American horror and fantasy writer Stephen King wrote in 2003 that Dolores Umbridge was the “greatest make-believe villain to come along since Hannibal Lecter…” She was played in the Harry Potter movies by English actress Imelda Staunton, who once told an interviewer that she hated the character as much as Potter fans did. Staunton is married to actor Jim Carter, perhaps best known for his role as the butler Carson in Downton Abbey.
The Staunton chess set is composed of a particular style of chess pieces used to play the game of chess.[1] According to the rules of chess, this style is to be used for competitions. The journalist Nathaniel Cooke is credited with the design, and they are named after the English chess master Howard Staunton. The first 500 sets were hand signed and numbered by Staunton.[2] This style of set was first made available by Jaques of London in 1849, and they quickly became the standard. They have been used around the world since.[3]
Chess is a musical, which first opened on London’s West End in 1986. The story, about a rivalry between two chess grandmasters (an American and a Soviet), is an allegory to the Cold War between those two nations.
The show’s music was written by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson (the male half of the pop group ABBA), with lyrics by Tim Rice. In 1984, two years before the show’s premiere, a concept album of the show’s music was released; one of the songs from the album, “One Night in Bangkok,” performed by Murray Head, became an international hit, reaching #3 on the U.S. chart.
Before Chess, before Mamma Mia!..In 1983 a French TV station aired Abbacadabra, a fairy tale musical with French songs set to ABBA music. It was a hit, and English theatre producer Cameron Mackintosh decided to produce a live-action English stage version of the TV show with lyrics by David Wood, Mike Batt, and Don Black. Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, who wrote the songs in ABBA, contributed with one new song, “The Seeker.” The show would also be done in Dutch and Portuguese, and deserves to be brought to Broadway.
The Dutch–Portuguese War was an armed conflict involving Dutch forces, in the form of the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company, against the Portuguese Empire. Beginning in 1602, the conflict primarily involved the Dutch companies invading Portuguese colonies in the Americas, Africa, India and the Far East. The outcome of the war was that Portugal successfully repelled the Dutch attempts to take control of Brazil and Angola, while the Dutch were the victors in the Cape of Good Hope and the East Indies, capturing Malacca, Ceylon, the Malabar Coast and the Moluccas from the Portuguese. English ambitions also greatly benefited from the long-standing war between its two main rivals in the Far East.
“Dutch” is old English for “people,” but somehow the English started applying it to Germans and people from the Netherlands; “High Dutch” or “Upper Dutch” were from Germany, “low Dutch” from the Netherlands - “Netherlands” of course coming from the same meaning of “low lands.” Over time “German” supplanted “Dutch” for people from Germany, and so the Netherlands got stuck with Dutch.
Ronald Reagan was of irish, Scottish, and English ancestry. However, when he was a child, Reagan’s nickname was “Dutch” – Reagan claimed that this nickname was given to him by his father when he was a baby, and looked like “a fat little Dutchman,” though, on other occasions, Reagan indicated that the nickname was due to him having a “Dutch boy” haircut as a child.
Michael Caine, playing international secret agent Austin Powers’s father Nigel in Goldmember, said, “There’s only two things I hate in this world: people who are intolerant of other people’s cultures, and the Dutch.”
In 2016, late in life, Sir Michael Caine had his legal name changed to his stage name, from the original Maurice Micklewhite, because he got tired of explaining his passport to Immigration officials.
Sir Michael Caine thought a bit differently sixteen years earlier. In the 2000 Birthday Honours he was knighted as Sir Maurice Micklewhite CBE by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. In a tribute to his background, he stated, “I was named after my father and I was knighted in his name because I love my father. I always kept my real name.”
Buckingham Palace, the London residence and administrative headquarters of the monarch of the United Kingdom, is located in the City of Westminster. Originally known as Buckingham House, the building was originally a large townhouse built for the Duke of Buckingham in 1703. It was acquired by King George III in 1761 as a private residence for Queen Charlotte and became known as The Queen’s House. Buckingham Palace became the London residence of the British monarch on the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837.
Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, was a cousin of Richard III and originally an ally.
He is suspected to have had a hand in the murder of the Princes in the Tower, whether on Richard’s command or to advance his position with Richard. There is at least one contemporary document which states his involvement.
Richard and Buckingham had a falling out in 1483, and Richard had him executed.
In Shakespeare’s play, Buckingham is a committed ally of Richard in the first part of the play, but breaks with Richard over a command to kill the Princes and leads an unsuccessful rebellion. Richard then has him executed.
In the neo-fascist 1995 film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Richard III starring Sir Ian McKellen, the Duke of Buckingham is played by Jim Broadbent, later to go on to greater fame in Iris, Moulin Rouge!, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Game of Thrones, Topsy-Turvy, Hot Fuzz and The Iron Lady.
The oldest operating elevator in the US is located in the city hall of New Bedford, Massachusetts. The 1912 Otis steel and wrought iron cage has a curved cushioned bench large enough for six, and serves the four floors of city hall.
Shortly before his 1967 death in a plane crash, Otis Redding wrote and recorded (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay with Steve Cropper. The song became the first posthumous number-one record on both the Billboard Hot 100 and R&B charts. Similarly, the album The Dock of the Bay was the first posthumous album to reach number one on the UK Albums Chart.
Early American aviator Cal Rodgers, trained by the Wright Brothers, was the first to fly across America (“crash by crash,” as one biographer wrote), from Sept. 17 to Dec. 10, 1911. Rodgers carried the first transcontinental U.S. Mail pouch on the 70-stop trip.
Wilbur Wright, the elder of the two flying Wright brothers, died of typhoid fever in 1912 at age 45, just 9 years after their first powered flight in 1903. Orville died in 1948, over 35 years after his brother, having lived from the horse-and-buggy age to the dawn of supersonic flight.
John T. Daniels, the Coast Guardsman who took the Wrights’ famous first flight photo, died the day after Orville. Daniels said that he was so excited by seeing the Flyer rising that he nearly forgot Orville Wright’s instructions to squeeze the bulb triggering the shutter.
The U.S. Coast Guard is the only branch of the U.S. armed services that performs law enforcement as one of its fundamental purposes.
Let’s raise a glass and toss it down, to our fellow Coasties…
The Coast Guard was founded on August 4, 1790, after Congress commissioned the construction of ten ships to help enforce federal tariffs and prevent smuggling.
Alex Haley, who wrote the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Roots: The Saga of an American Family,“ (1976) was the Coast Guard’s first journalist.
Walt Disney created a special logo for the Coast Guard’s Corsair Fleet during World War II, featuring Donald Duck. 1941-1945. Image here.
Since 2003, the Coast Guard has been operating as part of the Department of Homeland Security. Before that, they were in the Department of Transportation.
“Semper Paratus” is the Coast Guard motto. Always Ready.
If a vessel is over 65 feet long, the Coast Guard calls it a “Cutter”.
President George Washington commissioned the first Coast Guard officer, Captain Hopley Yeaton, on March 21, 1791.
The Constitutional Act came into force on December 26, 1791. The Act divided the old province of Quebec into the two provinces of Upper Canada and Lower Canada.