On January 29, 1979, the Cleveland Elementary School shooting (in San Diego) occurred. Brenda Ann Spencer opened fire at a school in San Diego, California, killing 2 faculty members and wounding 8 students and a police officer.
The shooting inspired the Boomtown Rats’ song “I Don’t Like Mondays”, written by Bob Geldof. The title is Spencer’s explanation for her actions.
The Carpenters’ hit song, Rainy Days and Mondays, was released in 1971 and went to number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It was their fourth number 1 song on the Adult Contemporary singles chart.
The Carpenters were a brother-sister musical duo, comprised of Richard Carpenter and his younger sister, Karen Anne. Karen Anne Carpenter was a baseball fan and enjoyed playing the sport, and she was often picked ahead of her brother in neighborhood sandlot games.
Karen Anne Carpenter suffered from an eating disorder called anorexia nervosa, and she died of heart failure caused by complications related to her illness. She was only 32 years of age at the time of her passing.
Plankton, tiny and incompetent villain of the SpongeBob SquarePants animated series and owner of the extremely unpopular restaurant The Chum Bucket, is sometimes advised by his sarcastic computer wife, Karen.
Chum is bait consisting of fish parts, bone and blood, which attract fish, particularly sharks owing to their keen sense of smell.
“Jumping the shark” is a phrased to denote when typically a TV show or entertainer, does some silly stunt as a ratings ploy when the show or entertainer is deemed no longer to be relevant, and the stunt just makes them look worse. The phrase originated when the character Fonzie jumped over a shark on water skis in an episode of Happy Days. At the time, Happy Days was the 2nd ranked show on television, fell to 4 the following season, and never got above 15 for the rest of the show’s run, ending 63rd in 1984.
Oh Happy Day, the 1967 gospel music arrangement recorded by the Edwin Hawkins Singers, became an international hit in 1969, reaching No. 4 on the US Singles Chart, No. 1 in France, Germany and the Netherlands and No. 2 on both the UK Singles Chart and Irish Singles Chart. It has since become a gospel music standard.
“Happy Days Are Here Again” is a song copyrighted in 1929 by Milton Ager (music) and Jack Yellen (lyrics). It became one of the signature tunes of the 1930s, sung ironically during the darkest days of the Great Depression. It was played during Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidential campaign; he used the song to identify his candidacy with the return to happy days in America.
Janet Yellen is an American economist. She served as the Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 2014–2018, previously serving as Vice Chair from 2010 to 2014. She was replaced when President Trump nominated Jerome Powell to succeed Yellen when her term ends on February 3, 2018, opting not to renominate Yellen. Yellen subsequently announced she would leave the Federal Reserve Board of Governors at the end of her term as chair.
The United States Marine Corps Reserve forces is the largest command in the US Marine Corps. There are over 35,000 Marines in the Reserves. The USMC Reserve Force was created in 1916 when Congress passed the Naval Appropriations Act.
In 1912, the Conservative government of Prime Minister Borden introduced the Naval Aid Bill, to authorise the Canadian government to contribute $35 million dollars to the British government to build three dreadnoughts. Former PM Laurier, now Leader of the Opposition, opposed the bill, arguing that Canada should instead establish its own navy, rather than subisidising the Royal Navy. The Bill passed the Commons after rancourous debate, but was defeated by the Liberal-dominated (unelected) Senate, one of the few times the Senate has so firmly rejected a government bill.
It all became moot in 1914, when it became clear that the war with Germany would be largely land-based.
According to inflation calculators, $35 million in 1912 dollars equals about $900 million in today’s dollars.
Also, Britain’s Royal Navy was formed in 1660. It was the first branch of the British armed forces and thus is known as the "senior service’.
In the United States, the twelfth grade is usually the fourth and final year of a student’s high school period and is referred to as his/her senior year. In England and Wales, students in their tenth year and above in Secondary School are seniors, while in Scotland, students in their fifth year and above are seniors.
Created in 1910, the Royal Canadian Navy was merged by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Pearson into the new Canadian Armed Forces, becoming known as the Maritime Command. In 2011, the conservative government of Prime Minister Harper restored the name, Royal Canadian Navy, although the Navy continues to be component of the Canadian Armed Forces rather than a separate body.
“Senior chief petty officer” is the eighth of nine enlisted ranks in the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard, just above chief petty officer and below master chief petty officer, and is a noncommissioned officer. They are addressed as “Senior Chief” in most circumstances, or sometimes, less formally, as “Senior”.
In the Navy, officers and chiefs are referred to as “khakis”. This is a reference to the color of one of their most common uniforms and is a direct contrast to those in pay grades E-6 and below, which are known as “blueshirts”.
In the US Navy, aviators are “brown shoes” and seamen are “black shoes”, for the obvious reason.
The US Naval Aviation Museum, at NAS Pensacola, Florida, allows visitors to view Blue Angels practice sessions. But you have to arrive early or the parking lot will fill up.
One of the nicknames for the Toronto Argonauts of the CFL is “Double Blue”, because their colours are Oxford Blue (dark) and Cambridge Blue (light).
The Dodger Blue color has RGB values of R-30, G-144, and B-255.