Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev killed an MIT policeman, kidnapped a man in his car, and had a shootout with the police in nearby Watertown, during which two officers were severely injured, one of whom died a year later. Tamerlan was shot several times, and his brother ran him over while escaping in the stolen car; Tamerlan died soon after. Dzhokhar was wounded in the shootout, but found later hiding in a boat in a person’s backyard. He was tried and sentenced to death.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is currently housed in ADX Florence, the federal Supermax prison in Colorado. So are the Unabomber, the 20th 9/11 bomber, the Bojinka/1993 World Trade Center bomber, and the second Oklahoma City bomber.
Florence is the English name for the Italian city of Firenze. Both are derivations from the old Latin name of the city, founded by Julius Caesar in 59 BC. It was originally called “Fluentia”, from its location between two rivers, but the name was later changed to “Florentia” (“flowering”). English kept the “l”, but Italian lost it, giving its current name.
Florence Henderson starred in the 1970s sitcom, The Brady Bunch, as Carol Brady. The Brady Bunch house from that TV show is up for sale now – the outside scenes were filmed there, but not the inside scenes.
Only $1.9 million buys you a bit of TV history.
Address: 11222 Dilling St, North Hollywood, CA 91602
Bradycardia, from the Greek βραδύς, bradys “slow”, and καρδία, kardia, “heart”, is a condition where an individual has a very slow heart rate, typically defined as a resting heart rate of under 60 beats per minute (BPM) in adults. Coincidentally, the Guinness Book of Records holder for the lowest resting heart beat on record is Martin Brady (UK, b. 24 March 1969) who was tested at the Guernsey Chest and Heart Unit, Channel Islands in August 2005 with a heartbeat of 27 BPM.
The idiom “It’s Greek to me”, meaning that something is not understandable, appears in Shakespeare’s 1599 play Julius Caesar, as spoken by Servilius Casca. Casca, who does not speek Greek, says, “…but those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but, for mine own part, it was Greek to me.”
In his excellent book Bardisms: Shakespeare of all Occasions, author Barry Edelstein has “a special footnote” in theBard’s quotes appropriate for weddings (paraphrased):
How cool is that?
Very cool, indeed.
Bard College, located in Annandale-on-Hudson NY, located some 75 miles south of Latham NY, was founded as St. Stephen’s College in 1860. St. Stephen’s College was founded by John and Margaret Bard and affiliated with the Episcopal Church in New York City. Isaac Bashevis Singer is a former faculty member of Bard College.
Singer Corporation is an American manufacturer of sewing machines, first established as I. M. Singer & Co. in 1851 by Isaac Merritt Singer. The Singer sewing machine was the first complex standardized technology to be mass marketed. It was not the first sewing machine, and its patent in 1851 led to a patent battle with Elias Howe, inventor of the lockstitch machine. This eventually resulted in a patent sharing accord among the major firms.
At age 11, Ronan Farrow, son of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen, was the youngest student to enroll in Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, Mass. The college is especially designed for students ready to enter college after the 10th or 11th grade.
At 15, Farrow received a college degree from Bard, with a double major in philosophy and biology, and at 16 was accepted to Yale Law School. At 21, he joined the State Department, where he later became Hillary Rodham Clinton’s special adviser for global youth issues. In 2011, at age 23, he was awarded a Rhodes scholarship, and studied international relations at Oxford University. He won a Pulitzer Prize for journalism earlier this year.
Mia Farrow has said recently that her 2013 statement that Ronan was “possibly” the son of Frank Sinatra was meant as a joke; investigative journalists have noted that Sinatra was bedridden in Florida and frail after a major heart attack at the time of Ronan’s conception, while Mia Farrow was living in New York.
At age 56, Tom Cruise is seven years older than Wilford Brimley was when he co-starred in Cocoon.
Tom Cruise is the first actor to appear in five consecutive movies (A Few Good Men, The Firm, Interview with the Vampire, Mission: Impossible and Jerry Maguire) that grossed more than $100 million in the U.S.
Tom Cruise declared his love for girlfriend (and future ex-wife) Katie Holms and jumped on Oprah’s coach on May 3, 2005. Oprah responded ,“He’s gone. He’s gone. The boy is gone.”
According to Forbes, Oprah Winfrey has a net worth of 2.7 billion dollars. That puts her in a 37-way tie for the 887th richest person in the world.
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, is the richest person in the world, with a net worth of 112 billion dollars.
Oprah was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, and Kosciusko is part of the Mississippi Blues Trail, and is named for the US and Polish-Lithuanian general Tadeusz Kościuszko, who assisted United States military efforts during the American Revolution. At 7,310’ in elevation, Mount Kosciuszko is the highest mountain in Australia and one of the “Seven Summits”, the tallest mountains on the seven continents.
The King Jagiełło Monument is a statue of Władysław II Jagiełło, King of Poland, on horseback. Located in Central Park, New York City, it is a replica of a statue in Warsaw that was melted down and made into bullets for World War II by the Germans after they entered and occupied the country. The replica was created for the 1939 World’s Fair and was supposed to be sent to Poland at the fair’s end but stayed in the US because of the German invasion. NYC Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia lobbied for the statue to be placed in Central Park, where it is one of the largest statues and occupies a prominent position.
Look at his eyes and tell me that’s Woody Allen’s son. 
The Crown of St. Stephen, the Holy Crown of Hungary, was recovered in Austria in 1945 by US troops, and sent to Fort Knox for safekeeping during the Cold War to keep it from the USSR. The crowning of Stephen I, the first king of Hungary, who was later canonized Saint Stephen, marks the beginning of Hungarian statehood. The date is variously given as Christmas 1000 or 1 January 1001.
Saint Stephen was martyred by being stoned at Jerusalem early in the 1st century AD. His stoning was witnessed by Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee, who approved of the killing. Saul converted to Christianity.
The 2009 Broadway revival of Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim’s classic show West Side Story actually had the Puerto Ricans speaking and singing in Spanish. The translation were done by Lin-Manuel Miranda, between doing In The Heights and Hamilton.
The Hamilton Watch Company, founded in Lancaster PA USA, produced its first watch in 1893 and ended American manufacture in 1969. The Hamilton Pulsar, the world’s first digital watch, was manufactured in 1972. The first Pulsar initially sold for $2100 (or $12,700 in 2017 dollars :eek:!). In October 1972, the Potpourri segment in the issue of Playboy mentioned the first Pulsar – and carried a photo.