James Kirk will be born, in the future, in Riverside, Iowa. The real life Riverside, Iowa has a memorial dedicated to Kirk.
The real Riverside, Iowa, is located more than three miles from the banks of the Iowa River, the nearest “rivereside”…
Banks in Canada are under federal regulation, which most observers feel has contributed to the stability of the Canadian banking system. The last bank failure was in the late 1970s. Prior to that, the last bank failure had been during the Depression.
Wiki: The Qattara Depression (Arabic: منخفض القطارة Munḫafaḍ al-Qaṭṭārah) is a depression in the north west of Egypt in the Matruh Governorate and is part of the Western Desert. It lies below sea level and is covered with salt pans, sand dunes and salt marshes. The region extends between latitudes of 28°35’ and 30°25’ north and longitudes of 26°20’ and 29°02’ east. The region was created by the interplay of salt weathering and wind erosion. Some 20 kilometres west of the depression lie the oases of Siwa and Jaghbub in smaller but similar depressions.
The Qattara Depression contains the second lowest point in Africa at an altitude of 133 metres (436 ft) below sea level, the lowest point being Lake Assal in Djibouti. The depression covers about 19,605 square kilometres (7,570 sq mi), a size comparable to Lake Ontario or twice as large as Lebanon. Due to its size and proximity to the Mediterranean Sea shore, it has been studied for its potential to generate hydroelectricity.
The Mariana Trench or Marianas Trench, the deepest part of the world’s oceans, has only been visited once, a manned descent by Swiss-designed, Italian-built, United States Navy-owned bathyscaphe Trieste which reached the bottom at 1:06 pm on January 23, 1960, with Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard on board.They left at 1:26 pm on the same date.
The aerial part of the Battle of the Philippine Sea was nicknamed the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot by American aviators for the severely disproportional loss ratio inflicted upon Japanese aircraft by American pilots and anti-aircraft gunners. Although at the time the battle appeared to be a missed opportunity to destroy the Japanese fleet, the Imperial Japanese Navy had lost the bulk of its carrier air strength and would never recover.[2] During the course of the battle, American submarines torpedoed and sank two of the largest Japanese fleet carriers taking part in the battle.
The Philippine Sea is bounded by the Philippines and Taiwan to the west, Japan to the north, the Marianas to the east and Palau to the south. The first European to navigate the Philippine Sea was Ferdinand Magellan in 1521, who named it Mar Filipinas when he and his men were in the Mariana Islands prior to the exploration of the Philippines.
In the early years of transatlantic commercial flight, when airliners typically had 5 flight crew members instead of 2, the pilot, co-pilot, and flight engineer customarily addressed the radio operator and navigator as Sparks and Magellan.
The Story of Ferdinand the Bull was a children’s book by Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson. Ferdinand was uninterested in fighting, and preferred to spend time smelling flowers.
“Leaf by Niggle” is a short story by JRR Tolkien, which has the theme of the creative process, coupled with an artist’s obsessive attention to detail.
As Good as It Gets is a 1997 American romantic comedy film directed by James L. Brooks. It stars Jack Nicholson as a misanthropic and obsessive-compulsive novelist, Helen Hunt as a single mother with a chronically ill son, and Greg Kinnear as a gay artist. It also included one of the cutest dogs in Hollywood history, Verdell, played by six Brussels Griffons, named Timer the Dog, Sprout, Debbie, Billy the Dog, Parfait, and Jill the Dog. Jill was the star.
It’s believed that Tolkien based Mordor on his memories of the Somme Battlefield, he had served there briefly as a Subaltern in 1916.
The first successful blood transfusion was performed by the British Royal Army Medical Corps on January 1, 1916.
In The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien, a strong and lifelong Catholic, had Gandalf, Frodo, Aragorn & Co. leave Rivendell on its great mission to destroy the One Ring on December 25, which would of course, many years later, become Christmas Day.
ETA: Tolkien was born in South Africa but considered himself British.
Danica Patrick’s sole win in the top level of either IndyCar or NASCAR was the 2008 Indy Japan 300, held at the Twin Ring Motegi track.
The Nurburg Ring in Germany is a privately owned track, where anyone can drive their own car as fast as they dare. Many Ferraris have been totaled by millionaires who shrugged and walked away. It was made famous by the British automotive TV series Top Gear.
The original hosts of Top Gear were Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and Jason Dawe. After the first season in 2002, Dawe left the program and was replaced by James May and the cast remained unchanged until 2015.
2002 was the first palindrome year of the new millennium. There won’t be another palindrome year for over a century: 2112.
President Theodore Roosevelt, Republican of New York, is generally considered to be the subject of the palindrome, “A man, a plan, a canal - Panama.”
After listening to Teddy Roosevelt try to justify his fomenting a secessionist rebellion in Panama, then part of Colombia, to further the plans for the Canal, his Attorney General, Philander Knox, is said to have sighed: “Oh, Mr. President, do not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality.”