Winchester Castle in England is home to the “Winchester Round Table”, a large tabletop painted with the names of 24 knights of Arthur’s court. It was probably created for a Round Table tournament. The current paintwork was done by order of Henry VIII for Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s 1522 state visit, and depicts Henry himself sitting in Arthur’s seat above a Tudor rose.
The table itself has been calculated by dendrochronology to date to 1250–1280—during the reign of Edward I—using timber from store felled over a period of years. Edward was an Arthurian enthusiast who attended at least five Round Table tournaments.
Winchester rifles were among the earliest repeating rifles. The Winchester Model 1873 was chambered in .44 Winchester (or .44 WCF Winchester Center Fire), which was the first metallic centerfire cartridge manufactured by Winchester. Winchester, located in New Haven CT, is now owned by the Olin Corporation and the name is used under license by two subsidiaries of the Herstal Group: Fabrique Nationale (FN) of Belgium and the Browning Arms Company of Ogden UT.
Winchester Cathedral was a song by The New Vaudeville Band, released in 1966. It was sung imitating the old Rudy Vallee style of singing through a megaphone, and, incomprehensibly, it reached #1 on the Billboard charts. It was knocked out of that slot by Good Vibrations, but somehow regained it the following week. The song was recorded entirely by session musicians, but when it became a hit, an actual band had to be formed. It’s one of the few hit songs that featured a bassoon.
Miranda v. Arizona, decided in 1966, was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court. In a 5–4 majority, the Court held that both inculpatory and exculpatory statements made in response to interrogation by a defendant in police custody will be admissible at trial only if the prosecution can show that the defendant was informed of the right to consult with an attorney before and during questioning and of the right against self-incrimination before police questioning, and that the defendant not only understood these rights, but voluntarily waived them.
Ernest Miranda (1941-1976), a native of Mesa, Arizona, was the plaintiff in the landmark Miranda vs Arizona case. In 1963, Miranda voluntarily confessed, in writing, to the crimes of rape, kidnapping, and armed robbery. But during his criminal trial, his attorney argued that his confessions should be excluded because Miranda was not told that he could remain silent or have an attorney present.
After his original conviction was overturned by the US Supreme Court, Miranda was retried by the State of Arizona. Even without his confession, he was again found guilty. He was sentenced to 20 to 30 years in prison. Paroled in 1972, he started selling autographed Miranda warning cards for $1.50. He died as a result of a knife wound sustained in a bar fight in 1976.
inculpatory — Inculpatory evidence is evidence that shows, or tends to show, a person’s involvement in an act, or evidence that can establish guilt. In criminal law, the prosecution has a duty to provide all evidence to the defense, whether it favors the prosecution’s case or the defendant’s case.
exculpatory — Exculpatory evidence is evidence favorable to the defendant in a criminal trial that exonerates or tends to exonerate the defendant of guilt. It is the opposite of inculpatory evidence, which tends to present guilt.
Okay, that’s my play.
In a key 1935 case, Berger v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court held, “The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all, and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the two-fold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor – indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one.”
The decision has since been interpreted to apply to all criminal prosecutors.
Character actor John Qualen, who played Resistance operative Berger (“Norwegian, at your service”) in Casablanca, played small parts, usually as a Scandinavian, in a number of John Ford films, including *Arrowsmith *(1931), The Searchers (1956), Two Rode Together (1961), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and Cheyenne Autumn (1964).
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance was based on a 1953 short story by Dorothy Johnson. Johnson, who was a writer best known for her Western fiction, had two other short stories that were made into movies: The Hanging Tree (which was released in 1959), and A Man Called Horse (released in 1970.)
A Man Called Horse was also the basis for a 1958 episode of the TV series Wagon Train.
Although “wagon train” suggests a line of wagons, when terrain permitted, wagons would often fan out and travel abreast to minimize the amount of dust blown onto other wagons.
The word “train” originally meant the trailing part of a robe (as seen most recently at Meghan Markle’s wedding to some British bloke), or the retinue of an important nobleman. From thence came the sense of objects following behind a cart, leading to the current meaning of the cars on a railway, pulled by an engine.
Her Royal Highness Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, appeared in two Hallmark Channel TV movies, When Sparks Fly (2014) and Dater’s Handbook (2016). She is the first American divorcee to marry into the British Royal Family, not for lack of trying by Wallis Simpson eighty years ago.
In 1936, Time magazine honored Wallis Simpson’s major coup of getting Edward to abdicate his throne by naming her "Woman of the Year," the first time the magazine had ever given its "Man of the Year" award to a woman. The other finalists included FDR, Mussolini, Eugene O’Neill, Chiang Kai-shek, British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, Lou Gehrig, Jesse Owens, and Margaret Mitchell.
According to Time, "In the single year 1936 she became the most-talked-about, written-about, headlined and interest-compelling person in the world. In these respects no woman in history has ever equaled Mrs. Simpson, for no press or radio existed to spread the world news they made."
However it took Time 63 more years to change the title from MAN of the Year to PERSON of the Year in 1999. Prior to that change, four women were granted the title as individuals: three as “Woman of the Year”—Wallis Simpson (1936), Queen Elizabeth II (1952), and Corazon Aquino (1986)—and one as half of the “Man and Wife of the Year”, Soong Mei-ling (1937).
“Jeff” is a nickname for the names “Jeffrey” and sometimes “Geoffrey”.
Geoffrey is an Anglo-Norman name. One of the notable people with the name was Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou, who married the Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I. Their son became Henry II of England and the founder of the Plantagenet dynasty.
The name comes from a nickname for Geoffrey, “Planta genesta”, thought to be the common broom plant. It is not known how Geoffrey acquired the nickname.
Maj. Gen. George Henry Thomas, United States Army, was one of the few prominent Civil War generals not to leave behind a memoir. He died while on duty at the Presidio in San Francisco, California, in 1870, just five years after the end of the war. Even had he lived, historians tend to doubt he would have written his memoirs, as he preferred to let his record speak for itself.
The Presidio of San Francisco (The Royal Fortress of Saint Francis) is a park and former U.S. Army military fort on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula and is now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
New Spain established the Presidio as a fort in September of 1776. It then passed to Mexico, and finally to the United States in 1848. It remained an active military installation until 1989, and in 1994 was officially transferred to the National Park Service.
The Presidio is now (since 1994) a National Historic Landmark District. It is managed by the Presidio Trust in partnership with the National Park Service and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. There are 870 buildings in the Presidio, 470 of which are historic, and more than 1,200 historic features, including a 300-acre historic forest. The Trust manages 30 archaeological areas that date from Native Ohlone settlements through the occupation of the Army.
The Presidio was a 1988 American film directed by Peter Hyams which starred Sean Connery and Mark Harmon. It is a murder and conspiracy film with Connery, as the Base Provost Marshal, working and clashing with Harmon, a San Francisco police inspector.