Joe Walsh, who was born in Wichita, lost his father in a plane crash. Walsh’s mother then remarried and Walsh was adopted by his stepfather. Walsh took his stepfather’s last name, but kept his birth father’s last name, Fidler, as his middle name.
When Walsh was a student at Kent State in the 60s, he and three fellow students formed a bar band, which they called The Measles.
Although measles is now thought of as a childhood disease in North America, it can be quite serious if caught by an adult.
Together, measles and smallpox eliminated three generations of the French royal family in 1711 and 1712.
Louis XIV’s son, Louis the Grand Dauphin, died of smallpox in 1711.
The son of the Grand Dauphin, grandson of Louis XIV, Louis the Petit Dauphin, along with his wife and eldest son, all died of measles within a few weeks of each other in early 1712, leaving his two year old son to become Dauphin and heir to Louis XIV. When Louis XIV died three years later, he succeeded as Louis XV at the age of five.
“Mon petit chou” is a French term of endearment, the equivalent of “sweetheart”, which translated literally means “My little cabbage”.
Frederick the Great, King in Prussia, built a country retreat for himself with the French name, Sans Souci (“Without a Care”).
Prussia was a historically prominent German state that originated in 1525 and lasted until the end of World War II. In 1932, Prussia was de facto dissolved by an emergency decree transferring powers of the Prussian government to German Chancellor Franz von Papen. Hermann Göring, commander-in-chief of Germany’s Luftwaffe, was the last Minister President of Prussia (Ministerpräsident) from 1933 until the end of World War II when, in 1947, an Allied decree dissolved Prussia.
Hermann Göring, who was a World War I fighter pilot, was the last commander of the fighter wing once led by Manfred von Richthofen (the Red Baron). During the Nazi reign, Göring at one time was the second most powerful person in Germany. However, as the fortunes of Nazi Germany declined, Göring lost favor with both Hitler and the public. One of Hitler’s last acts was to expel Göring from the party and order his arrest.
Göring was convicted of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials. He was sentenced to death by hanging, but committed suicide by ingesting cyanide the night before the sentence was to be carried out.
As anyone who has read an Agatha Christie novel knows, potassium cyanide smells like burnt almonds.
But who knows what burnt almonds smell like?
I sure as hell don’t.
Almond trees occupy more farming area in California than any other crop except grapes. Almonds are one of only two nuts mentioned in the Bible (Genesis 43:11). The other is the pistachio nut.
Almonds were one of the earliest domesticated fruit trees, which must have been painstaking work, as there were far more varieties of bitter almonds than of sweet. They are native to the Mediterranean climate of the Middle East.
Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge (R-Mass.), who led the bitter Senate opposition to President Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations, was a longtime friend of former President Theodore Roosevelt. As a senior Republican politician in Massachusetts by the time of Calvin Coolidge’s rise to power as Governor, Vice President and President, Lodge was sometimes both patronizing and an obstacle to Coolidge, according to Coolidge’s recent biographer Amity Shlaes.
The Alaska boundary dispute, resolved in 1903 under President Theodore Roosevelt, settled the dispute of Alaska’s panhandle boundary between the US and the UK, which then controlled Canada’s foreign relations. The boundary claimed by Canada and the UK (red line in pic link, below) would give Canada an outlet from Yukon to the sea. It was a dispute sourcing from Russia in 1821 and inherited by the US in the Alaska purchase of 1867. The final resolution favored the US position (blue line), and the resultant boundary (yellow line) meant Canada did not get an all-Canadian outlet from the Yukon gold fields to the sea. The disappointment and anger in Canada was directed less at the US and more at the British government for betraying Canadian interests in favour of healthier Anglo-American relations.
Wikipedia pic: Alaska boundary dispute - Wikipedia
The ‘Boundary Waters’ is a region of wilderness straddling the Canada–United States border between Ontario and Minnesota, in the region just west of Lake Superior. This region is part of the Superior National Forest in northeastern Minnesota, and in Canada it includes La Verendrye and Quetico Provincial Parks in Ontario.
NM
The design of a flag for the Vice President of the United States was not specified until 1936, although there had been earlier, not-officially-adopted Vice Presidential flags. The flag was last redesigned in 1975, when Nelson Rockefeller was Vice President, and at his initiative. Like the President’s flag, it displays a bald eagle, shield, stars and scroll with “E Pluribus Unum” on it, but unlike the President’s flag, the color of the field is white, and there is no circle of fifty stars, but rather, one star in each corner, similar to the flags of some Cabinet secretaries.
Here’s my play:
The Northwest Angle of Minnesota, or simply “The Angle”, is that small part of the state that juts out northward into Canada’s Manitoba Province. It is essentially the only place in the United States outside of Alaska that is north of the 49th parallel. It contains the northernmost point in the contiguous 48 states, and is one of the only six non-island locations in the 48 contiguous states that are practical exclaves of the US. Its area is mostly water, and what land it has is mostly forest. The town of Angle Inlet MN, population 60, is part of the Northwest Angle and is the northernmost census-designated place in the contiguous US.
Although it is an exclave, during winter one can drive to the Northwest Angle on the ice road across Lake of the Woods without leaving the US. Some current ice road conditions, many which lead to ice fishing spots, can be found here:
https://cyrusresort.com/latest-news/ice-road-report/
gMap of some areas: Google Maps
Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario is one of Canada’s most visited parks, since it is just 2 hours from Toronto and Ottawa. It hosts a Natural Heritage Education program, which includes weekly wolf howls. These are held (weather and wolves permitting) on Thursdays in August.
Park staff attempt to locate a wolf pack on Wednesday evening and, if successful, they announce a public wolf howl the next day. The naturalist team presents an orientation to the visitors (who sometimes number over a thousand) and then they all drive or walk to the site where wolves were located, and then gives imitation howls to encourage a nearby pack to respond.
In addition to Northwest Angle MN, there are two other exclaves of the United States where Canada blocks them entirely: Akwesasne NY (gMap Google Maps), and Point Roberts WA which is blocked by Canada’s Tsawwassen Peninsula (gMap Google Maps).
Lake Itasca is a small glacial lake approximately 1.8 square miles, known for being the headwaters of the Mississippi River, and is located in Itasca State Park southeastern Clearwater County, Minnesota.
The Ojibwe name for “Lake Itasca” Omashkoozo-zaaga’igan (Elk Lake), was changed by Henry Schoolcraft to “Itasca”, coined from a combination of the Latin words veritas (“truth”) and caput (“head”),though it is sometimes misinterpreted as “true head”. It is one of several examples of pseudo-Indian place names created by Schoolcraft.
Cool trivia. I’ve been there, and have walked across the rocks that mark the river’s headwaters (gImage — https://goo.gl/DcGJX6).
The Mississippi and Missouri Rivers combine to form the longest river system in North America. It is also the fourth longest in the world.
The name ‘Missouri’ came from a tribe of Sioux Native Americans. The word was originally thought to mean “muddy water,” but the Smithsonian has stated it means “town of the large canoes,” and scholars have said the native syllables from which the word comes mean “wooden canoe people” or “he of the big canoe.”