According to Wikipedia, as of April 25, 2019, there were 2,644 death row inmates in the United States. 98% of these inmates are male. The median time that a prisoner has been held on death row is 7 years.
25 prisoners, all male, were executed in the US in 2018.
According to deathPenaltyInfo.org, only 2% of US counties accounted for over 50% of the executions since 1976.
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/50-Facts#50factsgeography
Queen Elizabeth II visited the U.S. to help celebrate its Bicentennial in 1976. The President and Mrs. Gerald Ford hosted her for a state dinner at the White House during which the Captain and Tennille sang, among other songs, “Muskrat Love.”
Another war did not break out, although no one would have blamed Her Majesty in the least if she had started one.
When King George VI visited President Franklin Rooseveltat his Hyde Park, NY “cottage” in 1939, FDR served him and Queen Elizabeth (the future Queen Mum) hot dogs and beer.
Although nuclear fission was discovered in late 1938 by Otto Hahn, the announcement was not made until 1939.
The explanation was authored by Lise Meinter, a Jew who had quite recently fled Austria for Sweden. Hahn was awarded the Nobel Prize but Meitner was not, a decision long considered one of the most unjust in Nobel Prize history.
Nuclear fusion as a concept had first been theorized by another woman scientist, Ida Noddack.
Elizabeth Fulhame (fl. 1794) was a Scottish chemist who invented the concept of catalysis and discovered photoreduction. She describes catalysis as a process at length in her 1794 book An Essay On Combustion with a View to a New Art of Dying and Painting, wherein the Phlogistic and Antiphlogistic Hypotheses are Proved Erroneous. The book relates in painstaking detail her experiments with oxidation-reduction reactions, and the conclusions she draws regarding Phlogiston theory, in which she disagrees with both the Phlogistians and Antiphlogistians. Fulhame’s work on the role of light sensitive chemicals (silver salts) on fabric, predates Thomas Wedgwood’s more famous photogram trials of 1801.
However, as she herself wrote, “But censure is perhaps inevitable: for some are so ignorant, that they grow sullen and silent, and are chilled with horror at the sight of anything that nears the semblance of learning, in whatever shape it may appear; and should be the spectre appear in the shape of a woman, the pangs which they suffer are truly dismal.”
The 1983 Nobel prize in Literature was awarded to William Golding, “for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today”.
The decision was ***censured ***by many, memorably so in the quote below, from an article by Paul Gray of Time Magazine:
"Q. Name three authors worthy of the Nobel Prize for Literature whose last names start with the letter G.
A. Nadine Gordimer. Günter Grass. Graham Greene.
Right, but still incorrect. With traditional quirkiness, the Swedish Academy last week bestowed the Nobel laurel (and approximately $193,000) on English Novelist William Golding. The decision dumbfounded nearly everybody and drove one of the 18 academy members into an unprecedented public complaint. Artur Lundkvist, 77, called the selection of Golding a “coup” and described the new laureate as “decent but hardly in the Nobel Prize class.”"
Comic actor Stan Laurel was born Arthur Stanley Jefferson; he originally performed under the stage name of Stan Jefferson. In his early career, he was a member of impresario Fred Karno’s troupe, along with a young Charlie Chaplin.
He changed his stage name to Stan Laurel around 1921, at the suggestion of Mae Dahlberg (who became his common-law wife); Dahlberg felt that “Stan Jefferson” was unlucky, due to containing 13 letters.
In The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin’s first talkie, he played a dual role as a Jewish barber and as Adenoid Hynkel, the dictator of Tomainia he impersonates. Both had the same toothbrush mustache as Chaplin and Hitler. Jack Oakie played Benzino Napaloni, Dictator of Bacteria.
The United Nations recognizes 195 sovereign countries, 193 of which are members of the UN. Palestine and the Holy See are observer states.
Of these 195 countries, 50 (!) are ruled by a dictator.
The ISO 3166-1 standard defines codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest. 2- and 3-letter abbreviations are assigned to each country / dependent territory / special area (e.g., US and USA, or CA and CAN for Canada). There are currently 249 such entities.
Although it doesn’t even have a ISO 3166-1 country code, SMOM (the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta, or Supremus Militaris Ordo Hospitalarius Sancti Ioannis Hierosolymitani Rhodiensis et Melitensis) is considered a sovereign state, mints its own coins and stamps, and has formal diplomatic relations with over a hundred countries. It has observer status at the UN (though listed as an “other organization” rather than “state”).
Although there are only two citizens who actually travel with a SMOM passport, it isn’t a tiny organization — SMOM has over 100,000 knights, members, employees and volunteers who participate in its charitable works.
If South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg’s dreams come true, he would be the first Maltese-American President (as well as the first openly gay one - James Buchanan was closeted, although not well). Buttiġieġ is a Maltese surname, derived from Arabic kunya أبو الدجاج (Abu d-dajāj), meaning chicken owner or poulterer.
The Oaken Bucket is the football trophy awarded to the winner of the annual rivalry between Purdue and Indiana. Purdue and Indiana wanted to stand out among the many institutions by signifying their rivalry in such a way that it would make many raise an eyebrow with puzzlement. Both schools decided that they would take a bucket surrounded with numerous metallic I’s and P’s, to make it look like a trophy.
gImage, Oaken Bucket — https://tinyurl.com/y37npoyu
A joke that came out about the time of the movie Indecent Proposal:
The idea isn’t “Would you accept a million dollars to have sex with Robert Redford?” The better idea is “Would you accept a million dollars to have sex with Frank Perdue?”
Rumored. Not historical fact.
In play:
Per Wiki, in April 2014, *Time *magazine included Robert Redford in their annual Time 100 as one of the “Most Influential People in the World”, declaring him the “Godfather of Indie Film.” In 2016, he was honored with a Presidential Medal of Freedom. In August 2018, Redford announced that he would retire from acting after completing the film The Old Man & the Gun.
President Bill Clinton created the Grand Staircase Escalante-National Monument on Sept. 18, 1996, by signing a declaration at the south rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona. It was lauded by environmentalists, with actor and Utah resident Robert Redford appearing at the ceremony with Clinton. The GSENM is twice the size of Yosemite National Park.
Unlike many awards, the Presidential Medal of Freedom can be awarded to dead people. Among several who have been given this award posthumouslyare Martin Luther King, Jr., César Chávez (awarded by Bill Clinton), Anwar el-Sadat, Pope John XXIII, Margaret Mead, Rachel Carson, Sallie Ride, Jackie Robinson, Roberto Clemente, Babe Ruth, Elvis Presley, and Presidents JFK and LBJ.
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (also known as AEDPA), is an act of the United States Congress signed into law on April 24, 1996 by President Bill Clinton. The bill was introduced by then-Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and passed with broad bipartisan support by Congress (91-8 in the US Senate, 293-133 in the U.S. House of Representatives) following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
Bob Dole was a Kansas Representative from 1961 through 1969, and then a Kansas Senator from 1969 through 1996. He resigned his Senate seat in 1996 to unsuccessfully run for President as the Republican party nominee. He was Gerald Ford’s running mate when Ford was defeated by Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election. Dole was the first person to be nominated for both president and vice president by one of the current major parties without winning election to either position.