Caroline Herschel started working in astronomy as her brother William’s assistant, and then became an astronomer in her own right, discovering many galaxies, nebulae and comets. In 1787, she was granted an annual salary of £50 by George III for her work as William’s assistant. Caroline’s appointment made her the first woman in England with an official government position, and the first woman to be paid for her work in astronomy. In 1828 the Royal Astronomical Society presented her with their Gold Medal for her work; no woman would be awarded it again until Vera Rubin in 1996.
Neil Diamond’s June 1969 hit song, Sweet Caroline, was inspired by John F. Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline, who was eleven years old at the time it was released. Caroline Bouvier Kennedy served as the US Ambassador to Japan from 2013 to 2017.
In the 2008 US presidential election, about Barack Obama, Caroline Kennedy said, “I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president—not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.”
British singer-songwriter Robert Wyatt had a Top 30 hit in the UK in September/October 1974 (it reached #29 on the UK charts) with a version of “I’m a Believer,” a song written by Neil Diamond a hit for the Monkees. It was Wyatt’s first recording after the June 1973 accident that left him a paraplegic.
gkster, I always thought that the Herschel siblings’ lives would make a great dual biopic.
In play:
The British Prime Minister - currently Theresa May - is ex officio also First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service.
Maybole railway station is a railway station serving the town of Maybole, South Ayrshire, Scotland. It’s National Rail station code is MAY. The station was opened in 1860 and the main building remains in operation to this day.
Her Majesty the Queen has a different coat of arms and a different flag when she’s in Scotland, with the Scottish royal red lion appearing twice and not once, as when she’s elsewhere in the United Kingdom.
The Loyola Marymount Lions have never won the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship, but the Loyola Ramblers of Chicago won it once and only once in 1963, the year before John Wooden and UCLA won their first of 10 champioships in 12 years, the most and best in the history of the tournament.
There are 28 Jesuit colleges in the US, run by the religious order founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola. Many of them, founded at a time of anti-Catholic prejudice, are named for their neighborhood or city, such as Boston College, Fordham University, Georgetown University, University of San Francisco and Spring Hill College. Others are named for Jesuit saints, such as Gonzaga and Xavier. Four of them bear the name Loyola; the first of them to be so named is Loyola Maryland in Baltimore.
Of the 28 Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) schools in the USA, there isn’t an AJCU college or university in (in alphabetical order) Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Wyoming.
They are in Alabama, California (4), Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts (3), Michigan, Missouri (2), Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Ohio (2), Pennsylvania (2), Washington (2), Wisconsin, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
Wikipedia has a notation to the effect that Usa was a legendary patron of Egypt—according to the Midrash Abkir, one of the smaller midrashim in Rabbinic Literature.
Doesn’t the lyrical line in the song “Mack the Knife” about the line forming on the right have bars in common with the melody composed by Florian Hermann and used by Yevhen Hrebinka with his lyrics for “Ochi Chyornye” (known in the USA as “Dark Eyes”)?
Russell Hoban’s novel Riddley Walker is set in a post-nuclear-apocalyptic Britain, in first person by the protagonist whose low literary skills reflect the remaining level of civilization. Clans wandering “Inland” (England) preserve what they think to be their history with ceremonial puppet-show retellings of the collapse, caused by bombs dropped by “Usa” (the USA).
Film director Ridley Scott‘s breakthrough film was 1979’s Alien. His brother, director Tony Scott, directed 1986’s Top Gun. Tony committed suicide in San Pedro CA in 2012 by jumping off of the Vincent Thomas Bridge. Near that bridge, the USS Iowa, floats as a restored museum battleship.
Most of Ridley Scott’s 1979 sf/horror movie Alien takes places aboard the USCSS (United States Commercial Starship, according to publicity materials at the time) Nostromo, named after a character in a book by Joseph Conrad, one of Scott’s favorite authors. The starship’s shuttlecraft is the Narcissus, named after a ship in another Conrad book.
Whose full title you know better than to write. 
Hermann Hesse’ novel Narcissus and Goldmund is the story of a young man, Goldmund, who wanders aimlessly throughout Medieval Germany after leaving a Catholic monastery school in search of the meaning of life, finding it in religion, sex, and art.
Joseph Conrad is recognized as a leading prose stylist in English, which was actually his third or fourth language. As a young man (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) he grew up speaking Polish, Russian, German and French. His literary ambitions were evident early in his life, and encouraged by his father, who translated literary works for a living. However, at at age 17 he went to sea, wandering the world in search of adventure and serving on various Navy and Merchant Marine ships for over 20 years.
According to his friend, philosopher Bertrand Russell, he “spoke English with a very strong foreign accent, and nothing in his demeanour in any way suggested the sea. He was an aristocratic Polish gentleman to his fingertips.”
Amor Towles’s critically-acclaimed novel A Gentleman in Moscow is about the confinement under house arrest of a kind, erudite Russian nobleman in a Moscow hotel beginning in 1922, and the life he makes for himself among his friends and coworkers on the hotel staff over the span of many years.
In November 1922, Howard Carter and George, earl of Carnarvon discovered King Tut’s tomb.
The 4th Earl of Carnarvon (father of the King Tut Earl) was Secretary of State for the Colonies in early 1867. He shepherded the British North America Act, 1867 through the House of Lords, thereby contributing to the creation of Canada.
Well, I had to look it up. :eek:
“He’s my favorite honky” is a line in comedian Steve Martin’s 1978 parody song, King Tut, from Saturday Night Live.
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Oh, I just realized that some may think there’s a connection between the book title and “He’s my favorite honky”, but no, there isn’t.
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