Admiral James Stockdale was businessman Ross Perot’s running mate in his 1992 campaign. His most prominent contribution came in the vice-presidential candidates’ debate, when he rhetorically asked “Who am I? Why am I here?”
Phil Hartman played Adm. James Stockdale to Dana Carvey’s Ross Perot in a series of Saturday Night Live sketches in 1992. In one of them, Perot drives Stockdale far out into the countryside and tries, unsuccessfully, to lose the nearly-incoherent retired Navy officer in the woods.
Ross Perot Jr. and J.W. Coburn were the first pilots to circumnavigate the world in a helicopter, completing the voyage in 1982 in a Bell 206 L-1 Long Ranger II.
On May 13, 1985, Philadelphia police raided a house with a helicopter dropping a bomb on it, killing eleven members of the black liberation group MOVE. The police department had decided to take action to evict the group from their row house. In the eviction attempt, after gunfire broke out and tear gas was not enough to force the MOVE members out of the house, the police decided to drop a bomb. A fire started, endangering several children trapped inside. The police decided to “let the fire burn,” resulting in the destruction of over 60 homes and the deaths of five children and six adults. An investigation commission that followed found that city leaders and law enforcement had acted negligently, but no criminal charges were filed.
“The Roof Is On Fire” by Rock Master Scott and the Dynamic Three became a hit in 1984 for its famous chorus, which actually doesn’t appear until 4:20.
*Now throw your hands in the air
And wave 'em like you just don’t care
And if you’re not a square from Delaware
And you got on clean underwear
And your momma ain’t on welfare
Somebody say ‘Oh, yeah’ (Oh, yeah)
Oh, yeah! (Oh, yeah)
…
Let’s make some noise (Ho)
Let’s make some noise - come on
The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire
(We don’t need no water, let the motherfucker burn)
(Burn, motherfucker, burn)
The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire
(We don’t need no water, let the motherfucker burn)
(Burn, motherfucker, burn)
The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire
Say ‘Ho’ (Ho)
Say ‘Ho’ (Ho)*
The “ho hey ho” chant from “Mrs. Vanderbilt” (from the 1974 Paul McCartney and Wings album Band on the Run) was used by The Lumineers for their 2012 hit “Ho Hey”.
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Ken Burns’ documentary, The West, which is streamable on Netflix, has an entire episode about the gold rush in California. There is no mention in that episode of the many migrants who went west via Panama, or of the shipment of gold eastward via Panama. Vanderbilt made deals with San Francisco shippers to handle the flow on the west side of Panama. But the Burns’ production does refer to migrants traveling via Cape Horn. Those were far, far outnumbered by those going across Panama.
Migrants from Mexico brought one of the Philippines national languages across the Pacific. Chavacano remains today the everyday language of Zamboanga, on Mindanao island. Chavacano is a Spanish Creole, dating back 400 years, which contains many words of Mexican Nahuatl origin, as well as modern imports from Tagalog and people in Zamboanga readily understand modern Spanish. I can speak Spanish (poorly) in Zamboanga, and be understood.
Judaeo-Spanish (also Judeo-Spanish and Judæo-Spanish: Judeo-Español, Hebrew script: גֿודיאו-איספאנייול), commonly referred to as Ladino, is a Romance language derived from Old Spanish. and spoken mainly by Sephardic minorities in more than 30 countries, most of the speakers residing in Israel. Although it has no official status in any country, it has been acknowledged as a minority language in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, France and Turkey.
The President of the Spanish Government (Presidente del Gobierno) is usually referred to in English as the “Prime Minister.” Mariano Rajoy Brey of the People’s Party has been the prime minister and head of government of Spain since 2011. King Felipe VI is the head of state.
The XV International Brigade, nicknamed Brigada Abraham Lincoln, fought for the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War. Iit mustered at Albacete in Spain, in January 1937, comprising many English-speaking volunteers – arranged into a mostly British Battalion and a mostly North American Lincoln Battalion. It also included two non-English-speaking battalions, the Balkan Dimitrov Battalion and the Franco-Belgian Sixth February Battalion. It fought at Jarama, Brunete, Boadilla, Belchite, Fuentes de Ebro, Teruel and the Ebro River.
The brigade’s songs were “Jarama Valley” and “Viva la Quinta Brigada”.
Agatha Christie’s famously fussy and carefully-groomed detective Hercule Poirot was, as he was often obliged to point out, Belgian, not French.
The most famous landmark in Brussels, Belgium is Manneken Pis, a statue of a naked little boy urinating into a fountain basin.
Manakins are a clade of about 60 species of very small songbirds of troplical America, many of which are distinguished by vivid colors and elaborate tail feathers. Their name is a misspelling of the Dutch word, which means “little man”.
“Songbird” was the name Sky King, played by Kirby Grant, gave to his twin-engined airplanes on the TV show of that name. He had a Cessna T-50 “Bamboo Bomber” originally, and a Cessna 310 in later seasons. Grant died in a car crash while on his way to Cape Canaveral to witness a launch of the space shuttle Challenger, and to be honored by the astronaut corps for encouraging aviation and space flight.
U.S. Grant, victorious general of the Civil War and later President of the United States, was tone-deaf. He once joked, “I know just two songs. One is Yankee Doodle, and the other isn’t.”
Roger Ramjet’s sidekicks, the four American Eagles (each of whom was smarter and a better pilot than Roger), were Yank, Doodle, Dan, and Dee.
The sports teams of American University in Washington, D.C. are called the Eagles. A large sculpture of a bald eagle stands on campus, and incoming first-year students traditionally have their picture taken with it.
Although the Auburn University athletics teams are the Tigers, their battle cry is “War Eagle!”
On June 9, 411 BCE, wealthy Athenians overthrew the democratic government of ancient Athens and replaced it with a short-lived oligarchy known as “The Four Hundred.” The coup d’état took place during the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta.