Gettysburg PA, is in south-central Pennsylvania and some 125mi W of Philadelphia, 40mi SW of Harrisburg, and 60mi NW of Baltimore MD. After the famous Civil War battle, over 35,000 rifles lying on the battlefield were collected. Some 24,000 of them were still loaded.
In Britain, following the Battle of Waterloo, dentures for the wealthy were purportedly made from teeth extracted from the bodies of soldiers who had fallen on the battlefield. These products were more comfortable and durable than those made of porcelain and ivory.
At the 50th anniversary celebration of the Eurovision Song Contest in 2005, Waterloo by ABBA was chosen as the best song in the competition’s history.
The name of the Swedish band ABBA is an acronym formed from the first letters of each group member’s first name: Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid. ‘Abba’ is also the name of a well-known fish-canning company in Sweden; the musical group negotiated with the canners for the rights to the name.
Jonathan Frid, known for playing Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows, was born and raised in Hamilton Ontario.
(I was in law school with a cousin of Frid.)
Hamilton: An American Musical is a sung- and rapped-through musical about the life of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. In 2016, Hamilton received a record-setting 16 Tony nominations, winning 11, including Best Musical, and was also the recipient of the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album and the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The Hamilton Watch Company, incorporated in 1892, sent more than one million watches overseas to troops during WWII. Hamilton developed the Pulsar, the world’s first electronic digital watch. In 1972.
The West End production of Hamilton: An American Musical was nominated for a record breaking 13 Olivier Awards in 11 catagories, and won 7.
13, 11, 7… and bankruptcy.
Chapter 13 Bankruptcy is designed for an individual who has a regular source of income, a desire to pay his or her debts, but currently is unable to do so.
Chapter 11 Bankruptcy primarily applies to commercial enterprises that wish to continue business operations while repaying creditors through a court-approved reorganization plan.
Chapter 7 Bankruptcy is also known as “liquidation,” “straight bankruptcy,” or “complete bankruptcy,” and is the most commonly filed form of bankruptcy among individuals. Chapter 7 Bankruptcy essentially allows the debtor to make a fresh start.
Bankruptcy is a matter of Federal law in the United States. Every U.S. district court has a bankruptcy court. Although district court judges are appointed to life terms during good behavior under Art. III of the U.S. Constitution, bankruptcy judges are appointed under Art. I to 14-year terms which may be renewed.
Writing about moral bankruptcy in his study On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts, Thomas De Quincey, also author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, opined: “If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begun upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.”
When the Hallmark Channel decided to create a series based on Joanne Fluke’s Hannah Swensen cozy mysteries about a coffee shop owner who is always finding dead bodies and solving murders, they called it “Murder She Baked,” an obvious takeoff on Jessica Fletcher’s Murder She Wrote.
The armed schooner Hannah, named after the captain’s daughter and hired into Continental Army service by Gen. George Washington in Sept. 1775, is considered to be the first United States warship.
While the USS Hannah is considered to be the first armed US warship, on March 27, 1794 the United States Congress authorized the construction of six frigates, the first ships of the United States Navy, the USS Constitution, the USS Chesapeake, the USS Constellation, the USS President, the USS United States, and the USS Congress.
The USS Constitution, commissioned in 1797, is the US Navy’s oldest commissioned vessel still afloat. The second-oldest is the USS Pueblo, which was commissioned in 1945. The Pueblo was captured by North Korea in 1968 and remains anchored in the Potong River in Pyongyang. It is used there as a museum ship.
Taos Pueblo NM, some 25 miles W of Angel Fire, 70 miles NNW of Santa Fe, and 1 mile NE of Taos, is a UNESCO-designated heritage site. Taos Pueblo is the ancient pueblo built between roughly 1000 and 1450 A.D. and is a US National Historic Landmark. Its most prominent architectural feature is a multi-storied residential complex of reddish-brown adobe, built on either side of the Rio Pueblo de Taos, a tributary of the Rio Grande flowing from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
Philmont Scout Ranch, run by the Boy Scouts of America, is in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico. I was there for a week of hiking in the summer of 1983; it is partially closed this summer due to wildfires.
The Sangre de Cristo Mountains are the southernmost subrange of the Rocky Mountains. All of the peaks over thirteen thousand feet in New Mexico are in this mountain range. Great Sand Dunes National Park, in south-central Colorado, is in the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
Sangre de Cristo is Spanish for Blood of Christ and may refer to the occasional reddish hues observed during sunrise and sunset, and when alpenglow occurs, especially when the mountains are covered with snow.
Alpenglow is an optical phenomenon that appears as a horizontal reddish glow near the horizon opposite of the Sun when the solar disk is just below the horizon.
Blue hour, the morning equivalent of alpenglow, is the period of twilight when the Sun’s light seems to have a predominantly blueish hue.