Athena was a 1990s rocket developed by the Lockheed Martin Corporation. The Athena comes in two versions, Athena I and Athena II. The Athena I has two stages, while the Athena II has three stages.
Athena rockets were a 1990s Lockheed system that used Thiokol rockets in its stages. Thiokol has a rocket park north of Salt Lake City and near the Golden Spike National Historic Site. Several full size inert Thiokol rockets are on display there.
Wow, Stainless Steel Rat. Too funny!
Play on!
The Golden Spike National Historic Site preserves 2,735 acres of land as well as a 15 mile stretch of the original Transcontinental Railroad. The site is located in a remote valley on the north end of the Great Salt Lake. There is only one paved road in and out of the site.
According to the Site’s website, visitors may have to ‘endure high winds, insects, heat, cold, and encounters with wildlife.’ The nearest emergency services are 35 miles away.
Although it was a major stop for traffic to and from the gold fields of Colorado, the city of Golden, CO was actually named for Thomas L. Golden, himself an early gold miner in the area.
Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts Jr. has referred citizen complaints about newly-sworn Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Denver, Colorado. Most if not all of the complaints are apparently based on his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee as he sought confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court.
During the Nixon administration, William Rehnquist served as Assistant Attorney General, before being named to the Supreme Court by Nixon in 1971. When Nixon’s tapes of Oval Office conversations were released during the Watergate investigation, it was revealed that Nixon apparently had trouble remembering Rehnquist’s name, as he repeatedly referred to him as “Renchburg.”
Tom Paxton could not resist writing the song Talking Watergate:
I said it made me feel so proud,
Just to hang around with this great crowd,
With John and Bob and Mitch and all the rest.
And even though no jail was fun,
I knew that justice would be done.
And they laughed so hard the tears rolled down their chest.
Actor Bill Paxton was 61 when he died last year, in Feb 2017 from apparent surgery complications. Among his earliest roles was a minor role as a punk thug in The Terminator (1984).
In astronomy, “terminator” is the term for the dividing line between the illuminated and non-illuminated portions of the surface of a planet or satellite.
In a 2006 poll conducted by Zogby International (the same poll referenced in post #40572), Krypton was identified correctly by 60% of the respondents as Superman’s planet of origin, while only 37% were able to name Mercury as the closest planet to the sun.
Superman was born on Krypton and given the name of Kal-El. His father was Jor-El and his mother was Lara Lor-Van.
Jor-El was a scientist who realized that Krypton was about to be destroyed by internal explosions, and he put his toddler son into a rocket and launched it into space before the planet was destroyed.
In Hebrew, El means God.
El Arish International Airport in located in the Sinai region of Egypt. The airport has been mainly used for Palestinian passengers traveling to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia for the annual Hajj Muslim pilgrimage.
The unification of Saudi Arabia was a military and political campaign, by which the various tribes, sheikhdoms, city-states, emirates, and kingdoms of most of the Arabian Peninsula were conquered by the House of Saud, or Al Saud, between 1902 and 1932, when the modern-day Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was proclaimed under the leadership of Ibn Saud. In 1902, Ibn Saud recaptured Riyadh, the Al Saud dynasty’s former capital. He went on to subdue the rest of Nejd, Al-Hasa, Jebel Shammar, Asir, and Hejaz (location of the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina) between 1913 and 1926. The resultant polity was named the Kingdom of Nejd and Hejaz from 1927 until it was further consolidated with Al-Hasa and Qatif into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.
Initially, three composers were supposed to write the score for David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, but for various reasons, Maurice Jarre ended up writing all the music himself and won his first Oscar. Jarre’s second collaboration with David Lean on Doctor Zhivago (1965) earned him another Oscar. He collaborated with Lean again on Ryan’s Daughter (1970) and A Passage to India (1984) for which he received a third Academy Award. In his 1984 acceptance speech, Jarre said “I was lucky Mozart was not eligible this year”, referring to the Bet Picture winner for that year, Amadeus.
Julie Christie was 25 years old when Doctor Zhivago (1965] was released. Omar Sharif was 33, and Geraldine Chaplin was 21. Because the Boris Pasternak book it was based on was banned in the Soviet Union, much of the movie was filmed in Spain. The Aldeadávila Dam between Spain and Portugal, in the northeastern part of Portugal and near Salamanca, Spain (gMap Google Maps), was the location for the opening and closing scenes.
The Aldeadávila Dam (pic, Aldeadávila Dam - Wikipedia is on the Douro River, the river that forms the international border between Spain and Portugal.
Arthur Wellesley’s first title of nobility was Baron Douro of Wellesley in the County of Somerset, awarded after he won the Battle of the Douro on 1809.
The Battle of the Douro, also called the Second Battle of Porto, ended the second French invasion of Portugal.
Porto Alegre (meaning joyful harbor) is the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul with a population of 1.5 million people. It is the southernmost capital city of a Brazilian state.