The Coen Brothers, who codirected the Oscar-winning dark-comedy crime movie Fargo, are executive producers of the FX anthology series of the same name. The series will soon conclude its third season.
Fargo is just down the Red River from Grand Forks, ND, which became famous on the Internet in 2012 when its new Olive Garden was praised in a restaurant review in the Grand Forks Heraldby 85 year old reporter Marilyn Hagerty. Wrote Ms. Hagerty,
The chain was satirized as “Breadsticks” in the TV series “Glee”.
The 1996 Coen Brothers movie Fargo only has a single scene actually set in Fargo, N.D., the opening scene when Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) meets with two hired kidnappers in a bar. The rest of the movie is set in Minnesota.
The annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City is the world’s largest parade. The parade started in 1924, and became known nationwide after it was featured in the 1947 film,** Miracle on 34th Street**, which included footage of the 1946 festivities. It has been televised nationwide since 1952.
The first European service of Thanksgiving in North America was held in Newfoundland in 1578, when Martin Frobisher landed.
There are quaint little drinking towns in the state of North Dakota, located in North America. Here is a verse as a mnemonic for remembering those locales:
Just south of Grafton is Minto
With whiskey you want to dip into
Then you drive west to find Minot
Where most folks think highly of rye (not!)
As Oscar Wilde once observed, “Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”
Oscar Wilde is said to have remarked, upon entering the U.S. and being asked by a Customs official if he had anything to declare, “Only my genius.”
Oscar Wilde sued the Marquess of Queensberry for leaving his calling card at Wilde’s club, addressed to “For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite”. Wilde sued Queensberry for libel, and the resulting trial was a major scandal of the day, with Queensberry’s defense team providing tons of evidence of Wilde’s sexual practices. Queensberry was found not guilty, and left Wilde bankrupt as he was ordered to pay Queensberry’s legal fees.
In Ohio legal slang, if the defense in a criminal case chooses not to present any evidence but rests immediately after the close of the prosecution’s case, it is said that the defense has “squatted.”
The word absquatulate, which means to make off with something or someone. came out of an odd fad in America in the 1830s for making playful words that sounded vaguely Latin. *Bloviate *(“speak pompously”) and *discombobulate *(“make confused”) are two other pseudo-Latin coinages from that era.
The Latin League was a collection of towns and villages near Rome. Rome during the Republican era was a member of the League, but as its power increased, it came to dominate the League. Eventually the members of the League went to war with Rome, which resulted in Rome winning, dissolving the League, and incorporating the former members of the League into Roman territory. The towns were designated as Roman colonies, which gave the residents some rights under Roman law, but short of full citizenship.
On November 4, 1970, Salvador Allende took office as President of Chile, the first Marxist to become president of a Latin American country through open elections. On September 11, 1973, the military moved to oust Allende in a coup d’état sponsored by the US Central Intelligence Agency. As troops surrounded La Moneda Palace, Allende gave his last speech vowing not to resign. He died later that day in uncertain and controversial circumstances.
Folk singer Tom Paxton composed a song called The White Bones of Allende, which he included on his LP New Songs From the Briarpatch
For it’s Kissinger in China; it’s Kissinger in Cairo;
Kissinger at NATO in the grand old power game.
But the white bones of Allende tell another darker story,
For you never got to Chile, but you killed it just the same.
And the white bones of Allende and the scattered bones of Chile
Are the scream that breaks the silence of the thousands blown away.
Oh, the white bones of Allende and the scattered bones of Chile
Are not silent, they are screaming, they’re your Peace Prize, Doctor K.
Tom Lehrer says he quit songwriting in 1973, because “Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Dr. Henry Kissinger, National Security Advisor to Richard M. Nixon and later Secretary of State to both Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, once humorously altered the motto of the Navy Seebees to fit life at the White House: “The illegal we do right away; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.”
Henri III, King of Navarre, was the founder of the Bourbon dynasty. His family was a junior offshoot of the Capetian French dynasty. When his distant cousin the King of France died, Henri was the next heir, except for the little detail that he was Protestant. He converted to Catholicism, reputedly saying: “Paris vaut bien une messe.” (“Paris is worth a mass.”). He became Henri IV of France.
Général de corps d’armée Henri Navarre was in command at the loss of Dien Bien Phu to the Viet Minh in 1954, forcing France to abandon its former colony of Indochine.
On August 14, 1945, the August Revolution began in Vietnam against French colonial rule. Ho Chi Minh was the leader of a nationalist party, the Viet Minh, which seized control of most rural villages and cities throughout the country, including Hanoi—where Ho on September 2, 1945, declared Vietnamese Independence.
Hỏa Lò Prison, used by the French colonists in Vietnam for political prisoners, was known to American POWs as the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” when used by North Vietnam for U.S. Prisoners of War during the Vietnam War.
The courage of the POWs who resisted severe torture and suffered through lack of medical treatment and near starvation during many years of detention is recorded in eyewitness accounts written by many of them after their release, including General James Robinson Risner, Admiral James Stockdale, Lieutenant Commander (later Senator) John McCain, and Captain Howard Rutledge. Such was their solidarity that most refused North Vietnamese offers of early release for propaganda purposes, stating that they did not want to leave their fellow Americans behind.