The world’s largest single brewing facility is the Coors brewery in Golden, Colorado, which originally touted its produce as being made from the local spring water. In later years, after expansion to other brewing locations, the company has declared that water is water and Coors beers will all taste the same, regardless of the water.
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was born in Mayapur, West Bengal, in 1486. He popularized the chant “Hare Krishna” and is revered as Krishna, or God, in Gaudiya Vaishnavism (commonly known today as the Hare Krishna movement). In this tradition, “Gaurāṅga” is a name used to refer to Krishna, the name meaning “having a golden complexion.”
Jane Austin’s books show how some spelling conventions have changed in 200 years.
Instead of “complexion”, she used “complection”.
Curiously, although it is the same terminal sound, she used “connexion” instead of “connection”.
Some English words have been treated completely differently by users over the generations, with no apparent accounting for their similarities. Such as ‘encourage’ and ‘entourage’, with only the latter retaining its french flavor.
Including the spelling of Austen.
In Voltaire’s Candide, the title character and Martin are in Portsmouth harbour when they spy an anonymous admiral, supposed to represent John Byng, being executed for failing to properly engage a French fleet. The admiral is blindfolded and shot on the deck of his own ship, merely “to encourage the others” (Fr. “pour encourager les autres”).
Actor Mark Baker, who made his Broadway theatre debut in November 1972 playing Cook in Via Galactica, a musical which, having lost nearly $1 million, is considered one of the worst flops in Broadway history, next appeared on Broadway in 1974 in the title role of the musical Candide, a performance which earned him a Theatre World Award and a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical.
The NASA WB-57 High Altitude Research Program aircraft have been flying research missions since the early 1960s. Three fully operational WB-57 Martin Canberra aircraft are based near JSC (Johnson Space Center, Houston TX) at Ellington Field. The “W” designator for the WB-57 is for Weather.
For many years NASA operated two WB-57s, and they were designated NASA 926 and NASA 928. Then, in 2013, the 50th anniversary year of the WB-57F model aircraft, NASA added a third aircraft to the fleet. It was the first flight of the aircraft in more than 41 years. Now known as NASA 927, the aircraft had been in long-term storage in the “boneyard” at Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona before completing two years of regeneration to flight status.
NASA 927 holds the aircraft record for the longest time in extended storage before being returned to flying status – 41 years.
NASA 926, NASA 927, and NASA 928 are the only three WB-57s still flying in the world today.
ETA: The RB-57D is the high-altitude strategic reconnaissance version of the B-57. Its first flight was in November 1955.
According to what traditionally is known as “The First Thanksgiving,” the November 1621 feast between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag at Plymouth Colony contained waterfowl, venison, fish, lobster, clams, berries, fruit, pumpkin, and squash. William Bradford noted that, “besides waterfowl and cider, there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many.”
Turkish Airlines is the national carrier of Turkey, headquartered at Atatürk Airport in Istanbul. It flies to 119 countries, more than any other airline.
In February 2009, Turkish Airlines Flight 1951, a Boeing 737-800 flying from Istanbul (not Constantinople) to Amsterdam, crashed on approach near Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. Its fuselage broke into three pieces but the plane did not catch fire. Nine passengers and crew died. Five were Turkish citizens, and four were Americans.
The hawkish U.S. Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-Wash.) was so diligent in representing the interests of his state’s largest employer that he was sarcastically named “the senator from Boeing.”
The most highly-produced American bombers of all time are the Consolidated B-24 Liberator (approx. 20,000 built) and the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress (approx. 13,000 built). By comparison, a total of approximately 4,000 Boeing B-29 Superfortresses were built.
The flying fox is actually a bat, the largest bats in the world. Some have wingspans of five feet and weigh over three pounds. They are harmless, subsisting on fruits. About 70 members of the Pteropus genus exist, all commonly known as flying fox, but some are as small as a half ounce. Half the species are on the brink of extinction, due to habitat deforestation and destruction.
BCI, Bat Conservation International (http://batCon.org), describes Austin TX’s Congress Avenue Bridge as the world’s largest urban bat colony. 1.5 million bats live underneath the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge. In 1980, when engineers reconstructed the bridge they had no idea that new crevices in its underside would make an ideal bat roost. Although bats had lived there for years, it was headline news when they suddenly began moving in by the thousands. Reacting in fear and ignorance, many people petitioned to have the bat colony eradicated. Austin residents soon learned that the bats eat from 10,000 to 20,000 pounds of insects every night, that bats are gentle and incredibly sophisticated animals, and that people have nothing to fear if they don’t try to handle them.
Austin now has one of the most unusual and fascinating tourist attractions anywhere, the summer nightly “bat flight” when the millions of bats fly out from the bridge to find and feed on insects.
(Missed the edit window to include the final paragraph)
BCI, Bat Conservation International (http://batCon.org), describes Austin TX’s Congress Avenue Bridge as the world’s largest urban bat colony. 1.5 million bats live underneath the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge. In 1980, when engineers reconstructed the bridge they had no idea that new crevices in its underside would make an ideal bat roost. Although bats had lived there for years, it was headline news when they suddenly began moving in by the thousands. Reacting in fear and ignorance, many people petitioned to have the bat colony eradicated. Austin residents soon learned that the bats eat from 10,000 to 20,000 pounds of insects every night, that bats are gentle and incredibly sophisticated animals, and that people have nothing to fear if they don’t try to handle them.
Austin now has one of the most unusual and fascinating tourist attractions anywhere, the summer nightly “bat flight” when the millions of bats fly out from the bridge to find and feed on insects.
These Mexican free-tailed bats summer in Austin, and winter over in central Mexico. With nearly 20 million bats, the largest known colony is found at Bracken Cave, north of San Antonio TX. The bats eat moths, beetles, dragonflies, flies, true bugs, wasps, and ants.
The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, which had been simply the Conservative Party since Confederation, got its name when it recruited John Bracken, the Progressive Premier of Manitoba, as their party leader. Bracken made the name change a condition of accepting the leadership.
A slurpee is a slushed ice drink severed by a store chain called 7-Eleven. Manitoba was crowned the Slurpee Capital of the World for the seventeenth year in a row in 2016. 7-Eleven stores across Winnipeg sell an average of 188,833 Slurpee drinks per month.
Arthur Meighen was the only Prime Minister from Manitoba.
He served two terms as PM, although he never won a general election and was defeated both times he ran as PM.
(Ninja’d) [del]Three continents in the world do not have 7-Eleven stores: Africa, South America, and Antarctica. Europe almost doesn’t have any – only Norway, Sweden, and Denmark have them, and the rest of the countries do not.[/del]
Still in play:
in 2016, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull came under scrutiny for his financial links to 7-Eleven in that country, which was involved in a wages exploitation scandal. 7-Eleven is now an American-Japanese international chain; while it originated in North America, the founding US business entered into bankruptcy protection in 1990 and 7-Eleven Japan bought a 70 percent stake in the US company. There are 16,664 7-Elevens in Japan, more than double the second most 7-11 dense country in the world, the USA.
[7-Elevens are really everywhere in Japan! I spent a week there and was in there all the time; they have good food and ATMs that take US bank cards, unlike most Japanese banks]