One of actor Pete Postlethwaite’s biggest fans was Steven Spielberg, who called him “the best actor in the world” after working with him on The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997). Daniel Day-Lewis, who as a young man saw him perform on stage frequently, was another fan. It was Day-Lewis who recommended him for the role of his father in In the Name of the Father (1993). Postlethwaite received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, one of the film’s seven nominations.
The English rock band Chumbawamba frequently addressed political and social themes in their music. They were best known for their 1997 song “Tubthumping,” which was a top 10 hit in England, the U.S., and a number of other countries.
“Tubthumping,” which, according to guitarist Boff Whaley, was about “the resilience of ordinary people,” began with a clip of a monologue by actor Pete Postlethwaite from the 1996 film Brassed Off.
The 1996 US presidential election was won by the incumbent Democratic president, Bill Clinton. He defeated the GOP nominee, Bob Dole of Kansas, who had resigned his seat as Senate Majority Leader to run for president. Also in the race was Ross Perot of the Reform Party.
Clinton garnered over 49% of the popular vote and carried 31 states and the District of Columbia, winning 379 electoral votes. Dole amassed about 41% of the popular vote, carrying 19 states and winning 159 electoral votes. Perot did not win any electoral votes, although he did win 8% of the popular vote.
This past week, a committee of the Senate of Canada voted down a government bill to establish a tanker moratorium on the BC coast.
First major defeat of a government bill in the Senate in many years.
Now waiting to se if the fullSenate nonetheless votes for the bill on Third Reading, overriding the committee report.
The perennial haplessness of the Washington Senators baseball team (a team name also used by the NHL’s Ottawa franchise, in the hometown of the Senate of Canada), memorialized in the Broadway musical Damn Yankees, led to the saying “Washington: First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League”.
While the official motto of the Marine Corps is Semper Fidelis, “Always Faithful”, one unofficial motto is “Marines — First to Fight” because one USMC mission is to lead amphibious assaults onto a beachhead in order for the more massive US Army and/or Air Force to own and occupy the new territory. During World War II’s Pacific Campaign, this was used in the Allied Forces’ ‘island hopping’, or ‘leapfrogging’ strategy to advance towards Japan. The islands of the Gilbert (e.g., Tarawa) and Marshall Islands (e.g., Wake Island) and the Marianas (Guam) and the Solomons (Guadalcanal), the Philippines, and Okinawa and Iwo Jima were some of the ‘stepping stones’ towards Japan.
President Harry S. Truman, frustrated by the Marine Corps’s effectiveness in legislative battles after World War II to reorganize the US armed forces, wrote to a critical Republican Congressman that the Corps had “a propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin’s.” He later wrote an apology.
The Great Purge was a campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union which occurred during the decade of the 1930s. It was perpetrated primarily by Josef Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the Soviet secret police. It has been estimated that at least 700,000 executions took place during the Purge.
Stalin’s mother encouraged his education and a local priest arranged to send him to a seminary.
It didn’t take.
The Mothers of Invention was the name of guitarist / composer Frank Zappa’s band, and existed, with a variety of line-ups and several hiatuses, from 1964 until 1975.
While the group was playing at the Montreux Casino in Switzerland in 1971, an audience member fired a flare gun; the resulting fire burned down the casino, and destroyed the band’s equipment. The incident was later immortalized in Deep Purple’s 1972 song, “Smoke on the Water.”
The 1964 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Martin Luther King, Jr.
One of Martin Luther’s accomplishments was the translation of the Bible from the original Greek text to German. It is believed that this translation aided in the development of a standard version of the German language.
Long Island Lutheran Middle and High School (commonly known as LuHi) is a Lutheran college preparatory school in Brookville, New York. 17 Lutheran congregations united in the late 1950’s to found a Lutheran high school to serve the Long Island community, and purchased the former Deering Howe Estate (from the family that made its fortune from the International Harvester Company) as the site for the school.
In 1985, International Harvester sold most of its agricultural-machinery business to Tenneco, which then merged that business with their J.I. Case business, to form the Case IH brand. The remainder of International Harvester’s business (primarily heavy trucks and buses) was renamed Navistar International in 1986.
The harvester is the only carnivorous butterfly in North America. They can be found through the eastern USA and Canada, and are recognizable by their orange/rust mottled wings.
Harvester butterfly larvae, being carnivorous, feed on various aphids such as Neoprociphilus, Pemphigus, Prociphilus and Schizoneura, according to Wikipedia.
Four centuries ago, mummies were still believed to have medicinal properties against bleeding, and were sold as pharmaceuticals in powdered form.For a brief time in Europe, an unusual form of cannibalism occurred when thousands of Egyptian mummies preserved in bitumen were ground up and sold as medicine. The practice developed into a wide-scale business which flourished until the late 16th century. This “fad” ended because the mummies were revealed actually to be recently killed slaves.
It has been estimated that, in 2015, over 4% of North Korea’s population were living in modern slavery. Over 50,000 North Korean citizens had been sent abroad to work in mining, logging, and the textile and construction industries; they were sent mainly to China, Russia and the Middle East.
“Va Pensiero” (also known as the “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves”), from the 1842 opera Nabucco, is one of Giuseppe Verdi’s best-known pieces. At the opera’s first rehearsal of the chorus, “the stagehands shouted their approval, then beat on the floor and the sets with their tools.” Nabucco was Verdi’s breakthrough and this piece went on to become the unofficial hymn of Italian national liberation and reunification. It has been suggested on several occasions that it replace “Inno di Mameli” as the Italian National Anthem.
Gerard Alessandrini was putting together Forbidden Broadway, a show about parodying musicals with their own songs. Barbra Streisand had just bought the film rights to Evita, and Gerard met with his cast at the theater venue, trying to come up with a good idea for a parody.
Suddenly cast member Bryan Bratt stood up, put his arms in the traditional touchdown pose, and belted out “Don’t Cry For Me Barbra Streisand, the truth is you bought the film rights.”
The whole cast cracked up, and a parody was born.