HAL 9000 was voiced by Canadian actor Douglas Rain, who died just last month, aged 90.
In most dialects of French, 70 is “soixante-dix” (sixty-ten), 80 is “quatre-vingt” (four-twenty), and 90 is “quatre-vingt-dix” (four-twenty-ten). However, in Swiss French and some other dialects, 70 is “septante”, 80 is “huitante” and 90 is “nonante”.
The numbers 90-60-90 are the supposed measurements (in centimeters) of an “ideally” shaped woman, measured at the bust, waist and hip. Converted to inches, these measurements would be 35.4-23.6-35.4, each of them around half an inch smaller than the conventional 36-24-36 inches. 36-24-36 were Marilyn Monroe’s measurements in 1946.
In 1946, Norma Jeane Mortenson was 20 years old. That’s when she signed her first film contract with Twentieth Century Fox and chose her stage name, Marilyn Monroe. All 36-24-36 of her then, apparently.
The only non-US national capital city named for an American President is Monrovia, Liberia, named for President James Monroe. At the provincial level, Paraguay’s Presidente Hayes Department has as its capital city Villa Hayes, honoring Rutherford Hayes’ help in resolving a violent border dispute with Argentina.
President Rutherford B. Hayes had the first post-presidential library, in a purpose-built structure on the grounds of his home, Spiegel Grove, in Fremont, Ohio. The facility is now run by the Ohio History Connection, formerly known as the Ohio Historical Society.
<time out>
I found two other border stations crossing from Alaska to Canada
— Skagway AK to Fraser BC on the Klondike Hwy; gMap Google Maps
— Klukwan AK to Pleasant Camp BC on the Haines Hwy; gMap Google Maps
</time out>
The US National Archives and Records Administration has 13 Presidential Libraries. In President order, they are,
31 - Herbert Hoover: West Branch IA
32 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Hyde Park NY
33 - Harry S. Truman: Independence MO
34 - Dwight D. Eisenhower: Abilene KS
35 - John F. Kennedy: Boston MA
36 - Lyndon Baines Johnson: Austin TX
37 - Richard Nixon: Yorba Linda CA
38 - Gerald Ford: Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor MI
39 - Jimmy Carter: Atlanta GA
40 - Ronald Reagan: Simi Valley CA
41 - George HW Bush: College Station TX (Texas A&M University Campus)
42 - Bill Clinton: Little Rock AR
43 - George W Bush: Dallas TX
44 - Barack Obama: Chicago IL
I have visited all except 5: Obama, W, Clinton, Ford, and JFK. When I visited #41’s, only Robin Bush was buried there. Now her parents rest there too.
Dwight Eisenhower holds the distinction of being the only president with a four-syllable last name.
By contrast, there have been 9 presidents whose last names contain only one syllable, including four of the last eight presidents. In chronological order, they are:
Franklin Polk
Franklin Pierce
Ulysses Grant
Rutherford Hayes
William Taft
Gerald Ford
George H. W. Bush
George W. Bush
Donald Trump
There is no US President with a four syllable first name, but there are seven with three syllable first names:
Zachary Taylor
Abraham Lincoln
Ulysses S. Grant
Rutherford B. Hayes
Benjamin Harrison
Theodore Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
I surrender.
[nitpick]
‘Franklin’ only has two syllables, at least here in the Midwest.
[/nitpick]
Racecar driver Johnny Rutherford was primarily known as a driver of open-wheel Indy cars, where he was very successful, having won three Indianapolis 500s (1974, 1976, 1980), and the 1980 Indycar series championship. Rutherford also drove in other race series, including NASCAR, and he won the very first NASCAR race he entered (a Daytona 500 qualifying race in 1963).
In 2001, race-car driver Tony Stewart raced at the Indianapolis 500, finishing sixth. Then he flew to Charlotte for the NASCAR Coca-Cola 600 and finished third. While other drivers have driven in both races, Stewart is the only driver to finish all 1,100 miles in the Indy-Charlotte double.
Wayne Gretzky’s first professional hockey team, for whom he played at the age of 17, was the Indianapolis Racers of the World Hockey Association.
The heavy cruiser USS *Indianapolis *was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine in July 1945 after having delivered atomic bomb components to Tinian. The sinking was not immediately reported, and the survivors were left adrift and set upon by sharks for four days. Quint (Robert Shaw) in the movie *Jaws *said he was a survivor of the sinking, and was clearly no fan of sharks; his monologue about the sinking includes some historical errors. The ship’s wreck was not located until last year by a group headed by retired Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen.
The captain of the USS Indianapolis, Charles B. McVay III, survived the sinking and was among those rescued days later. In November 1945, he was court-martialed and convicted of “hazarding his ship by failing to zigzag”.
However, in 1996, sixth-grade student Hunter Scott began research on the sinking of Indianapolis for a class history project. This assignment eventually led to a United States Congressional investigation. In October 2000, Congress passed a resolution stating that Captain McVay should be exonerated. The resolution noted that, although several hundred ships of the US Navy were lost in combat in World War II, McVay was the only captain to be court-martialed for the sinking of his ship. President Bill Clinton signed the resolution.
In July 2001, the United States Secretary of the Navy ordered McVay’s official Navy record cleared of all wrongdoing. McVay died in 1968 at the age of 70.
Mochitsura Hashimoto, former commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-58, which torpedoed the Indianapolis, testified at McVay’s court-martial in Dec. 1945 that zigzagging would have made no difference. McVay was convicted anyway. He committed suicide with his service revolver in 1968.
Zig-Zag is a brand of cigarette rolling papers, and other related products. The brand was founded in France in 1855; their logo features a “zouave” (a French army soldier stationed in French North Africa), which is commonly known as “the Zig-Zag man” or “Captain Zig-Zag.”
Following the success of the French Zouaves in North Africa, units in several other countries called themselves “Zouaves” and adopted their distinctive uniform of short open-fronted jackets, baggy trousers, sashes and oriental head gear such as the fez. The French Zouaves modeled their uniform and drill after the native dress and fearless tactics of their former Algerian opponents, encountered in the course of the colonial war of the 1830s.
The Papal Zouaves were organized by General de La Moricière, a former commander of North African zouaves, while a former zouave sergeant, François Rochebrune, organized the Polish “Zouaves of Death” who fought against Russia in 1863-64.
In 1856, the West India Regiment of the British army switched its attire to a uniform modeled on that of the French zouaves.
In the US, the Union army had more than seventy volunteer Zouave regiments throughout the conflict, while the Confederates fielded about twenty-five Zouave companies.