The Chamberlains were a family of British politicians: Joseph and his two sons, Austen and Neville. They had no aristocratic connections, with Joseph having made his money in manufacturing. All three held various significant Cabinet positions, with Neville becoming Prime Minister, now remembered for his policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany. Austen was a strong proponent of rearmament, along with Churchill.
Neville Chamberlain had been a mayor before entering the House of Commons, and years later Winston Churchill said that “Neville looks at foreign policy through the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe.”
Richard Chamberlain starred as Carl Brown and sang the title song to the movie adaption of Betty Smith’s book Joy in the Morning. His co-star as Annie was Yvette Mimieux, who would later play Dr. Kildare’s girlfriend, who died in the end.
The starship which brings Call (Winona Ryder) and her ragtag crewmates to a United Systems Military secret research facility in Alien Resurrection (1997) is called the Betty.
Yvette Diane Clarke is a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives from New York. The child of Jamaican immigrant parents, Clarke has lived all her life in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn. Upon graduating from Edward R. Murrow High School, she earned a scholarship to Oberlin College in Ohio, which she attended from 1982 to 1986.
*ninja’ed but found me a loophole.
The number of United States Representatives in the first Congress in 1789 was 65. That number has been adjusted more than 30 times, rising to 435 in 1913. The number rose to 437 in 1961 after Alaska and Hawaii had been admitted to the Union, but was reduced back to 435 in 1963.
Ohio, which now has 16 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, is projected to lose one seat after the next U.S. Census in 2020. Although the state’s population has grown slightly since 2010, it has not grown as much as in some other states, particularly Texas and Florida.
The protest song “Ohio”, written by Neil Young for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, was released in response to the Kent State university shootings of May 4, 1970. Crosby, Stills, and Nash visited the Kent State campus for the first time on May 4, 1997, where they performed the song for the May 4 Task Force’s 27th annual commemoration.
Gov. Jim Rhodes, who sent the Ohio National Guard to Kent State University in May 1970 in response to student unrest there, was narrowly defeated in his run for the Republican nomination for U.S. senator two days after the shootings on campus.
The Colossus of Rhodes was the shortest-lived of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Completed around 280 BCE, it lasted only 6 decades until it was destroyed by the Rhodes earthquake of 226 BCE.
Of the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, only one—the Great Pyramid of Giza, the oldest of the seven wonders—remains relatively intact. The Colossus of Rhodes, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Temple of Artemis and the Statue of Zeus were all destroyed. The location and ultimate fate of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are unknown, and there is speculation that they may not have existed at all.
The Rivers of Babylon is a pop song, originally with Rastafarian roots, based on Psalms 19 and 137, recounting the exile of the Jews in Babylon after the destruction of the First Temple.
The Boney M version, released in 1978, was a number 1 hit in the U.K. and in the top 10 in Canada, but did not fare so well in the US.
Walter Koenig played Psi Cop Alfred Bester in the TV Series Babylon 5. The real Alfred Bester (1913-1987) was a leading science fiction writer, one of whose best works, “The Demolished Man”, deals with murder in a world where the police are telepathic, as is the Bester character in this show.
Walter Koenig was added to the cast of Star Trek as Ens. Pavel Chekov, a young Russian navigator, in part to show that Cold War animosities would be no more at the time the show was set (several centuries in the future), but also to appeal to younger viewers. In his initial appearances, his wig had a definite Beatles/Monkees look.
On April 16, 1947, Bernard Baruch coined the term “Cold War” to describe the increasingly chilly relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Baruch used the phrase in a speech to the South Carolina House of Representatives, where his portrait was being unveiled:
“Let us not be deceived. We are today in the midst of a Cold War. Our enemies are to be found abroad and at home. Let us never forget this: Our unrest is the heart of their success.”
The South Carolina House of Representatives is one of the few American state legislative bodies to have a mace, which are more common in countries following the Westminster parliamentary model. The South Carolina Senate also has a ceremonial sword.
https://www.scstatehouse.gov/studentpage/coolstuff/seal.shtml
The original Mace of the Canadian House of Commons was destroyed 101 years ago in the fire on February 3, 1917, which wiped out the Centre Block of the Canadian Parliament buildings.
A temporary Mace was hurriedly put together when the Commons began sitting in a museum building in Ottawa a few days later. It is still used once a year, on February 3, to commemorate the fire.
The current Mace was made shortly after the fire and presented to Prime Minister Borden when he was in London in the spring of 1917.
https://www.ourcommons.ca/About/HistoryArtsArchitecture/collection_profiles/CP_mace-e.htm
When Lizzie Borden was tried for the axe murder of her parents, their skulls were introduced as evidence in the trial. Following the trial, the skulls were buried between the feet of each of the victims. One of the prosecutors of the case, William Henry Moody, went on to become a US Supreme Court Justice.
The trial of Lizzie Borden was sensational for the time. A child’s rope-skipping rhyme came out of the notoriety, sung to the then-popular tune Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-de-ay:
Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.
Elizabeth “Lizzie” Bennet, heroine of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), was played by English actress Keira Knightley in the critically-acclaimed 2005 movie adaptation of the book. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress but lost to Reese Witherspoon, who starred in Walk the Line.