That tool of anarchy known as the Molotov Cocktail was invented and named in Finland during the Winter War of 1939-1940 – in Finnish it is the Molotovin koktaili. Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov created a pact with Germany to not intervene in the war. However, The Fins were hoping to be supported by the Germans if Finland were to be invaded by the Soviets. Other peoples and countries had used similar incendiary devices, prior to their being called Molotov Cocktails.
During the liberation of Paris in 1944, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, son of Pierre and Marie Curie and himself a Nobel laureate in chemistry, used his laboratory near the Prefecture of Police to turn discarded wine bottles into Molotov cocktails that could be dropped into German tanks on the streets of his city.
Marie Curie named the first chemical element she discovered polonium, after her native country of Poland.
In January of 1918, US President Woodrow Wilson gave a speech which was a statement of principles for peace that was to be used for peace negotiations in order to end World War I. This speech became known as the Fourteen Points. The 13th of these 14th points called for an independent Polish state to be erected which would include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations. Shortly after the armistice in November of 1918, Poland regained its independence.
Alas, World War II began with the Nazi German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, followed by the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939,
On hearing of Wilson’s Fourteen Points, Prime Minister Clemenceau is said to have exclaimed : “Quatorze points? Le Bon Dieu n’avait que dix!”
(“Fourteen points? The Good Lord only had ten!”)
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“The Fourteen” was an informal name for NASA Astronaut Group 3, the third set of astronauts selected by NASA, who were first introduced in October, 1963.
Of the fourteen, four died in training accidents before they were able to fly in space, including Roger Chaffee, who died in the Apollo 1 fire. All ten of the surviving members of the group flew on Apollo missions, including Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins of the Apollo 11 crew.
A fortnight equals fourteen days. Fortnight comes from the Old English fēowertyne niht, meaning “fourteen nights”.
An archaic term for a week is sennight, meaning seven nights.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church observes Saturday as the Sabbath Day. Sabbath is observed from Friday evening to Saturday evening. One of the Ten Commandments is, Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village is a Shaker village near New Gloucester and Poland, Maine, in the United States. It is the last active Shaker community, with two members as of 2017.
Shaker High School of Latham NY includes, among notable alums, former NBA player Sam Perkins. Perins went on to play at U. North Carolina where he won an NCAA Championship in 1982, and then on to a 17-year NBA career playing for the Dallas Mavericks, Los Angeles Lakers, Seattle SuperSonics, and Indiana Pacers. He has been inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in KCMO.
Founded in 1829, Perkins Institute for the Blind was the first school for the blind established in the United States. The school was originally named the New England Asylum for the Blind and was incorporated on March 2, 1829. The name was eventually changed to Perkins School For the Blind. John Dix Fisher first considered the idea of a school for blind children based upon his visits to Paris at the National Institute for the Blind and was inspired to create such a school in Boston.
The school is named in honor of Thomas Handasyd Perkins, one of the organization’s incorporators and a Boston shipping merchant who began losing his sight at the time of establishment. In 1833, the school outgrew the Pleasant Street house of the father of its founder Samuel Gridley Howe, and Perkins donated his Pearl Street mansion as the school’s second home. In 1839, Perkins sold the mansion and donated the proceeds. This gift allowed the purchase of a more spacious building in South Boston. In 1885, 6 acres were purchased in the Hyde Square section of Jamaica Plain, a residential district of Boston, to build a kindergarten. This property was home to both Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller. The school moved to its present campus, in Watertown, Massachusetts, in the autumn of 1912.
Jamaica, south of Cuba, was spared from significant damage from Hurricane Dorian. Dorian passed north of the Dominican Republic and north of Cuba, so it was quite far, relatively speaking, from Jamaica. Unfortunately, Dorian passed directly over the Bahamas.
Louis Braille, who invented the system of touch reading and writing for the blind, was inspired to create it after hearing of ‘night writing’. This was an effort to develop a means of safe communication between soldiers in Napoleon’s army during the night. Soldiers were killed because they used lamps after dark to read combat messages. As a result of the light shining from the lamps, enemy combatants knew where the French soldiers were and that led to the loss of many men.
ETA: Today, Braille is used all over the world, including the Bahamas.
Napoleon Bonaparte’s brother Joseph, whom he made King of Naples and Sicily and later of Spain (where he ended the Inquisition), went into exile in Bordentown, New Jersey, just outside of Trenton.
Laurie Beechman was the first actor to play the lead role of the Narrator in the original Broadway cast of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat during its first Broadway production in 1982, earning a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress (Featured Role - Musical) and a Theatre World Award.
In December 1983, Beechman headed the First National Company of Cats as “Grizabella, The Glamour Cat” when the tour opened in Boston. Within four months, she assumed the role on Broadway, replacing Tony winner Betty Buckley. Belting out the show’s hit song “Memory”, Beechman stayed with the show for more than four years and made occasional return engagements over the next decade.
Dolly Parton’s favorite of all the songs she has written is 1971’s “Coat of Many Colors”, about a garment her mother stitched together from rags. She wrote it on the back of a dry-cleaning receipt while riding a tour bus with her then-partner, Porter Wagoner.
Sevier County, Tennessee is just east of Knoxville. The largest employer in the county is Dollywood.
Dolly Parton wrote a song about a professional breakup, not a personal one.
When Parton wrote it in 1973, it was as a farewell to her mentor, producer, and longtime duet partner, Porter Wagoner, with whom she never had a romantic relationship. Wagoner was reluctant to have her go solo, to say the least. “It’s saying, ‘Just because I’m going don’t mean I won’t love you. I appreciate you and I hope you do great and I appreciate everything you’ve done, but I’m out of here,’” Parton told CMT. “And I took it in the next morning. I said, ‘Sit down, Porter. I’ve written this song, and I want you to hear it.’… And he was crying. He said, ‘That’s the prettiest song I ever heard. And you can go, providing I get to produce that record.’ And he did.” She even sang it on one of her last appearances on Wagoner’s TV show in 1974.
the song was I Will Always Love You. But some people still think it was written for the movie The Bodyguard and first recorded by Whitney Houston.