through a carefully worded message that Han and Chewbacca are on their way and should be arriving soon. Malla then attempts (unsuccessfully) to prepare a meal, the instructions of which are being aired via a local cooking show by an eccentric four-armed alien cook, Chef Gormaanda (Harvey Korman).