Dallas TX is named after the small town of Dallas, in the region of Moray, in Scotland, UK. There are ten other states in the USA with a town named “Dallas”.
There are approximately 200 species of Moray eels, which can be found in all parts of the world. Most are found in the ocean, but several species are regularly seen in brackish water, and a very few are found in fresh water.
The smallest moray eel attains a maximum length of 4.5 inches, while the longest species reaches up to 13 feet in length. The largest in terms of total mass is the giant moray, which reaches almost 10 feet in length and 66 pounds in weight.
The Earldom of Moray (pronounced “Murray”) has been created on 5 separate times in the peerage of Scotland. The current Earl is the 21st Earl of the fifth creation.
Murray was Dr. John H. Watson’s Army orderly, who saved him from enemy soldiers after the doctor’s wounding during the 1888 Battle of Maiwand in the Second Afghan War. It is unclear from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s writings whether Murray was the soldier’s first or last name. He was only mentioned once, in A Study in Scarlet.
The “Heights of Dargai” is a pipe tune, commemorating a battle which occurred on October 20, 1897, in North-west India (now Pakistan).
A battalion of the Gordon Highlanders were ordered to take the heights of Dargai in a battle with Afridi and Orakzai tribesmen. The five pipers of the battalion were ordered to lead the advance. One of the pipers was George Findlater, who said later that the order had been to play the “Cock o’the North,” but he thought that as a march tune, that wasn’t appropriate, and that the charge would be better led by a quick strathspey, so instead played “The Haughs o’ Cromdale”.
Four of the five pipers were wounded in the battle, including Findlater, who was struck in both legs and unable to advance. Nonetheless, he propped himself up against a boulder and continued to pipe until he passed out from loss of blood. The heights were taken in 40 minutes, with only one piper making it to the top.
Findlater’s dogged determination to keep playing to encourage his fellow-soldiers, in spite of his own wounds, won him great popular support. He was awarded the VC personally by Queen Victoria.
The Swat district of northwest Pakistan, in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, was once ruled by sultans, although that appears to be a happy coincidence rather than the origin of one of baseball great George Herman “Babe” Ruth’s nicknames, the Sultan of Swat. Moe Solomon, a minor league slugger who briefly played for the New York Giants, was the Rabbi of Swat.
The USCSS Nostromo, the ill-fated starship in the 1979 Ridley Scott-directed sf horror film Alien, was mentioned in a single line of dialogue as being “out of the Solomons.” The Solomon Islands are near the equator, ideally placed for a future spaceport.
In one MAS*H’s best lines, and William Christopher’s best deliveries, when an injured soldier said he was reading Songs of Solomon, Father Mulcahy replied “Solomon sure had a lot to sing about.”
Warren Christopher, President Bill Clinton’s first Secretary of State, had earlier served as a top official in the State Department during the Carter Administration.
Victor French played supporting roles with Michael Landon on both “Little House on the Prairie” and “Highway to Heaven”. In between, he played the fictional Clinton Corners, Georgia police chief Roy Mobey on “Carter Country”, an IMHO underrated comedy. Richard Paul as Mayor Teddy Burnside originated the brief-lived catchphrase “Handle it, Roy, handle it!”
Bill Clinton was the first native of Arkansas, the first person born after World War II, the first Rhodes Scholar and the first former head of the National Governors Association to be elected President of the United States.
Warren Christopher was a patrician who was a bit out of place in the free-wheeling Clinton universe. One comment was that Christopher was so buttoned-down that he ate M&Ms with a knife and fork.
Warren Christopher headed the committee which recommended that Gov. Clinton pick U.S. Sen. Al Gore, Democrat of Tennessee, as his running mate, and later chaired transition planning for the President-elect.
According to Wikipedia (yet again), the original Atari was founded in Sunnyvale, California in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. It was a pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles, and home computers. The company’s first major success was the game of Pong, released in 1977.
Edit: Pong was released in 1972 as an arcade game. A home version was released in 1975, and Pong was one of the games featured in the Atari 2600, which was released in 1977.
Although J. Jaques & Son Ltd trademarked the name “ping-pong” in 1901 (and later sold the rights to Parker Bros.), the name was in wide use before they trademarked it.
Jaques is a major character in Shakespeare’s As You Like It; he delivers the celebrated “All the world’s a stage” speech. The role is a favorite among Shakespearean actors and has been played by Alan Rickman, Stephen Spinella, Kevin Kline (who received a SAG award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries) and Ellen Burstyn.
The late, great Alan Rickman played a real U.S. President in a movie (Ronald Reagan, in The Butler) and Kevin Kline played both a real one (U.S. Grant, in Wild Wild West) and a fictional one (Bill Mitchell, in Dave)
Actor Will Smith turned down the lead role in The Matrix to star in The Wild Wild West, being a fan of the television series. He later said this was the worst decision he ever made in his career.