The southern live oak is, as it happens, the state tree of Georgia. Georgia was the last-established of the original thirteen British colonies in what is now the United States, and now has the eighth-largest population of any U.S. state.
Georgia is one of six states that has a species of oak as its state tree. The other states are Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, and New Jersey. The District of Columbia also has a species of oak as its ‘state’ tree.
Although the District of Columbia is a special Federal enclave and not a state, its top legal officer has since 2004 been called the Attorney General, just as if he or she held that post in a state.
On May 1, 2004, the European Union expanded by 10 member states. The new members were: Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Malta and Cyprus.
Eleven men are officially recognized by the EU as its founding fathers: Konrad Adenauer and Walter Hallstein of West Germany, Joseph Bech of Luxembourg, Johan Beyen and Sicco Mansholt of the Netherlands, Winston Churchill of the UK, Alcide de Gasperi and Altiero Spinelli of Italy, Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman of France, and Paul-Henri Spaak of Belgium.
The M1911 is a semi-automatic pistol chambered for the .45 ACP cartridge.
The original Colt 1911 succeeded in tests to win the competition for a new US military service pistol, specifically in a test in 1910 attended by its designer, John Browning. Six thousand rounds were fired from a single pistol over the course of two days. When the gun began to grow hot, it was simply immersed in water to cool it. The Colt gun passed with no reported malfunctions, while the other competing pistol had 37.
The M1911 is commonly called the “nineteen eleven.”
The Houston Colt .45s were an expansion team that entered the National League in 1962, along with the New York Mets. The Colt .45s opened the season by sweeping the Chicago Cubs in a 3-game series. They would end the season with a record of 64-96, finishing ahead of both the Cubs and Mets.
In 1965, the team was officially renamed to the Houston Astros and they began play in their new stadium, the Astrodome. The Astros won their first World Series title in 2017.
In their 56th season ever, and their 53rd as the Astros, and as Railer13 tells us, the 2017 Houston Astros won their first-ever World Championship by beating the Los Angeles Dodgers 4 games to 3.
At 362 feet long, the Los Angeles-class submarines were the longest United States Navy nuclear fast attack subs up to that time. First entering service in 1976, 62 were built; 35 remain on active duty.
Tom Clancy’s 1984 debut novel, The Hunt for Red October, about a Russian submarine by that name, catapulted his writing career onto a very successful trajectory. It didn’t hurt that President Ronald Reagan called it “un-put-downable.”
The October Revolution of 1917 is so called because of its dates in the Julian calendar, which was still in use in Russia at the time. By the Gregorian calendar, it occurred in November.
Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III was born in 1917. He died in 1986. He was better known as Desi Arnaz.
In the 1992 Armand Assante - Antonio Banderas film The Mambo Kings, based on Oscar Hijuelos’ novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Desi Arnaz was played by Desi Arnaz Jr. Arnaz offered the musical brothers from Cuba a spot on his TV show, the one with his crazy Irish wife.
Grandma, Granma, Gramma, Grandmama, and Grandmother are all endearing name for the mother of one’s parent. But it is also, as Granma, one of the 16 political subdivisions of Cuba: Granma Province.
In 1511, the first Spanish settlement in Cuba was founded by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar at Baracoa. Other towns soon followed, including San Cristobal de la Habana, founded in 1515, which later became the capital, better known today as Havana.
Havana is the capital city, largest city and leading commercial center of Cuba. With just over two million people, it is also the largest city in the Caribbean region.
Fifteen million units of “Grand Theft Auto V” sold in 2017. Years after its initial release in 2013, the game was still somehow the sixth best-selling video game last year. And since its release, the game has moved 90 million copies, putting its haul well north of $6 billion and making “Grand Theft Auto V” plausibly the most commercially successful single media property of all time.
When and if His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, eldest son of the Prince of Wales, takes the British throne, he might do so as King William V (using his birthname), Charles III (his father’s), George VII (after his paternal great-grandfather), or something else entirely.
John Wayne got his nickname “the Duke” from his childhood dog. The dog was named Duke, and John Wayne, then in grade school, was tagged as Little Duke. A local fireman at the station on Wayne’s route to school in Glendale CA started calling him “Little Duke” because he never went anywhere without his huge Airedale Terrier, Duke. He preferred “Duke” to “Marion”, as his birth name was Marion Mitchell Morrison, and the nickname stuck.
The Duke of Wellington’s London home, Apsley House, stands alone in a corner of Hyde Park, facing the Wellington Arch. Although its official address is 149 Piccadilly, W1J 7NT, it has the popular nickname of Number One, London, since it was the first house passed by visitors who travelled from the countryside after the toll gates at Knightsbridge.