On the morning of the day of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, a parade was held in New York City. Estimates of the number people who viewed the parade ran as high as one million. The route of the parade went past the New York Stock Exchange, where traders threw ticker tape from the windows, thus beginning the New York tradition of the ticker-tape parade.
The only classical musician to get a tickertape parade in New York was pianist Van Cliburn, who, at the age of 23, achieved worldwide recognition when he won the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958. The judges reportedly asked Khrushchev’s permission to choose a non-Soviet winner.
Tchaikovsky trained for, and became a civil servant in Russia. At the time, a musical profession didn’t convey the sort of social status that was acceptable to his family’s respected position. In 1859 he embarked on his public service career and spent three years in the Ministry of Justice, rapidly advancing to senior assistant.
Composed in 1891 by Tchaikovsky, The Nutcracker is the most performed ballet of the modern era. It wasn’t until 1944 that its first production was performed in America, by the San Francisco Ballet. Since then, it has become a traditional offering during the holiday season.
With a population of 880,000, San Francisco is the 13th largest city in the USA. The city has a land area of just 46.9 square miles, making it the smallest city, in area, of the 40 largest cities by population.
San Francisco is the fourth largest city in the state of California, behind Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Jose.
“Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” a song which was written by composer Burt Bacharach and lyricist Hal David, was a top 10 hit for singer Dionne Warwick in 1968. Warwick won her first Grammy award for the song, and it was a major hit for her in many countries outside of the U.S., as well.
However, Warwick disliked the song, and had to be convinced to record it. Years later, in an interview with Ebony Magazine in 1983, she said, “It’s a dumb song and I didn’t want to sing it.”
San Jose’s full name is El Pueblo de San Jose de Guadalupe.
Santa Fe’s full name is La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís (The Royal City of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi)
Assisi, a hill town in Umbria, Italy, overlooks the valley of Tescio. Assisi was the birthplace of St. Francis in 1181 (or 1182).
St Francis of Assisi invented the nativity play, putting on the first performance in 1223, using live animals. He was known for his love of nature and animals. An apocryphal story relates that he tamed a wolf that was terrorizing the Umbrian city of Gubbio by making the sign of the cross and commanding the wolf to lay down before him, which it obediently did. He then led the wolf through town, arranging a pact between it and the townspeople that the wolf would not harm the townspeople so long as they fed it regularly.
Now that’s ballsy.
Ballsy is the name of a company that produces body cleaning products for ummm…male genetalia and anal regions.
No, I am not making this up: https://ballwash.com/
On the TV show, Shark Tank, the Shark Mark Cuban invested in a company pitch. The company name is Manscaped (https://www.manscaped.com/), for male grooming of, umm, around his ‘tree’, and its tag lines include,
“When You Trim The Hedges, The Tree Stands Taller. Shop Our Manscaping Tools Today.
Experience The #1 Men’s Grooming Brand For Below-The-Belt Hygiene!”
Actor Mark Hamill said due to a record heatwave in England when they were filming Star Wars: A New Hope, most of the rebel pilots wore only the top-half of their costume, attacking the Death Star wearing shorts.
The phrase “I have a bad feeling about this” or “I have a very bad feeling about this” is said in every Star Wars movie.
According to 30 'Star Wars' Facts You Didn't Know | Mashable.
Various explanations have been suggested for the Star of Bethlehem seen by the Wise Men in the Gospel of Matthew, including Halley’s comet, other lesser-known comets, a supernova, or a conjunction of planets.
Astronomer Michael Molnar points out that the Gospel phrase “in the east” is a literal translation of the Greek phrase en te anatole, which was a technical term used in Greek mathematical astrology 2,000 years ago. It described, very specifically, a planet that would rise above the eastern horizon just before the Sun would appear; this is known as a heliacal rising.
The orbit of Venus is inside the orbit of Earth, and Venus is always relatively close to the Sun in the sky. When Venus is on one side of the Sun, it becomes visible shortly after the Sun sets. This is when Venus is seen as the Evening Star.
When Venus is on the other side of the Sun, it will rise in the morning a few hours before the Sun. This is Venus the Morning Star.
The name Lucifer, one of many applied to Satan, is Latin for “Light bringer”, and refers to Venus, the morning star. Due to the unique movements and discontinuous appearances of Venus in the sky, mythology surrounding these figures often involved a fall from the heavens to earth or the underworld.
Discounting the Star of Bethlehem, the earliest supernova confirmed to be recorded by man was SN 185 described by Chinese astronomers in 185 AD and confirmed by modern astronomers, with the RCW 86 gaseous shell having just the right location and age. The supernova may also be mentioned in Roman works.
There are much older carvings conjectured to be accounts of supernovae. Some of those conjectures are mentioned here: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1404/1404.3253.pdf
The Dacia SuperNova was a small family car manufactured by Romanian auto manufacturer Dacia from the year 2000 to 2003. The SuperNova was the first model Dacia released after the company was taken over by Renault in 1999. The improvement over the Nova model consisted of a Renault engine and gearbox among other equipment upgrades.