The Vauxhall Cadet was a car produced from 1930 to 1933 by Vauxhall Motors of Luton, Bedfordshire, England. Vauxhall Motors is now owned by Opel which was founded in 1862 in Germany. The Vauxhall Cadet was the first British car with synchromesh, a transmission first featured by Cadillac in 1928.
The founder of Opel was a man named Adam Opel of Rüsselsheim, Germany. He began his business by making sewing machines in a former cowshed. In 1886, the company began producing high-wheel bicycles. Opel died in 1895; his widow and sons continued to run the company and began manufacturing automobiles in 1899.
From post #41,064 on 2018-11-09, here…
… I was down in L.A. over the weekend and did Eldred St. Yes, it’s pretty steep!
Now, back to Railer13’s play —
In play:
Isaac Merritt Singer (1811 – 1875) founded the Singer Sewing Machine Company in 1851. Singer is based in La Vergne TN, near Nashville. Its first large factory for mass production was built in Elizabeth NJ in 1863.
Interesting — during the Civil War, a company HQ’d in the South opens a manufacturing facility in the North…
Many of the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz were played by the Singer Midgets, a vaudeville troupe assembled by Austrian impresario Leo Singer. The group first appeared in 1912 at the Liliputstadt, a “midget city” at the “Venice in Vienna” amusement park.
The play, by Leah Napolin and Isaac Bashevis Singer, was based Singer’s short story “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy.” Barbra Streisand would later adapt the play Yentl into a movie. The film received a scathing review from Singer, who was particularly taken aback by Streisand’s monopolization of the production to its detriment, saying: “When an actor is also the producer and the director and the writer he would have to be exceedingly wise to curb his appetites. I must say that Miss Streisand was exceedingly kind to herself. The result is that Miss Streisand is always present, while poor Yentl is absent.”
When Isaac Merritt Singer was trying to invent his sewing machine, he used ordinary sewing needles and simply could not make the machine work. The action required to pull the needle all the way through the cloth was simply too cumbersome.
One night, he gave up and went to bed. And had a dream. He dreamt he was in Africa and being chased by spear-wielding Africans.
And for some reason, the spears had holes in the tips of their points.
Singer woke up and immediately started to make a needle with a hole for the thread in the tips. That solved his mechanical problem and he came up with the sewing machine.
Actor Oscar Isaac was a member of a ska-punk band, The Blinking Underdogs, for several years (he was the band’s vocalist and guitarist) before deciding to focus on acting, and attending the Julliard School.
As an actor, Isaac has used his musical talent in several roles, including his role as the titular folk singer in Inside Llewyn Davis.
The cartoon dog superhero Underdog was created to sell General Mills cereal, but became so popular its own cartoon series began in 1964.
Underdog was voiced by Wally Cox, whose best-known role was as “Mr. Peepers”. While trying to break into standup comedy in New York, he became Marlon Brando’s roommate and lifelong close friend. After Cox’s death, Brando kept Cox’s ashes in his bedroom and conversed with them nightly.
In the US presidential election of 1920, the two-major party candidates were both former newspaper editors from Ohio: Republican Warren G. Harding of Marion and Democrat James M. Cox of Dayton. Cox lost, although his running mate, Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York, later went on to win some small measure of fame.
The statue of Franklin D. Roosevelt at his memorial in Washington, DC depicts his wheelchair resting on all four wheels. By statuary custom, if he had died in combat, the front wheels would have been raised.
I had to think about this one for a bit! Wonder if there’s an example somewhere??
In play: Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt were fifth cousins. FDR’s wife Eleanor was TR’s niece. Thus, Franklin and Eleanor were fifth cousins once removed.
The rabbit was introduced into England, probably from Iberia, by the Normans for their fur and meat. In order to thrive they had to be sheltered from the elements, protected from predators and fed regularly. Artificial warrens were built consisting of low flat topped mounds, 10 to 20 yards long, 5 to 10 yards wide and up to a yard high, sometimes surrounded by a shallow ditch or moat since rabbits do not swim. These mounded warrens are sometimes called pillow mounds although on Dartmoor they are known as buries and historically were termed coney garths. As they are not particularly striking monuments they are often overlooked, but there are at least twelve warrens in Blenheim Park, the historic estate of the Dukes of Marlborough.
Theodore Roosevelt’s summer estate in Oyster Bay, Sagamore Hill, included a farm and a pet cemetery where several dogs and horses were buried. I don’t know if they had any rabbits.
Oyster Bay, NY, is in the middle of Long Island, and extends from its north shore to its south shore, the only mid-island municipality that does that.
The mixed drink known as the Long Island Iced Tea does not, typically, contain any iced tea at all. While there are numerous variations on the recipe, the most common recipe uses equal parts of vodka, gin, rum, and triple sec, with sour mix as a mixer, and a splash of cola.
Amy Fisher, the “Long Island Lolita”, shot the wife of her married lover, Joey Buttafuoco, so they could be together forever.
Baffin Island is the largest island in Canada, and the second largest in the Americas, after Greenland.
“Were I Laid on Greenland’s Coast” is a song from “The Beggar’s Opera” (1728), the satirical comedy by John Gay. It is supposedly a love duet with dreams of escape to distant places like Greenland and India, but it is sung by the amoral thief Macheath and Polly Peachum, daughter of Mr. Peachum, leader of a criminal gang, who uses her to entrap the unwary.
“The Threepenny Opera”, by Bertolt Brecht, Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill, was adapted from “The Beggar’s Opera”.
“The Beggar’s Opera”, written by John Gay and produced by John Rich, was a phenomenal success on the London stage, produced in 1728.
It was said that the Opera “Made Gay rich, and Rich gay.”