Robert Gould Shaw, young abolitionist and military officer, was played by Matthew Broderick in the Oscar-winning movie Glory, about the famous 54th Massachusetts infantry regiment (with white officers and black soldiers, as was customary at the time) and their service during the Civil War.
Robert Lowell’s 1960 poem “For The Union Dead” compares Boston of the then-present-day to that of the Civil War period, and how so much had been destroyed and replaced, including its abolitionism.
*Two months after marching through Boston,
half the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.
Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city’s throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.
He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound’s gentle tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.
He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man’s lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die–
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.*
Boston’s debut album was released on August 25, 1976 in the US by Epic Records. In what has been described as “an elaborate end run around the CBS brain trust,” the album was privately recorded in Tom Scholz’s Watertown MA home for a cost of a few thousand dollars, a paltry amount in an industry accustomed to spending hundreds of thousands on a single recording.
Boston’s lead tenor singer Brad Delp had a vocal range from G#2 to E6. He committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning at age 55.
Aristotle first recorded that burning coals produced toxic fumes. An ancient method of execution was to shut the criminal in a bathing room with smoldering coals. What was not known was the mechanism of death, which of course was carbon monoxide poisoning.
<Off game>
So, what is that, is that good? I imagine it is. He had a great voice, and I think a wide range.
</Off game>
In play:
In 1994, a pool mechanic’s failure to install an extra $1.44 worth of plastic exhaust pipe led to the death of Vitas Gerulaitis, the tennis player, as he inhaled carbon monoxide fumes from a new $8,000 pool heater.
Not in play: About vocal range: G#2 to E6 is 4 octaves, which is exceptional. Most singers’ range is 2 octaves. E6 is a very high note for sopranos, while G#2 is about as low as baritones usually go.
Vitas Gerulaitis: I did not know that he died that way!
And thank you for that about Brad delp’s vocal range.
In play: Vitas Gerulaitis was nicknamed “The Lithuanian Lion”. His best tournament was the 1977 Australian Open where he beat John Lloyd to win the tournament. John Lloyd was the first husband of Chris Evert, whose husbands include:
John Lloyd: professional tennis player
Andy Mill: Olympic skier
Greg Norman: professional golfer
Queen Elizabeth II is the Australian monarch as well as the British one. She became the first reigning monarch to visit Australia in 1954, and was greeted by huge crowds across the nation. Her son Prince Charles attended school in Australia in 1967, and her grandson Prince Harry undertook a portion of his gap year living and working in Australia in 2003.
While Uluru (often known as Ayers Rock) is one of the most famous sites in Australia, nearby is “the Olgas”, now known as Kata Tjuta, which is another rock formation of 36 domes. The Anangu Aborigines believe the great rocks of Kata Tjuta are homes to spirit energy from the ‘Dreaming’, and since 1995 the site is being used once again for religious ceremonies.
not in play: I visited the site in 2015 and it is impressive: Kata Tjuta - Wikipedia
Climbing of Uluru is discouraged, out of respect for Aboriginal religious beliefs and customs, but nevertheless permitted. About a fifth of all visitors make the climb.
On February 6, 1851, a large fire burned in Victoria, Australia. Terms such as wildfire, brush fire, bushfire, forest fire, desert fire, grass fire, hill fire, peat fire, vegetation fire, and veldfire may be used to describe the same general type of phenomenon depending on the vegetation being burned and the regional variant of English being used—“bushfire” was applied to this one. The Australian “bush” is known for its Aboriginal population.
Harry Harbord “Breaker” Morant was an Anglo-Australian drover, horseman, bush poet, and military officer. His Boer War court-martial and execution by the British Army for war crimes are the subjects of the play and movie Breaker Morant. He remains, for many, an Australian folk hero.
British soldiers fighting in the Boer War were issued with the first composite emergency ration packs containing two tins to be used only in extremity. One held four ounces of beef concentrate and the other five ounces of cocoa paste.
In 1900, Queen Victoria sent her New Year’s greetings to the British troops stationed in South Africa during the Boer War in the form of a specially molded chocolate bar. The tins containing the chocolate, 6" x 3", were later used to return personal items to the fallen soldier’s or sailor’s family, including items such as medals, talismans, coins, jewelry, photos, documents or letters and the soldier’s identity disc, also known as a ‘dog tag’, which was first used in the Second Boer War.
The Philip Morant School and College is a Secondary school located within the Prettygate suburb of Colchester, Essex, England. It was named after the author of a detailed History of Essex which remains a standard work of reference, even though it was published in 1763.
The USS Yorktown (CV-10), an Essex class aircraft carrier, is preserved as a museum ship at Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum in Mount Pleasant SC, on the Charleston Harbor across from Charleston.
In the 2013 film The Great Gatsby, people are seen dancing the Charleston by the pool and on the stairs while Gatsby introduces himself to Nick Caraway. The novel is set in 1922 which is actually too early for the dance to be strictly in period.
Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum in Mount Pleasant SC, on the Charleston Harbor across from Charleston, is home to three museum ships:
USS Yorktown (CV-10), an aircraft carrier
USS Laffey (DD-724), a destroyer
USS Clamagore (SS-343), a submarine
On board the USS Yorktown are 28 airplanes, including:
Douglas A-4 Skyhawk
Grumman A-6 Intruder
Ling-Temco-Vought A-7 Corsair II
McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II
Grumman F-9 Cougar
Grumman F-14 Tomcat
Also aboard USS Yorktown is the Medal of Honor Museum. USS Yorktown is also home to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.
In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade the sultan of the fictional desert country of Hatay is offered a chest of stolen valuables in compensation for allowing the Nazis to seek the Holy Grail in his land. He ignores them but makes it known he will fully cooperate in exchange for the “Rolls-Royce Phantom II. 4.3 litre, 30 horsepower, six cylinder engine, with Stromberg Downdraft carburetor. Can go from zero to 100 kilometers an hour in 12.5 seconds. And I even like the color.” Clip.
The base price of a 2016 Rolls Royce Phantom was approximately $417,000.
Maybe not for long: Clamagore submarine move from Patriots Point to Florida hinges on vote
In play:
Rolls-Royce makes aircraft engines as well as luxury cars, including this turbojet used in seven different aircraft: Rolls-Royce Derwent - Wikipedia