The northern areas of Norway, Sweden and Finland used to be known as Lapland, and the inhabitants “Laps” or “Lapps”. Those terms are now considered derogatory and the term “Sami” is preferred. There is no single Sami language, but at least ten related languages, not all mutually intelligible.
Rovaniemi, capital of the Finnish province of Lapland, was mostly destroyed by the explosion of an ammunition train during the retreat of German forces in the Lapland War theater of World War II. It is now a favorite destination of tourists seeking to witness the Aurora Borealis.
Jakob Maria Mierscheid is a fictional German parliamentarian “born” in 1979 and since interwoven into Bonn and Berlin political lore.
Folksinger Erik Frandsen, who often performed with Dave Van Ronk in Greenwich Village clubs in their younger days, found a new career commenting on Teutonic existentiality and despair, as the fictional German UN Ambassador Hans Beinholtz on Stephen Colbert’s “The Colbert Report”.
Stephen Colbert is a huge Tolkien fan, has a replica of the royal sword Anduril, and made a cameo appearance in the Hobbit movies, directed by Peter Jackson, who has also been a guest on his show.
Anduril Industries is a recent high-tech startup company which is committed to solving the most complex national security challenges. One of their products is a border ‘wall’ which uses high-tech, low-cost off-the-shelf devices and sensors instead of traditional structure material such as concrete. Two test sites of this system were put into place in March of 2018.
Exotropia, or “wall eye,” is a condition that occurs when the eyes turn outward, away from the nose, rather than being aligned. The term may relate to the walleyed pike, a freshwater perch. When the walleyed pike is dead, its large divergent eyes quickly become opaquely white. Or it may come from the Old Norse “vagl-eygr,” from “vagl” (beam) and “eygr” (eyed).
Gracie Allen, wife and longtime comic foil of George Burns, was born with heterochromia, giving her two different-color eyes - one blue and one green. She was said to be somewhat self-conscious about it.
The Swinging Blue Jeans were a four-piece band best known for the hit singles “Hippy Hippy Shake”, “Good Golly Miss Molly”, and “You’re No Good”, issued in 1964. In 1966, their version of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Don’t Make Me Over” peaked at no. 31 in the UK Singles Chart, but the group never charted again.
Jeans are a type of trousers, typically made from denim or dungaree cloth. The term ‘jeans’ often refers to a particular style of trousers, called ‘blue jeans’, which were invented by Jacob W. Davis in partnership with Levi Strauss & Co. in 1871 and patented by Jacob W. Davis and Levi Strauss on May 20, 1873. Prior to the Levi Strauss patented trousers, the term ‘blue jeans’ had been long in use for various garments constructed from blue-colored denim. It is theorized that the fabric known as denim was first developed in Genoa, Italy, and thus the word ‘jeans’ was derived from the city’s name.
Claude Lévi-Strauss, “the father of modern anthropology”, was a French anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theory of structuralism and structural anthropology. He held the chair of Social Anthropology at the Collège de France between 1959 and 1982 and was elected a member of the Académie française in 1973.
The Chevalier de Lévis was a French soldier, second-in-command of the French forces during the final stages of the Seven Years’ War, under the Marquis de Montcalm. Lévis took over command after Montcalm’s death on the Plains of Abraham. He successfully kept the French military in existence after the British victory, and in the spring decisively defeated the British forces outside Quebec. However, the British retained their hold on Quebec and their overall victory was confirmed when the Royal Navy was the first to arrive at Quebec following the spring break-up.
Zacharie Cloutier (1590-1677) was a French carpenter who immigrated to the shires of the St Lawrence river in what is now Quebec. He is the ancestor of many well-known people of French Canadian descent, including Jack Kerouac, Hillary Clinton, Justin Bieber, Robert Goulet, Angelina Jolie, Beyonce Knowles, Madonna, Celine Dion, Ryan Gosling and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.
“in a hole in the shires of St Lawrence lived a Cloutier.”
Yves Saint Laurent, the French designer, was born in Oran, Algeria, and went on to be the head designer at the House of Dior when he was still only 21. A CT holds that Dior management pulled strings to get him drafted by the French Army for service in the Algerian War of Independence to permit them to fire him.
:: golf clap ::
In play:
Cadets at the military academy of Saint-Cyr still wear full-dress uniforms based on those of the early-19th-century French Army. The school was founded by Napoleon in 1802: École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr - Wikipedia
In the short story “The Last Encounter,” retired Admiral of the Fleet Hornblower loans his carriage to a madman claiming to be Napoleon who needs to get to Dover to catch passage to France for the national elections.
Little does Hornblower know that by doing so, he has put his old adversary’s nephew on the track to become Napoleon III, and found the Second Empire.
The novel Commodore Hornblower “really caused quite a flutter”, according to its author, C. S. Forester. It first appeared in 1945, as a serial in the Saturday Evening Post, and Horatio Hornblower, in an implied sexual encounter with a (married) Russian Countess, was the Post’s first adulterer.
When accepting the 1980 Democratic renomination for the Presidency, Jimmy Carter paid tribute to one of the great progressives of the party by calling him “Hubert Horatio Hornblower. . . er, Humphrey”.
For the ultimate embarrassment caused by mixing up two names, Click here