On November 8, 1861, the USS San Jacinto, commanded by Union Captain Charles Wilkes, intercepted the British mail packet RMS Trent and removed, as contraband of war, two Confederate diplomats, James Mason and John Slidell. The envoys were bound for Britain and France to present the Confederacy’s case for support. The British government then demanded an apology and the release of the prisoners. President Lincoln, wishing to avoid a war in addition to the Civil War, released the prisoners two weeks later but did not apologize. The facedown has been called “the Trent Affair.”
Jacinto is a Spanish and Portuguese name meaning Hyacinth, usually referring to Saint Hyacinth, a Roman martyr who with his brother Protus was executed for practicing Christianity during the persecution of Emperor Valerian, around 258 CE.
The hyacinth macaw is a parrot native to central and eastern South America. With a length (from the top of its head to the tip of its long pointed tail) of about 3.3 feet, it is longer than any other species of parrot. It is the largest flying parrot species, though the flightless kakapo of New Zealand can outweigh it by 7-8 pounds.
This past July, Glenna Duram of Michigan was convicted of first degree murder in the shooting death of her husband Martin Duram. There was an eyewitness to the shooting, Bud, whose evidence and ‘testimony’ helped to convict Glenna Duram.
Bud is the family parrot, and Bud repeatedly squawked,
“Please don’t fucking shoot me!”
“Please don’t fucking shoot me!”
“Please don’t fucking shoot me!”
“Please don’t fucking shoot me!”
… or words to that effect.
Christina Keller, the ex-wife of Martin Duram, had taken possession of Bud after Martin Duram’s death and noticed Bud’s repeated squawking.
ETA – USA Today article: 'Don’t (expletive) shoot': Michigan woman convicted of murder in parrot witness case
As a result of a U.S.-British treaty demilitarizing the Great Lakes after the War of 1812, the steamer USS Michigan was the only U.S. Navy warship there during the American Civil War. Among other duties, she from time to time guarded the Confederate officers’ POW camp on Johnson’s Island near Sandusky, Ohio. The camp was the subject of several Confederate plots to liberate it during the war.
Six months before he shot Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth spent nine days in Montreal, conferring with the Confederate agents based in St. Lawrence Hall. Clayton Gray wrote in his 1950s book, Conspiracy in Canada:
The northernmost raid during the US Civil War occurred in St. Albans, Vermont, on October 19, 1864, when Confederates came into town from Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec, Canada and raided the three banks in the small town of St. Albans. The raid turned many Canadians against the Confederacy because they didn’t like the idea of Canada being drawn into the conflict, and the Confederacy ceased all actions from Canada after.
Dr. Samuel Mudd, Edmund Spangler, Samuel Arnold, and Michael O’Laughlen, were convicted of conspiracy in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. They were imprisoned in the Florida Keys, at the scenic Fort Jefferson Civil War structure in the Dry Tortugas National Park which are the westernmost and most isolated of the Florida Keys.
Image, Fort Jefferson: Fort Jefferson (Florida) - Wikipedia
Image, Samuel Mudd at Fort Jefferson: Fort Jefferson (Florida) - Wikipedia
The first European to see the Dry Tortugas was Juan Ponce de León, who visited on June 21, 1513. Ponce de León caught 160 sea turtles there and subsequently referred to the islands as the “Tortugas” (turtles). They are called Dry owing to the absence of surface fresh water on the island.
When the purple turtle drowns
And the Irish elf wears browns
Then the lights begin to dim out from my eye
With the loss of my memory
You color my reverie
Making me blue, I know not why
(Lyrics to alternate “Deep Purple”)
In a poem entitled “The Lepracaun; or, Fairy Shoemaker”, 19th century Irish poet William Allingham describes the appearance of the leprechaun as “a wrinkled, wizen’d, and bearded Elf.”
Allingham, born in Ballyshannon, Donegal, is best remembered for his poem “The Fairies”:
Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!
Owls have fluffed edges on their flight feathers, which enables them to fly silently, without the giveaway sound of wing-flap to alert their prey in the dark.
There are over 100, and by some counts over 200, owl species of owls in the world. The greatest owl diversity is found in Asia. In the US and Canada, only 19 owl species are found.
Several species of owl that live in far northern Canada often wander as far south as the USA in winter, in search of food., There, they are conspicuous at close range in open habitat in broad daylight, since that’s the characteristic of their summer landscape – no trees, no hours of darkness. They have also not learned to fear humans, and you can walk up and touch some of them,.
The Trans-Canada Highway between Victoria, British Colombia and St. John’s, Newfoundland is the world’s longest national highway with a length of 4,860 miles. In 2012, a series of free public electric vehicle charging stations were installed along the main route of the highway, permitting electric vehicle travel across the entire length of the road.
The Trans-Canada Highway opened in 1962 and was completed in 1971. Along the route there is a 175-kilometer stretch across the Gulf of St. Lawrence that must be crossed by ferry (map, Google Maps).
The Trans-Canada Highway has been posted in kilometres since 1977, when all Canadian roads switched to metric. But at its western terminus there is a “Mile 0” monument in Victoria, BC. (image, Mile 0 (not Kilometer 0): https://goo.gl/wQRScr)
Mile Marker Zero for US Route 1 is in Key West, Florida, where Ernest Hemingway’s house and its six-toed cats all survived Hurricane Irma. The Overseas Highway forming the southern end of Route 1 uses the former route of the Key West Extension of Henry Flagler’s Florida East Coast Railway, which was destroyed by the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935.
For the first time in 300 years, there’s not a single person living on the island of Barbuda – a civilization that has existed in that island for close to over 300 years has now been extinguished. Hurricane Irma completely decimated Barbuda. Rescuers evacuated all residents to Antigua.
*Decimation *did not originally mean total destruction. The term comes from a disciplinary procedure used by the Roman army that resulted in the removal of a tenth of a unit.
Fish sauce is a well-known condiment in the cuisines of Vietnam, where it is known as nuoc mam, and Thailand, where it is called nam pla, in the Philippines (patis), Burma (ngan bya) and many other Southeast Asian countries. Fish sauce plays a vital role in adding an umami (savory) element to the flavor of food.
The Ancient Romans had their own fish sauce, garum, which was sold by the amphora as an indispensable condiment.
“Pisces,” the Latin word for “fishes,” is one of the earliest zodiac signs on record, with the two fish appearing as far back as c. 2300 B.C. on an Egyptian coffin lid.