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In the early months of WWII, the British bombing campaign strategy was to aim for specific key targets such as airfields and armament factories. This strategy was later changed when it was discovered that only one in five aircraft was succeeding in dropping its bombs within five miles of its target.
Key bombing targets included railroads and railroad crossings.
The “Overland Route”, the popular name of the first US Transcontinental Railroad, was 1,912 miles long and ran from Council Bluffs IA to Alameda CA. (gMap, today on streets it’s a 1,670 mile driving distance: https://goo.gl/FfMqnC). It was built from 1863 to 1869 and it opened on 10 May 1869 when CPRR President Leland Stanford ceremonially drove the gold “Last Spike” (the “Golden Spike”) with a silver hammer at Promontory Summit UT.
10 May 1869: completion of the Overland Route; the Golden Spike is driven
??? Sep 1869: the first transcontinental rail passengers arrived at the Pacific Railroad’s original western terminus at the Alameda Mole (06 Sep? 08 Sep?)
This was almost 4 months after “completion”, because a final link connecting New York City to Alameda/Oakland was the Mossdale Crossing over the San Joaquin River near Lathrop CA.
For four months in 1869, a passenger would board a train in New York City and travel west until they reached Mossdale. At that point, they would unload their luggage, cross the river by ferry, and board another train on the other side of the river before the trestle was completed.
The first train crossed the Mossdale Crossing bridge on 08 Sep 1869.
The brass plaque depicting that historic event — California Registered Historical Landmark No. 780-7 — has since been stolen from the stone monument on the north side of Mossdale Crossing along Manthey Road.
The breakthrough in the WW2 Allied advance into Germany, the crossing of the Rhine, was first accomplished at the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen, a railroad crossing that the Wehrmacht had failed to destroy in its retreat. When the charges were blown, the bridge had lifted up but settled back down on its foundations, still usable.
Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff was a German general during WWI. After the war, Ludendorff became a prominent nationalist leader, and a promoter of the Stab-in-the-back myth, which posited that the German loss in World War I was caused by the betrayal of the German Army by Marxists, Bolsheviks, and Jews. He was arrested in 1923 as part of Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch.
Despite Wonder Woman’s belief through most of last summer’s blockbuster Gal Gadot movie, directed by Patty Jenkins, Ludendorff was not actually the Greek god Ares, bringer of war.
Gal Gadot briefly appeared on Conan O’Brien’s televised multi-day visit to Israel in September 2017. O’Brien came to her apartment door, clearly smitten, but she regretfully declined to let him in, explaining that she had some friends over.
Gal Gadot won the 2004 Miss Israel title at the age of 18. The winner of the first Miss Israel title, in 1950, was a woman named Miriam Yaron, who was born in Germany.
There are more than 40 kosher McDonald’s in Israel. There is one outside Israel, in Buenos Aires.
The McDonald’s in Sedona, Arizona is the only McDonald’s where the trademark “Golden Arches” are Turquoise. The owners of that franchise were told that they needed to make the location more in keeping with the distinct desert environment.
pic: http://cdn5.viralscape.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Blue-McDonalds-Sedona-2.jpg
The song “Old MacDonald had a farm” dates in its present form back to 1917, when it was collected as “Old Macdougld”. By then it was already 200 years old, having evolved from:
In the Fields in Frost and Snows,
Watching late and early;
There I keep my Father's Cows,
There I Milk 'em Yearly:
Booing here, Booing there,
Here a Boo, there a Boo, every where a Boo,
We defy all Care and Strife,
In a Charming Country-Life.Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone for the Doubleday book plant, Country Life Press, on Aug. 19, 1910. Located in Garden City, NY, it was the press where the classics of Rudyard Kipling, O. Henry, Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle and Lawrence of Arabia were printed, along with countless others. The press, no longer in operation, had its own Long Island Railroad station, also named Country Life Press, which is still in use.
Abner Doubleday was an artillery officer in the US Army!
“The Army Goes Rolling Along” is the official song of the United States Army, and uses the tune of the older “U.S. Field Artillery March”. The line “For it’s high high he / In the Field Artillery” was changed to “Then it’s Hi! Hi! Hey! / The Army’s on its way”, and now it’s the entire Army that goes rolling along, not just the caissons.
The US Army’s official song was written by a US Marine. The US Field Artillery March was written by John Philip Sousa in 1917.
Its first phrase,
Over hill, over dale,
We will hit the dusty trail,
And those Caissons go rolling along.,
is Shakespearean. It comes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act II, Scene 1:
“Over hill, over dale
Thorough bush, thorough briar
Over park, over pale
Thorough flood, thorough fire”.
Johnny Horton’s hit recording of “The Battle of New Orleans” (using the lines " they ran through the brambles And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn’t go ") was a lame watered-down version of the original song composed by Arkansas folk singer Jimmy Driftwood. About three quarters of the Driftwood lyrics were cut out, with Horton singing the same verses over again. The original was considered inappropriate for the tender ears of AM radio listeners of the time, including “really gave them hell”, and dancing with pretty girls from France, to rhyme with “underpants”’
Arlo Guthrie’s 1972 song City of New Orleans describes a train ride from Chicago to New Orleans on the Illinois Central Railroad’s City of New Orleans. Places that are named in the song are, in order,
New Orleans
Illinois
Kankakee
houses, farms and fields
freight yards
graveyards of the rusted automobiles
America
Memphis, Tennessee
the sea
“Rock Island Line” by British singer Lonnie Donegan was another song about the train from Chicago to New Orleans, and also completely destroyed forever by being covered by both Johnny Horton and Johnny Cash.
Johnny Cash has inspired two Broadway jukebox musicals based on his life and works: On March 12, 2006, Ring of Fire, debuted on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theater but closed due to harsh reviews and disappointing sales on April 30. Million Dollar Quartet, a musical portraying the early Sun recording sessions involving Cash, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins, debuted on Broadway on April 11, 2010. Actor Lance Guest portrayed Cash. The musical was nominated for three awards at the 2010 Tony Awards and won one.
Actor Loni Anderson’s father was originally going to name her “Leiloni” but then realized to his horror that when she got to her teen years it was likely to be twisted into “Lay Loni”. So it was changed to simply "Loni“.