The Irish Hunger Memorial in New York City occupies a half acre of reclaimed land in downtown Manhattan. It is landscaped with soil, and native vegetation from the western coast of Ireland and stones from all counties of Ireland.
An authentic ruined Irish cottage from 19th century Carradoogan, County Mayo, belonged to the Slack family and was donated by them as part of the memorial in “memory of all the Slack family members of previous generations who emigrated to America and fared well there.”
(It’s disconcerting to see a ruined cottage and overgrown field tilted on top of a modern building:
A tale just read today is a Native American Huron legend, and it belongs here:
There was a time when the world was barren. No plants could grown, and people were dying of famine. The Great Spirit sent a young girl to save his people. Whenever the girl touched the land with her right hand, potatoes drew. Her left hand, and corn grew. The land grew lush with food, the people ate and regained their strength.
Then the girl sat down to rest. And when she stood up, another plant had grown under her ass–the tobacco plant. The Hurons believe that either tobacco is a gift from the God, or that every gift from the gods has its own curse.
Tim Cahill’s Road Fever: A High-Speed Travelogue (a fun read) tells of how he and Garry Sowerby, a Guiness-book-obsessed professional driver, set a record for fastest transit of the Americas, from Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska in 23 1/2 days. That included a brief container-ship detour (allowed by Guinness) around the roadless Darien Gap in eastern Panama.
Comment only. Cool trivia. I’ve looked at that drive too. It is 7,500 miles from Prudhoe Bay to the Darien Gap, and then from the Gap to Ushuaia it is an additional 5,700 miles.
To cross the Gap you’d have to drive to a different spot. Not to Yaviza, and then not continue from Riosucio.
13,200 miles total, and who knows how good those roads are? But I’m not really interested in doing it in 23 days. If I did it, I’d do it in 2-3 months. Maybe while in my retirement…?
In play: According to Huffpost, Ed Bolian drove his car from New York City to Los Angeles in a record time of 28 hours, 50 minutes. He was accompanied by a co-driver and another passenger. Their average speed was 98 miles per hour, and the trip included only three stops to refuel and use the restroom.
Erwin “Cannonball” Baker’s best-remembered drive was a 1933 New York City to Los Angeles trek in a Graham-Paige model 57 Blue Streak 8, setting a 53.5 hour record that stood for nearly 40 years. This drive inspired the later Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, better known as the “Cannonball Run”, which itself inspired at least five movies and a television series. In 1941, he drove a new Crosley Covered Wagon across the nation in a troublefree 6,517-mile (10,488 km) run to prove the economy and reliability characteristics of Crosley automobiles. Other record and near-record transcontinental trips were made in Model T Fords, Chrysler Imperials, Marmons, Falcon-Knights and Columbia Tigers, among others.
Ricky Martin, dubbed “The King of Latin Pop” due to his smash hit “Livin’ La Vida Loca”, was a member of Menudo in his teens. The band kept rotating new boys in as old boys aged out, keeping their image fresh.
German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) is best known for his contributions in the broad general philosophical study areas of phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism.
Tom “T-Bone” Stankus is an American musician, best known for his 1980 comedy song “Existential Blues,” which was a staple on the Dr. Demento radio show.
The above song had to be edited when the publishers of “The Impossible Dream” threatened to sue. Some people have no sense of humor, or concept of fair use.
Singer and actor Jim Nabors, of Alabama, sang The Impossible Dream (The Quest) in his album of 1966. He also sang the song in a TV episode of Gomer Pyle, USMC called “The Show Must Go On”.
A longstanding rumor maintains that Jim Nabors “married” actor Rock Hudson in the early 1970’s, shortly before Nabors began his relationship with Stan Cadwallader, his partner of over 30 years and his legally wedded husband. Not only was same-sex marriage not yet legal anywhere in the United States at the time, Nabors and Hudson were reportedly never more than casual friends. According to Hudson, the story originated with a group of “middle-aged homosexuals who live in Huntington Beach”, who sent out joke invitations for their annual get-together.[63] One year, the group invited its members to witness “the marriage of Rock Hudson and Jim Nabors”, at which Hudson would take the surname of Nabors’ most famous character, Gomer Pyle, becoming “Rock Pyle”. The rumor was spread by those who failed to get the joke, and because Nabors was still closeted at the time and Hudson never publicly admitted to being homosexual (despite longtime suspicion that he was), the two reportedly never spoke to each other again.
The United States Marine Corps or USMC is the only branch of the American military with a flag with a red field. No Cabinet department has a red flag, either.
The earliest citation for “red flag” in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1602 and shows that at that time the flag was used by armies and ships to indicate that they were preparing for battle.
Work on the Oxford English Dictionary was begun in 1879 and was originally thought to be a 10 year project. However, in 1884, when the team had only reached the word ‘ant’, they realized that they had perhaps underestimated the scope of the undertaking.
In play: After the Virginius Affair, which was a dispute between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Spain in the mid-1870s during the Ten Years’ War (1868-1878), the United States, fearing a war with Spain, practiced naval brigade landing exercises. US Marines practiced “invading” Key West FL in 1874, Gardiners Island NY in Long Island Sound in 1884, and Newport RI in 1887.
