Those who, due to experience, connections or charisma are considered potential popes at the beginning of the Vatican conclave which meets to elect the next one are referred to collectively as papabile.
In the 2005 papal conclave, only 3 of the members of the College of Cardinals eligible to vote had been chosen as Cardinals by a Pope other than John Paul II. One of them was Joseph Ratzinger, head of the office once known as the Inquisition, who was chosen and selected the name Benedict XVI.
The main resource listing English collective nouns (those which refer to things, often animals, collectively, like “a murder of crows”) is the book An Exhaltation of Larks, written by James Lipton, better known as the host of the TV show Inside the Actor’s Studio.
Among the many species of larks are the Madagascar Lark, Angola Lark, Tibetan Lark, and Mongolian Lark.
Louisiana State Penitentiary has more than 5,000 inmates at any given time of whom about 3 in 4 are serving life sentences; several times more men are executed there each year than are paroled. It is better known as Angola, the name of a huge plantation that was located on the same land in the antebellum era; the plantation was founded by Isaac Franklin, a slave trader who imported slaves from Angola in the early 19th century.
He bashes his skull in? :eek:
Angola – the country, not the prison – is about twice the size of Texas and the world’s 23rd-largest country, after Niger.
Only two states in the lower forty-eight states were not adjacent to an existing state at the time they achieved statehood: California and Louisiana.
Besides Alaska, there are two areas of the lower 48 states where one must go through Canada first to be able to access them – Point Roberts, which part of the state of Washington, and Minnesota’s Northwest Angle.
Over time, I’ve been to both.
Bang, bang, papal silver hammer came down on his head
Clang, clang, papal silver hammer made sure he was dead !
The number eighty-eight is often used by neo-nazi groups. Each 8 stands for an H (8th letter in the alphabet), 88 in turn stands for HH, or Heil Hitler.
ETA : heh, ninja’d but the connection’s the same, so.
Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl was a confidante and friend of Adolph Hitler and later defected after Hitler played a practical joke on him – putting him in a plane supposedly to fly to Spain and telling him he was to parachute into the midst of the war. The plane was actually circling within Germany. Later, Hanfstaengl helped FDR with the US war effort.
Hitler and Spanish leader Francisco Franco (whose full name was Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco y Bahamonde Salgado Pardo de Andrade) met several times to discuss Spanish assistance to the Nazi war effort, although Spain was putatively neutral. Franco drove a very hard bargain, and after one such meeting, Hitler complained to an aide, “Next time, I’d just like to have a tooth pulled.”
During the first season of Saturday Night Live, Chevy Chase hosted the “Weekend Update” news segment, during which he would often report that “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead” (Franco having died only a few weeks after the premiere of SNL).
That became a running gag because there had been several false reports, repeatedly retracted, of Franco’s death before he finally, and irrevocably, kicked the bucket.
Salmon P. Chase, Republican of Ohio, was President Lincoln’s very ambitious Secretary of the Treasury. When Chase self-righteously resigned for the umpteenth time, Lincoln accepted his resignation, but in 1864 appointed him Chief Justice of the United States. In that capacity, Chase presided at the 1868 Senate impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson.
Herman “Fish” Salmon, a test pilot for Lockheed, tested the P-80, the first operational US jet fighter, and was the first to fly the L-188 Electra, P-3 Orion, YF-104A Starfighter, and the XFV-1 tailsitter, which was named in his honor.
Never mind Beaten to the punch.
Hamilton Fish was a NYS senator and governor. His son, Hamilton Fish II, served in the House of Representatives. His son, Hamilton Fish III, also served in the House of Representatives. His son, Hamilton Fish IV, also served in the House of Representatives. His son, Hamilton Fish V, ran for the House of Representatives to succeed his father, but lost.
A bridge over the Hudson at Newbergh, NY, is named for one of them.
Los Angeles DA Hamilton Burger did, somehow, manage to beat Perry Mason not once but twice on the TV series - in “The Case of the Terrified Typist” and again in “The Case of the Deadly Verdict”. He never did, however, realize just how much Mason flouted rules of courtrooom procedure.
Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry sailed into the Sept. 10, 1813 Battle of Lake Erie aboard his flagship, the USS Lawrence, but it got so badly shot-up that he was rowed to her sister ship, the USS Niagara, and won the battle aboard the latter warship.
Oliver Hazard Perry died of yellow fever in Venezuela, and was originally buried in Port of Spain, Trinidad. His body was eventually moved to Newport, Rhode Island, where he was briefly interred in the Old Common Burial Ground before being relocated to Island Cemetery.
When Annapolis, Md. was menaced by Confederate sympathizers during the Civil War, the U.S. Naval Academy was moved to Newport, R.I. It was moved back after the war, where it’s remained ever since.