The year before Vanderbilt died, in 1919, Sir Barton became the first of currently 13 horses to win American horse racing’s Triple Crown. In that year, the Preakness Stakes was held only 4 days after the Kentucky Derby, and the length of the Belmont Stakes was 1⅜ miles, and not the 1½ miles it is today. The Belmont Stakes has been a 1½ mile long race since 1926.
Anderson Cooper (gt-gt-gt grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt whose steamship and railroad businesses made him the richest man of his day) had varied careers: his work as a model and TV personality began while he was a toddler; he interned two summers for the CIA; and finally settled on a career as TV journalist. He needed gumption to become a news-reporter: he once forged a fake press pass to sneak into Burma and report on political unrest there.
The Burma Road was a road linking Burma with the southwest of China. It was built while Burma was a British colony in order to convey supplies to China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Preventing the flow of supplies on the road helped motivate the occupation of Burma by the Empire of Japan in 1942.
In an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, one character suddenly exclaims, “Burma!” When another, puzzled, asks why he said it, he replies, “I panicked.”
The decision of the House of Lords in their judicial capacity in Burmah Oil Corporation v the Lord Advocate is a major constitutional case in Britain, and by extension in some of the Commonwealth countries.
During the Japanese advance on Burma during WWII, the British Army destroyed a refinery owned by Burmah Oil to prevent it from falling into Japanese hands.
After the war, Burmah Oil sued the British government for compensation. The British government argued it was a war loss and there was no liability.
The House of Lords ruled in favour of Burmah Oil. It found that the war loss exception to government liability only applied to damage incurred in the face of the enemy. If the British Army had destroyed the refinery while in direct battle with the Japanese, there would be no liability.
However, the British Army destroyed the refinery as a strategic decision, before the Imperial Japanese Army arrived, and then decamped. That did not come within the war losses exception and therefore the British government was liable.
The decision had major potential impact on the government’s financial liability for similar acts committed throughout the war. In response, Parliament passed a statute which changed the law to encompass strategic destruction in the exemption from liability. It also made the legislation retroactive, effectively overturning the decision of the House of Lords and denying compensation to Burmah Oil.
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small sequential highway roadside signs. At its peak, Burma-Shave was the second-highest-selling brushless shaving cream in the United States. Sales declined in the 1950s, and in 1963 the company was sold to Philip Morris. The signs were removed at that time.
Here’s an example of a series of signs:
Keep well
To the right
Of the oncoming car
Get your close shaves
From the half pound jar
Burma-Shave
The Phillip Morris company’s namesake, Philip Morris, was born in Whitechapel, United Kingdom in 1835, the son of a recent immigrant from Germany who had taken the name Bernard Morris. In 1847, the family opened a shop in London. The first cigarettes that Philip Morris made were in 1854 and were known as “Philip Morris English Ovals,” a non-filter brand of oval-shaped cigarettes that were manufactured in limited quantities until their discontinuation in 2017.
Nine Men’s Morris is an ancient strategy game, probably dating back to the Romans. Players move their nine pieces on points of a grid. If a player forms a line of three, a “mill”, the player can remove one of the other player’s counters.
It was popular in England in the medieval period, with the Morris board sometimes carved into a village green for outdoor play, as reflected by Titania’s comment in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where she comments on bad weather: “The Nine Men’s Morris is filled up with mud.”
The best known musical pieces written for A Midsummer Night’s Dream are both by Felix Mendelssohn. He wrote the Overture when he was only 17. The Wedding March was written 16 years later. Now well known as a recessional piece at weddings, it became popular after it was selected by Victoria, The Princess Royal for her marriage to Prince Frederick William of Prussia on 25 January 1858. The bride was the daughter of Queen Victoria, who loved Mendelssohn’s music and for whom Mendelssohn often played while on his visits to Britain.
The Disney Dream is a cruise ship operated by Disney Cruise Line, part of The Walt Disney Company. She currently sails three-day, four-day, and occasional five-day cruises to the Bahamas out of Port Canaveral FL. She entered service in 2011; her sister ship, Disney Fantasy, was deployed in 2012.
Besides cruise ships, Port Canaveral has played a role in support of NASA projects out of nearby John F. Kennedy Space Center. Most recently the Space Shuttle’s external tanks were floated into Port Canaveral for each mission, and the solid rocket boosters were towed back through Port Canaveral after being fished out of the Atlantic Ocean after each launch.
Port Canaveral is, thanks largely to Disney Cruise Line and its Bahamas routes, the second busiest cruise port in the *world *by passenger count, behind only Miami. It is also the home port of SpaceX’s powered barge, or drone ship, used for Falcon 9 booster landings, named “Of Course I Still Love You”.
There were 135 Space Shuttle missions from 1981 to 2011, and each mission averaged just under 10 days in space. STS-80, flown by Columbia, was the longest at 17 days, 15 hours, 53 minutes, and 18 seconds. Its external tanks were floated into Port Canaveral.
For her first launch as a Shuttle pilot, USAF Col. Eileen Collins invited as her guests the surviving members of the Mercury 13, women pilots who had passed all the same physiological tests as the Mercury astronauts but were barred from consideration by NASA due to lack of military test pilot experience. NASA shifted them from Collins’ guest list to the VIP list when they learned of it. More info is available on the new Netflix documentary “Mercury 13”, of which this is a strong recommendation.
Col. Eileen M. Collins, USAF, is a former military instructor and test pilot. Her parents were immigrants from County Cork, Ireland. Col. Collins was the first female pilot and first female commander (in 1999) of a Space Shuttle.
In addition to being the first female American astronaut, Sally Ride was also the youngest American astronaut to have traveled in space, having do so when she was 32.
‘Ride, Sally, Ride!’ is a well-known chorus from the song Mustang Sally, which was written and recorded by R&B artist Sir Mack Rice in 1965. The song achieved greater popularity when Wilson Picket released it as a single the following year. Since then at least 10 more recording artists have released cover versions of the song, including Buddy Guy and Sam & Dave.
In the film The Commitments, based on one of Roddy Doyle’s novels about working-class Irish life, the Dublin rock band puts its differences aside for the chance to perform in front of Wilson Pickett, although he does not show at the club until after they’ve performed “In the Midnight Hour” and broken up.
Gene Hackman won his only Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role for his portrayal of Jimmy ‘Popeye’ Doyle in The French Connection. Twenty-one years later he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Sheriff ‘Little Bill’ Daggett in Unforgiven. His two BAFTA wins were for the same two movies.
In The French Connection, Popeye Doyle famously interrogated a suspect: “All right! You put a shiv in my partner. You know what that means? Goddammit! All winter long I got to listen to him gripe about his bowling scores. Now I’m gonna bust your ass for those three bags and I’m gonna nail you for picking your feet in Poughkeepsie.”
It has never been clear what those last few words meant.