The 1979 film The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh, often ranked as the worst sports movie of all time (I’ve seen it and won’t argue the point), included cameos by a number of NBA players, particularly members of the Detroit Pistons. Stockard Channing is an astrologer who revitalizes a woebegone NBA team when the roster is rebuilt entirely of players born under the sign of Pisces, the star sign of Moses Guthrie (played by Julius “Dr. J” Erving). The Pythons team is reborn as the “Pittsburgh Pisces”.
Tennis player Alexandra Stevenson made her debut at Wimbledon in 1999 and was ranked among the top 100 singles players for several years. Her mother is Samantha Stevenson, a sports journalist and her father is former basketball player Julius Erving. Stevenson met her father for the first time in October 2008 after she initiated a meeting.
[not in play: ElvisL1ves, The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh sounds like a real turkey, but on rottentomatoes.com it says that 71% of the audience liked it?!?!??]
Adlai Stevenson, Democrat of Illinois, was the party’s nominee for President of the United States in both 1952 and 1956, but lost to Dwight D. Eisenhower, Republican of (by that point) New York, both times. Stevenson is said, when an eager supporter assured him that he would “have the vote of every thinking person in the country,” to have joked, “It’s not enough - I need a majority!”
State nicknames for Illinois include Land of Lincoln, The Corn State, and The Sucker State. The Sucker State harkens to Illinois’ roots in tobacco. The sprouts around the main stem of a tobacco plant are commonly referred to as “suckers.”
Vietnam is the world’s largest producer of black pepper corns. In fact, Vietnam’s pepper exports alone accouint for 7% of the total of all spice production on the planet.
Melange, often referred to as simply “the spice”, is the name of the fictional drug central to the Dune series of science fiction novels by Frank Herbert. It is a drug that gives the user a longer life span, greater vitality, and heightened awareness; it can also unlock prescience in some humans, depending upon the dosage and the consumer’s physiology. It is essential to interstellar travel in the Herbert universe.
The Herbert family was a distinguished Anglo-Welsh family, active in Anglo-British politics from the time of Edward IV down to the Victorian period.
One member of the family, the 4th Earl of Carnarvon, was the Secretary of State for the Colonies and was largely responsible for shepherding the British North America Act through the British Parliament in 1867. The Act established Canada and is still the foundation of the Canadian Constitution.
The first US Secretary of State was Thomas Jefferson. Other Presidents who have been Secretaries of State include James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, and James Buchanan.
The Secretary of State for Canada was a relatively non-important Cabinet position, being mainly concerned with various administrative matters, such as maintaining the corporate registry of federally incorporate companies. The position was abolished a couple of decades ago.
The Secretary of State of the Confederate States of America was Judah P. Benjamin, the highest ranking Jew to hold office in any North American government up to that time.
After the fall of the Confederacy, Benjamin made his way to England where he was called to the Bar.
In addition to arguing some Canadian constitutional law cases before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, at that time the highest court of appeal for the Empire, he wrote a text book on the Law of Sale of Goods, which became one of the authoritative texts in this area of the law.
Now in its 10th edition, Benjamin’s Sale of Goods is still an authoritative text in the UK and other Commonwealth countries which use the common law.
Inns of Court, in London, is a group of four institutions of considerable antiquity that have historically been responsible for legal education. Their respective governing bodies, the benches, exercise the exclusive right of admitting persons to practice by a formal call to the bar. They consist of the Inner Temple and Middle Temple (both housed within the area known as The Temple), Lincoln’s Inn, and Gray’s Inn—all of which are located in the general vicinity of the Royal Courts of Justice, at the boundary between the City of London and Westminster.
Several of Shakespeare’s plays were put on in the Inns of Court, as entertainment for the members of the Inns at special times of the year, such as Christmas.
In 1603, ten days after James I took the throne, he announced that he would be the new sponsor of Shakespeare’s theatre company, which renamed itself the King’s Men. The company performed several plays at Hampton Court for the new royal family, but the list of plays performed has not survived.
Hampton Inn is a chain of moderately priced, mid-scale hotels with limited food and beverage facilities. It is now known as Hampton by Hilton, due to it’s purchase in 1999 by the Hilton chain, it has more than 2,300 + hotels throughout the U.S. and 16 other countries.
At the time of Benedict Arnold’s thwarted plan to turn over the Continental Army’s key outpost at West Point to the British, passage of shipping along the Hudson River was blocked by a large chain strung from shore to shore.
The little town of West Point, Georgia, lies in two different metropolitan areas. The town straddles a county line, so most of the town is in the Columbus Metropolitan Area, but part of it in the La Grange SMA.
The easternmost point of the CONUS 48 is a place called West Quoddy Head, Maine.
Quoddy Moccasins, which was founded in Portland, Maine in 1947 by Jack and Anne Spiegel, was a leading national brand sold in more than 1,500 stores around the country. The brand foundered in the 1980’s, but was revived in 1998. The shoes ( always in moccasin style) are hand-crafted in an 1876 textile mill on the Androscoggin River in Lewiston, Maine.
Maine is the only US state name with one syllable, and is the only US state to border only one other state (New Hampshire). With five syllables, Louisiana has the most of any single word state name. It is tied with North and South Carolina.