On June 9, 1772, in an act of defiance against the Navigation Acts, Abraham Whipple led 50 Rhode Islanders in the capture and burning of the British revenue cutter Gaspee. The ship had run aground off Pawtuxet.
Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1855 to a young aspiring lawyer, “If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. It is but a small matter whether you read with any body [study with an established lawyer] or not. I did not read with any one. Get the books, and read and study them till, you understand them in their principal features; and that is the main thing. It is of no consequence to be in a large town while you are reading. I read at New-Salem, which never had three hundred people living in it. The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places.”
Despite years of legal study at the University of Edinburgh, and admittance as an advocate after passing his Scots Bar examinations “with credit,” Robert Louis Stevenson practiced law very briefly before focusing on his literary career. He studied law only to please his father, who was greatly disappointed when it became clear that he had no aptitude for the family business, lighthouse engineering.
Arthur Conan Doyle became a doctor after graduating from the University of Edinburgh Medical School, and turned to writing when his medical practice repeatedly struggled.
Arthur Conan Doyle clerked under surgeon Joseph Bell, of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, and said that Bell was his inspiration for Sherlock Holmes.
Glen Bell, the founder of Taco Bell, found that the traditional soft tortillas that were stuffed with filling and then fried meant that customers had a long wait for their tacos. He decided to use preformed fried shells that would then be stuffed. Mr. Bell asked a man who made chicken coops to fashion a frying contraption made of wire.
Alvin C. Copeland, founder of Popeyes Chicken, claimed he named the stores after the fictional detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in the movie The French Connection and not the comic and cartoon character Popeye the Sailor. And also would claim facetiously that he was “too poor” to afford an apostrophe.
The Scottish philosopher, David Hume, declined his publisher’s entreaties to finish his History of England, explaining that he was done with literary endeavours: “I must decline not only this offer, but all others of a literary nature, for four reasons: Because I’m too old, too fat, too lazy, and too rich.”
Queen Elizabeth II’s Scottish heraldic coat of arms is different from her arms for the rest of the United Kingdom: Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom - Wikipedia
On February 10, 1862, a Union naval flotilla destroyed much of the Confederate Mosquito Fleet in the Battle of Elizabeth City in North Carolina. The result was a Union victory, with Elizabeth City and its nearby waters in the North’s possession and the Confederate fleet captured, sunk, or dispersed.
Although the US Civil War battle is generally referred to as the Battle of the *Monitor *and the Merrimack, in fact, the *Merrimack *was officially known as the CSS (Confederate States Ship) Virginia. The *Virginia *had been a Union vessel, which had been captured by the Confederacy, armored, and renamed.
The newest U.S. Navy class of nuclear fast-attack submarine is the Virginia class. Despite the longstanding efforts of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable and others, the Navy has not yet agreed to name one of the subs of the class the USS Monitor, in honor of the historic ironclad which fought the CSS Virginia to a standstill in March 1862.
William & Mary is the second-oldest college in America. The original plans for W&M date back to 1618 — decades before Harvard — but were derailed by an “Indian uprising.”
On February 8, 1693, King William III and Queen Mary II of England signed the charter for a “perpetual College of Divinity, Philosophy, Languages, and other good Arts and Sciences” to be founded in the Virginia Colony.
Workers began construction on the Sir Christopher Wren Building, then known simply as the College Building in 1695, before the town of Williamsburg existed. Over the next two centuries, the Wren Building would burn on three separate occasions, each time being re-built inside the original walls. That makes the Wren the oldest college building still standing in America.
William III and Mary II were cousins. William was the son of Mary, Princess Royal, the eldest daughter of King Charles II of England. Upon the exclusion of Roman Catholics to the English throne, Mary II became Charles II’s heir, and her sister, Anne, was Mary’s heir. But William was the third in line, behind Anne, and so when Mary died, William was ceded the throne. But he and Mary had no children, so Anne inherited upon William’s death.
In addition to reigning as King of England, William III of the House of Orange-Nassau was also Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel and sovereign Prince of Orange. The colors of Princeton University, black and orange, and the name of the oldest campus building, Nassau Hall, honor him.
William III was the last King of England and also the last King of Scotland, reigning as William II.
A popular claim by Scottish nationalists is that all royal emblems in Scotland, including those on Royal Mail postboxes, should refer to their monarch simply as Queen Elizabeth, not QE II, since Scotland never had a Queen Elizabeth I.
Only by the CSS.
According to Uncle Fred, Lord Ickenham, the mixed cocktail “May Queen” is guaranteed to alleviate the deepest despondency. His summary of the recipe:
[QUOTE=Lord Ickenham]
Its foundation is any good, dry champagne, to which is added liqueur brandy, armagnac, kummel, yellow chartreuse and old stout, to taste.
[/QUOTE]
Louisa May Alcott’s middle name was the maiden name of her mother, who was born Abigail May. The Mays were an established Boston family; Abigail’s father, Colonel Joseph May, was a respected merchant and for over forty years a warden of King’s Chapel in Boston. On her mother’s side she descended from prominent families, the Sewalls and Quincys. Abigail’s uncle Samuel Sewall was a congressman and her great-aunt Dorothy Quincy had been married to John Hancock.
And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod.
Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.
- John Collins Bossidy, A toast given at Holy Cross College alumni dinner in 1910.