In 1979, the World Hockey Association, a rival to the established National Hockey League, folded. However, four of the WHA’s franchises survived, being accepted into the National Hockey League for the 1979-80 season. Those teams were the Quebec Nordiques, Edmonton Oilers, Hartford Whalers, and Winnipeg Jets.
Of those four, only the Oilers remain in the city which they were in when they joined the NHL: the Nordiques became the Colorado Avalanche in 1995, the Jets became the Phoenix Coyotes in 1996, and the Whalers became the Carolina Hurricanes in 1997. (However, in 2011, the Atlanta Thrashers then moved to Winnipeg, and adopted the old Jets name.)
The Hartford Whalers began play in 1971 as the New England Whalers in Boston MA, where they played from 1971 to 1974. In 1974 they relocated to Hartford CT. They were to play in the brand-new Hartford Civic Center but it was not completed in time for the start of the 1974-1975 season, so they opened the season 25 miles to the north in West Springfield MA. In January, 1975 when the Civic Center opened, the Whalers played from there until the WHA folded in 1979.
For the 1979-1980 season the New England Whalers continued play in the NHL as the Hartford Whalers and they soon adopted their new “W” and “H” and whale tail logo. The designer of the new logo had explained that a team named the Whalers should not have a whale for a mascot and harpoons in its logo because it implies killing your own mascot (images here, and here). Team ownership agreed and the new logo was born (image here). The Hartford Whalers continued play from 1979 to 1997.
On May 6, 1997, the Whalers announced that they would move to Raleigh NC and become the Carolina Hurricanes. The Hartford Whalers had already played their last game in Hartford on April 13, 1997, defeating the Tampa Bay Lightning 2–1.
Hartford Whalers team captain Kevin Dineen scored the final goal in Whalers history that day.
Sir Walter Raleigh is well known as one of the popularizers of tobacco smoking in England. His small tobacco pouch was found in his cell after his execution in 1618. Engraved upon the pouch was a Latin inscription: Comes meus fuit in illo miserrimo tempore (“It was my companion at that most miserable time”)
Johannes Kepler’s Third Law of Planetary Motion (of his 3 Laws) states, The square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit.
Kepler discovered this law on March 8, 1618. He soon rejected the idea after some initial calculations were made, but later on May 15 he confirmed the discovery.
Johannes Kepler’s Third Law of Planetary Motion (of his 3 Laws) states, The square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit.
Kepler discovered this law on March 8, 1618. He soon rejected the idea after some initial calculations were made, but on May 15 he confirmed the discovery.
The current administrator of NASA is James Bridenstine. Bridenstine, a native of Michigan, was formerly a US congressman from Oklahoma. His nomination to the post was controversial, due to his lack of scientific qualifications and his rejection to the scientific consensus on climate change. However, after his confirmation in April of 2018, Bridenstine has reversed his position on climate change, saying that ‘Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. We’re putting it into the atmosphere in volumes that we haven’t seen, and that greenhouse gas is warming the planet. That is absolutely happening, and we are responsible for it.’
The first greenhouse in the sense we would understand it today, at least that was recorded, was used in the 15th century in Korea. The windows were made of translucent paper.
The first ironclad warships were built in ancient Korea, but the first battle between ironclad warships did not take place until March 1862, when the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia clashed at Hampton Roads, Va. during the American Civil War.
The Hampton Inn is one of the few remaining places from Hampton-on-Sea, Kent (gMap here), which was lost to coastal erosion and became a drowned village in the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries.
The cause of the erosion and flooding which eventually drowned the village was the original Hampton Pier. The pier, built in 1865, changed the tidal current patterns which then changed where deposits of sand and pebbles were built up. This is believed to have caused the ocean currents to scour and erode the land where Hampton-on-Sea houses had been built. These were then lost to flooding.
Hampton by Hilton, a chain of hotels that was formerly known as Hampton Inn, includes over 2,300 hotels around the world. The majority of these properties are in the United States. The first Hampton Inn opened in Memphis, Tennessee in 1984, and the first international location opened in Niagara Falls, Ontario in 1993.
“Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and the “In the Heights” movie crew surprised by turning out for a high school performance of the musical at New York’s George Washington High on Friday, May 31st.
Is Miranda too talented and too nice to be for real?
The Balfour Declaration, issued by the Imperial Conference of 1926, marked the beginning of the transition of the British Empire to the Commonwealth of Nations.
The original signed parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence was, for many years, displayed in an ordinary frame under glass (but not under guard) in the library of the U.S. State Department. It is now housed at the National Archives in an ultrasecure and airtight display case which descends every night into a basement vault.
The original engrossed copy of the British North America Act, 1867, the foundation of the Constitution of Canada, is held by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Rumour is that the Canadian government once inquired whether the original could be transferred to Canada, but was met with the equivalent of “Dear boy, if we did that for you, we would have to hand out our original copies of acts to countries all over the world.”
The Mayflower Compact, written and signed by the Pilgrims while the ship was moored in Provincetown Harbor, and often considered white America’s first constitution (the Iroquois Confederacy had no document), has been lost but Gov. William Bradford’s handwritten copy from his journal Of Plimoth Plantation is on display at the Massachusetts State House in Boston.
Joan Braden was a popular Washington hostess who also held a number of low-profile political and government positions. During Bostonian John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign, she reportedly ghosted a weekly newspaper column, “Campaign Wife”, for Jacqueline Kennedy, who could not understand the respect of her husband Tom Braden and brother-in-law, Robert F. Kennedy, for Braden’s opinions.