“The Eighth” was an annual US federal holiday to celebrate victory in the Battle of New Orleans on the 8th of January 1815. The holiday was celebrated from 1828 through 1861.
Country singer Jimmy Driftwood wrote the song “The Battle of New Orleans” when he was a high school principal and history teacher in Arkansas, to try to stimulate his students’ interest. Homer and Jethro parodies it with “The Battle of Kookamonga”.
Early in his career, the young teacher Mike Healy, then at Latham Ridge Elementary School in Latham NY in the early 1970s. would play the Arlo Guthrie song, City of New Orleans to stimulate his students’ interests and test their listening skills. After playing the song he would test his students on details they should have picked up in some of the lyrics:
*Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail
The train pulled out at Kankakee
And rolls along past houses, farms and fields
And freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles
Dealin’ card games with the old men in the club car
Penny a point ain’t no one keepin’ score
Mothers with their babes asleep
Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee
Half way home, we’ll be there by morning
The conductor sings his songs again
I’m the train they call the city of New Orleans
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done*
While looking to start a career as a writer, Salvatore Lombino took a variety of jobs, including 17 days as a teacher at Bronx Vocational High School in September 1950. This experience would later form the basis for his novel Blackboard Jungle (1954), written under the pen name Evan Hunter.
Classical composer Johann Pachelbel, writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, labor leader Walter Reuther, boxer Rocky Marciano, Texas Gov. Ann Richards, comedienne and actress Lily Tomlin (and I) were all born on September 1.
The Battle of Marciano occurred in the countryside of Marciano della Chiana, near Arezzo, Tuscany, on August 2, 1554, during the Italian War of 1551. The battle marked the defeat of the Republic of Siena in its war against the Duchy of Florence, and resulted in Siena losing its independence and being absorbed into the Duchy of Florence.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. is the only boxer to retire undefeated with a record of 50-0, having passed Rocky Marciano’s 49-0. Both Marciano and middleweight Marvin Hagler came from Brockton, Massachusetts, home of the BHS Boxers.
We was too late! The Vicar is KO’ed.
New one in a bit.
Earring George Mayweather was an American electric blues and Chicago blues harmonica player, songwriter and singer. He was given the nickname “Earring” by Big Bill Hill, a Chicago disc jockey.
Some of the greatest undefeated boxers include:
27-0: László Papp from Budapest HUN
51-0: Ricardo López from Cuernavaca MEX; 1 draw
27-0: Edwin Valero from Bolero Alto, Mérida VEN
46-0: Joe Calzaghe from Hammersmith, London GBR
49-0: Rocky Marciano from Brockton MA USA
50-0: Floyd Mayweather Jr. from Grand Rapids MI USA
Listed are their birthplaces.
The first iron works in the US was in Saugus, Massachusetts, just north of Boston. Called “Hammersmith”, it was restored in the 1950’s to near-functioning status as a National Historic Site. It operated from 1646 to 1670 before exhausting the local ore deposits, and was supplied with labor both by Scottish prisoners captured by Cromwell and by local Indians.
A National Historic Site is a protected area of national historic significance in the United States. A Site usually contains a single historical feature directly associated with its subject. There are currently 90 of these sites, of which 78 are also official National Park Service units and are managed by the Service.
The first National Historic Site was created in Salem, Massachusetts in 1937. Its purpose was to preserve and interpret the maritime history of New England and the United States.
Although the Salem Witch Trials were held in Salem Town, which is now the city of Salem, almost all of the accused were residents of Salem Village, which is now the city of Danvers. The Rebecca Nurse Homestead in Danvers is still standing, and is open to the public.
Mrs. Danvers, one of the most memorable female villains in all of Alfred Hitchcock’s films, was played (in Rebecca, 1940) by Dame Judith Anderson. A notable stage actress in her era, Anderson won two Emmy Awards and a Tony Award and was also nominated for a Grammy Award and an Academy Award. In 1984, she appeared in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock as the Vulcan High Priestess T’Lar.
(not in play: If you’re ever in Salem, do not, repeat not, waste any money on the so-called Salem Witch Museum! Worst tourist trap ever!)
The Rebecca Riots took place between 1839 and 1843 in South and Mid Wales. They were a series of protests undertaken by local farmers and agricultural workers in response to perceived unfair taxation. The rioters, often men dressed as women, took their actions against toll-gates, as they were tangible representations of high taxes and tolls. The origin of their name is said to be a verse in the Bible, Genesis 24:60 - ‘And they blessed Rebekah and said unto her, Thou art our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them’
Rebecca was the wife of Isaac and the mother of the twins Esau and Jacob. Esau was born first. Later when Isaac was old and dying, Rebeccah helped the younger son Jacob trick Isaac into giving Jacob the birthright and blessing rightly belonging to Esau.
Rebecca did this because God had told her,
“Two nations are in your womb,
and two peoples from within you will be separated;
one people will be stronger than the other,
and the older will serve the younger.”
William Pitt the Elder and his son William Pitt the Younger both served as Prime Ministers of Great Britain. WPtY gained the office at the tender age of 24.
Daphne du Maurier wrote a postscript to her classic atmospheric thriller Rebecca which is omitted from most editions of the book. In it, the unnamed female narrator and her infirm older husband Maxim De Winter are in sad, self-imposed exile in a European coastal resort town.
ETA: Next page! Du Maurier was a citizen of Great Britain.
Brighton, East Sussex GBR is a European coastal resort town on the south coast of England that is about 55 miles south of Buckingham Palace in London. From Brighton, the “Seven Sisters” is a quick 15 mile drive.
While the “white chalk cliffs of Dover” are best seen from on the water, in the English Channel, the Seven Sisters are readily seen from land. The Seven Sisters is a series of chalk cliffs by the English Channel. They form part of the South Downs in East Sussex, between the towns of Seaford and Eastbourne in southern England. They are within the South Downs National Park.
gMap, Brighton to Seaford: Google Maps
gImage, Seven Sisters, view from Seaford: Seven Sisters, Sussex - Wikipedia
Brighton Beach Memoirs is a semi-autobiographical play by Neil Simon, the first chapter in what is known as his *Eugene *trilogy. It precedes Biloxi Blues and Broadway Bound. Set in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn, New York in September 1937 during The Great Depression, this coming-of-age comedy focuses on Eugene Morris Jerome, a Polish-Jewish American teenager who experiences puberty, sexual awakening, and a search for identity as he tries to deal with his family, including his older brother Stanley, his parents Kate and Jack, Kate’s sister Blanche, and her two daughters, Nora and Laurie, who come to live there after their father’s death.