The song “That’s Amore” (with its well-known line, “when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie”) was written by composer Harry Warren and lyricist Jack Brooks in 1952, for the film The Caddy, starring Dean Martin (né Dino Crocetti). Martin at the time was the straight man in a popular comedy team, partnering with Jerry Lewis, his co-star in The Caddy. Martin and Lewis would later split up in, launching one of the longest-running feuds in American show biz history. While “That’s Amore” was a big hit for Martin, it never reached No 1 on the US charts. The song it could not dislodge was “Vaya Con Dios,” performed by Les Paul and Mary Ford.
The Gibson Les Paul is an electric guitar that was first sold by the Gibson Guitar Corporation in 1952. The Les Paul has been continually produced in countless versions and editions since.
The five biggest deserts in Australia are, in order, Great Victoria Desert, Great Sandy Desert, Tanami Desert, Simpson Desert, and Gibson Desert.
Saskatchewan has two major areas of sand dunes: the Great Sand Hills in the southwestern corner, and the Athabaskan Sand Dunes in the far north, on the shores of Lake Athabasca.
Both are active sand dune systems. The Athabaskan dunes are the northern-most active dunes in the world. They date back to the end of the last glacial period, probably about 8,000 years ago.
(I’ve been to the Great Sand Hills, but the Athabaskan ones are a fly-in only - no roads.)
“Buckley’s to none” is an Australian vernacularism that is used to characterize a very low probability outcome, particularly as it might pertain to the potential success of an endeavor. More often than not, the phrase is shortened to simply “Buckley’s”. For example, if one were to loan money to an untrustworthy individual, an astute onlooker might comment “Yer got Buckley’s of ever seein’ that bob again, mate.”
“It Tastes Awful. And It Works” was the successful cough syrup marketing slogan of the W.K. Buckley Ltd. company of Canada. Noted for the unpleasant taste (hence the slogan), the syrup’s ingredients include ammonium carbonate, potassium bicarbonate, camphor, menthol, Canada balsam, pine needle oil, and a tincture of capsicum.
Manitoulin Island, Ontario, Canada, located in Lake Huron, is the largest freshwater island in the world.
Lake Manitou is the largest lake on Manitoulin Island in Ontario, Canada. It is the largest lake on a lake island in the world. Since Manitoulin Island itself is in Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes, Manitou qualifies as the largest “lake in a lake”.
Huron Glacier is a 4.8 mile long and 2.2 mile wide glacial flow on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. The glacier was named after the American ship Huron which visited the South Shetland Islands in 1820–21 and 1821–22.
The US National Park Service predicts that there will be no more glaciers in Glacier National Park, Montana by 2030 and perhaps sooner. In 1850, at the end of the Little Ice Age, there were an estimated 150 glaciers in the area that is now Glacier National Park. By 1968, these had been reduced to around 50. Today the number of glaciers in the park is 25, many of which are mere remnants of what they once were.
What flavors did those fascicles come in?
Fictional Ohio-class Trident ballistic missile submarines named the USS Montana appeared in both the TV movie The Fifth Missile and the James Cameron big-screen movie The Abyss.
The first real-life USS Montana was launched in 1905, and renamed the USS Missoula after World War I.
Miley Cyrus, star of “Hannah Montana”, is the daughter of “Achy Breaky Heart” singer Billy Ray Cyrus.
Ray Kurzweil received the 1999 National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the United States’ highest honor in technology, from President Clinton in a White House ceremony.
To Elendil’s Heir, a paste from the Wikipedia entry for “serial:”
// My yogurt is flavored vanilla, but I couldn’t find much choice as to OED fascicles.
The first National Medals of Technology were issued in 1985 by then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan to 12 individuals and one company. Among the first recipients were Steve Jobs and Stephen Wozniak, founders of Apple Computer. The medal has since been awarded annually.
The oldest military Medals still in use are Sweden’s För tapperhet i fält (“For Valour in the Field”) and För tapperhet till sjöss (“For Valour at Sea”), which were awarded beginning in 1789 to officers and soldiers of the Swedish Armed Forces during wartime. However, they has not been awarded since 1915.
Walter Isaacson, in his biography of Steve Jobs, writes that on the naming of Apple, Jobs said he was “on one of my fruitarian diets.” He said he had just come back from an apple farm, and thought the name sounded “fun, spirited and not intimidating.” Steve Wozniak said, “We’re on the freeway, and Steve mentions, ‘I’ve got a name: Apple Computer.’ We kept thinking of other alternatives to that name, and we couldn’t think of any.” Also, Wozniak had worked at Atari, and he pointed out that Apple would appear before Atari in the phone book.
ETA avoiding ninja:
Jobs probably did not eat the ‘Birgit Bonnier’ apple which is a Swedish cultivar that looks like a Macintosh apple.
Apple Records was founded by The Beatles in 1968. Apple albums and singles displayed a bright green Granny Smith apple on the A-side, while the flipside displayed the cross section of the apple.
But on the US issue of the Beatles’ Let It Be album, the Granny Smith apple was red. That’s because in the USA that album, being the soundtrack to the movie of the same name, was, for contractual reasons, being manufactured and distributed by United Artists Records. The red apple was used to mark the difference.
Granny Smith apples are known for their bright light green color; even when ripe they do not turn red. The name has been used for green paints and Crayola crayons. The “Granny Smith” RGB color space specifications are hex #a8e4a0, composed of 65.9% red, 89.4% green and 62.7% blue.
The red apple on the US Let It Be album was either a colorized version of the green Granny Smith, or, more likely, a photograph of a naturally red apple, like a Jonathan. (It is not a Red Delicious apple which has a tapered base) https://fthmb.tqn.com/ixC0vThUR6drj8NIf1YzjTVhBQU=/768x0/filters:no_upscale()/about/Let-It-Be-Label-A-Real-57bb564d3df78c8763fb8941.jpeg
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The red apple gave rise to stories that since Let It Be was the final Beatles album, a red Apple was used to signify that the Apple was “ripe,” and the end of the line.
The Smith & Wesson firearms company was created by Horace Smith and Daniel B. Wesson. They worked at the National Armory in Springfield MA, and they formed their first partnership in 1852 in Norwich CT. Smith & Wesson is headquartered in Springfield MA.