A mule is also a type of slipper that has an open back for the feet.
Although I’d never heard of that before.
The Mule (his birth name is never given) is a sterile man with remarkable mind-control powers in the distant-future Foundation novels of the late Isaac Asimov.
A mule is a hybrid, meaning that it is an offspring of two animals of differing species. Other hybrids that occur in nature include:
Zeedonk or zonkey, a cross between a zebra and a donkey
Beefalo, a cross between an American bison and a domestic cow
Yakalo, a cross between a bison and a yak
Liger and tigon, both crosses between lions and tigers, oh my
(I was going to post that one! GMTA 
)
In play:
In the 2004 film Napoleon Dynamite, the title character is a socially awkward high school student, who draws doodles of fantasy creatures during school. In one scene, he talks about the doodle he’s done of a liger, which he describes as, “pretty much my favorite animal. It’s like a lion and a tiger mixed…bred for its skills in magic.”
Ligers, offspring of a male lion and female tiger, are bigger than tigons, bred from a male tiger and lioness. They have both muted spots and stripes. Ligers are tawny-orange in color, and the males have short manes. Both males and females have stripes on their backs and spots on their bellies. Ligers weigh on average 1,000 pounds, and the heaviest liger on record was 1,600 pounds. Ligers are considered the biggest cat on earth because tigers weigh about 500 pounds and lions max out at about 600 pounds. Ligers can make lion and tiger vocalizations. Ligers enjoy swimming, which is a tiger-like behavior. They’re also social cats, which is a strictly lion-like trait.
Tigons are a much more rare hybrid animal than ligers. They are much smaller than ligers so are less popular in the world of hybrid fanciers. Tigons are not only smaller than ligers, they’re often smaller than both their parents. Tigons also show a mix of lion- and tiger-like behaviors. They also enjoy both swimming and socializing.
Most tigon offspring don’t reach full term or are stillborn because the lioness’s womb isn’t big enough to hold the big tigon cubs, which are larger than what the male lion’s cubs would be. This may also be because many of these hybrid animals have genetic disorders and die at an unnaturally young age.
The Lions and the Tigers are both Detroit teams. The Bears play in Chicago. Oh, my!
The Chicago Bears originated as the Decatur Staleys, a company team owned by A.E. Staley, a manufacturer of food starch, located in Decatur, Illinois (about 175 miles south of Chicago).
The Staley team had been founded in 1919, and, in 1920, the company hired George Halas and Dutch Sternaman to run the team. Halas and Sternaman brought the Staleys into the newly-founded American Professional Football Association for the 1920 season They moved the team to Chicago for the 1921 season, and Halas bought the rights to the team from A.E. Staley for $100. The team was renamed the Bears for the 1922 season.
Future Civil War general George Henry Thomas, while still in his teens, helped save his family from the bloody Nat Turner slave uprising in Southampton County, Va.
Actor Henry Thomas, born in 1971, became first widely known in the 1982 movie, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, where he played Elliott the boy who befriends the alien creature. The movie was filmed in Tujunga, Porter Ranch, and Granada Hills in Southern California. The majority of outdoor locations were in Porter Ranch. The bicycle take-off scene, when several boys, with E.T. riding in a front handlebar basket, was filmed on White Oak Ave. in Granada Hills (gMap Google Maps), near the Ronald Reagan Freeway.
Granada is the capital city of the province of Granada, in the autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. It is home to The Alhambra, an Arab citadel and palace that was originally constructed as a small fortress in AD 889 on the remains of Roman fortifications, and then largely ignored until it was renovated and rebuilt in the mid-13th century by the Nasrid emir Mohammed ben Al-Ahmar of the Emirate of Granada.
The United Arab Emirates is a federation of seven emirates, (territories, or kingdoms), historically known as the Trucial States.
By size, they are
- 26,000 sq mi - the Emirate of Abu Dhabi
- 1,500 sq mi - the Emirate of Dubai
- 1,000 sq mi - the Emirate of Sharjah
- 650 sq mi - the Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah
- 450 sq mi - the Emirate of Fujairah
- 300 sq mi - the Emirate of Umm Al Quwain
- 100 sq mi - the Emirate of Ajman
Each is ruled by an emir:
- Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan - Abu Dhabi
- Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum - Dubai
- Sultan bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi - Sharjah
- Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi - Ras Al Khaimah
- HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad bin Mohammed Al Sharqi — Fujairah
- Sheikh Saud bin Rashid Al Mualla - Umm Al Quwain
- H.H Sheikh Humaid bin Rashid Al Nuaimi III - Ajman
[ul]
[li]Abu Dhabi means father of the dhabi, or gazelle.[/li][li]Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building (2,717 ft, 163 floors) stands in Dubai.[/li][li]Sharjah translates to “rising sun”. It has land on both the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.[/li][li]Ras Al Khaimah has the highest mountain in the UAE, Jebel Jais, 6,345 ft. Ras Al Khaimah means ‘top of the tent’, but that is not for Jebel Jais. It is because of Ras Al Khaimah being the northernmost of the Emirates.[/li][li]Fujairah is the only Emirate on the Gulf of Oman and also not on the Persian Gulf. Fujairah lies to the east of the Strait of Hormuz, while all the others lie to the west.[/li][li]Umm Al Quwain is the least populous of the Emirates. It has not made any significant find of oil or gas in its territory, and it depends on revenue from hotels, parks and tourism, fisheries and general trading activities.[/li][li]Ajman encompasses two landlocked exclaves, the township of Manama and village of Masfout.[/li][/ul]
Vermont is the only landlocked state in New England, bordered by Massachusetts on the south, New Hampshire on the east, New York on the west, and Quebec on the north. Vermont’s most populous city of Burlington is the least populous city to be the most populous city in a state.
New Hampshire would be landlocked too, if it weren’t for its 18 mile Atlantic coastline. New Hampshire has the shortest ocean coastline of any state.
Last month, the Canadian Football League announced plans to expand the league, with a tenth team. The prospective new team will be called the Atlantic Schooners, and is planned to be based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and is hoped to begin play by 2021.
In 1867, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Québec were the four founding provinces of Canada. The rest joined Confederation later.
1867 New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Québec.
1870 Manitoba, Northwest Territories.
1871 British Columbia.
1873 Prince Edward Island.
1898 Yukon.
1905 Alberta, Saskatchewan.
1949 Newfoundland and Labrador.
1999 Nunavut.
There are four official border crossing points from Alaska to Canada:
Poker Creek (Little Gold), Yukon Terr.
Beaver Creek (Alcan crossing), Yukon Terr.
Stewart, BC
Stikine, BC
Beaver Creek is the westernmost community in Canada.
The Poker Creek crossing connects Tok, AK to Dawson, YT via the Top of the World Highway.
Hi Chefguy, where is the crossing at Stikine BC? Is it a river crossing? I could not find a road crossing on the map. Thanks. As you know, I’ve been planning a drive to Deadhorse. After the Iditarod in 2019, my drive there might be in 2022.
In play, with links to gMaps and CBP.gov:
The Poker Creek AK road crossing is not open in winter.
The Alcan Border AK road border crossing is open in winter and is 2,700 miles from San Francisco.
The Hyder AK road border crossing is open in winter, and it is 1,800 miles from San Francisco.
According to CBP.gov, the US Customs and Border Protection agency, there are 12 border crossings in Alaska:
Alcan, Alaska
Anchorage, Alaska
Dalton Cache, Alaska
Fairbanks, Alaska
Juneau, Alaska
Ketchikan, Alaska
Kodiak, Alaska
Nome, Alaska
Sitka, Alaska
Skagway, Alaska
Valdez, Alaska
Wrangell, Alaska
Fictional coffee bean spokesman Juan Valdez was initially portrayed by José F. Duval in both print advertisements and on television from 1958 until 1969. José Duval died in 1993 at the age of 72.
Juan Valdez had been embodied by Carlos Sánchez since 1969 and voiced by Norman Rose. Sánchez played Valdez in a brief sequence in the 2003 comedy film Bruce Almighty. In 2006, Sánchez announced his retirement, and Carlos Castañeda, a grower from the town of Andes, Antioquia, was selected by the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia as the new face of Juan Valdez.
Can you really call it landlocked, with Lake Champlain right there? Certainly it’s not on any ocean or sea.
In play:
Juan Carlos was born in Rome 80 years ago and became King of Spain in 1975; his exiled father did not waive any claim to the crown until two years later. King Juan Carlos abdicated the throne in 2014 and was succeeded by his son, Felipe VI.
Those are ports of entry. I was talking about border stations. Stikine is too remote for there to be a road. I’m not sure what is there, unless it’s an unmanned obs station for the Stikine River. I hadn’t even thought about Dalton Cache, even though I’ve driven through it. The Haines Highway passes briefly through a nob of Canada there, then back into Alaska, then back out into Canada further north where it connects to the Alcan at Haines Junction. The Hyder Road is the one that passes through Stewart, BC.