The saxophonist on Baker Street was Raphael Ravenscroft.
Mission San Rafael Arcángel was founded in what is now the present day location of downtown San Rafael, California in 1817 as a hospital to treat sick Native Americans, making it Alta California’s first sanitarium. On June 28, 1846, three men departed the mission, including Kit Carson, and murdered three unarmed Californians under the order of John C. Fremont: Don José R. Berreyesa, father of José de los Santos Berreyesa, along with the twin sons of Don Francisco de Haro, Ramon and Francisco De Haro. Berreyesa was the last Alcalde, or magistrate, of Alta California. Today, the reservoir Lake Berryessa is the largest lake in Napa County. It was named for the first European settlers in the Berryessa Valley, José Jesús and Sexto “Sisto” Berrelleza. Berrelleza is a Basque surname that was Anglicized to Berreyesa and then later respelled Berryessa.
Sabado Gigante (“Giant Saturday” or “Gigantic Saturday”) was a Spanish-language variety show. Originally premiering in Chile in 1962, the show was created by, and hosted by, Chilean entertainer Mario Kreutzberger, who used the stage name Don Francisco.
The show quickly became popular throughout Latin America, and production of it moved to Miami in 1986. Episodes were typically three hours long (though were sometimes much longer), and featured games, live comedy and music, and human interest stories.
The show ran until 2015, when Univision (which then produced the show) retired it. Don Francisco hosted the show through its entire 53 year run.
For more on Benedict Arnold: What was the deal with Benedict Arnold? - The Straight Dope
In play:
President Bill Clinton offered New York Gov. Mario Cuomo a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, but Cuomo declined. He was then defeated when he ran for reelection in 1994.
The Tappan Zee Bridge, officially named the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge after former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, spans the Hudson River around 20 miles north of New York City. It opened in 2018, replacing the decaying Tappan Zee Bridge (officially the Governor Malcolm Wilson Bridge).
Current New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Mario Cuomo’s son, caused some controversy when he passed legislation naming the new bridge, which many opposed, and then insisted that signs reading “Governor Mario Cuomo Bridge” be replaced with new signs reading “Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge”, at substantial cost. According to opponents of the bridge renaming, the cost of the new signs was “rubbing salt into the wound”.
The source of the Hudson River is Lake Tear of the Clouds in the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York, 300 miles north of New York City. Along its 300-odd mile length are several waterfalls, Ord Falls near Newcomb NY, Spier Falls near Corinth NY, Glens Falls in the city of Glens Falls NY, and Bakers Falls in Hudson Falls NY.
Images of:
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Ord Falls — HR4 Ord Falls Rapids upper Hudson River | upper Hudson River… | Flickr
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Spier Falls — https://nnywaterfalls.com/hudsonriver/spierfalls/spierfalls01_575.jpg
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Glens Falls — https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Williamsville_-_Glen_Falls.jpg
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Bakers Falls — https://nnywaterfalls.com/hudsonriver/bakersfalls/bakersfalls02_575.jpg
ORD is the IATA airport code for O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois. Part of the land which is now O’Hare was a Douglas Aircraft plant during World War II, where C-54 Skymaster transport aircraft were built; at that time, it was referred to as Orchard Place.
After WWII, Douglas closed the Orchard Place plant, and the U.S. Air Force began using the airfield, which was named Orchard Field Airport (thus, its IATA code is based on “Orchard”). The City of Chicago bought the airport in 1946, and renamed it for the ace U.S. Navy pilot Butch O’Hare in 1949.
Bangor International Airport has an international arrivals terminal but no scheduled international flights.
One of the smallest commercial airports in the country is Dawson Community Airport, located in Glendive, Montana. The airport is served by one commercial carrier (Cape Air), which offers two daily round-trip flights to Billings, which is 220 miles west of Glendive.
El Alto International Airport, which serves the cities of La Paz and El Alto, Bolivia, is the world’s highest international airport, at an altitude of 4,061 m / 13,325 ft.
Neon signs direct arrivals to the airport’s stores of emergency oxygen, and airport personnel are on standby with bottled oxygen and wheelchairs for people who are overcome by altitude sickness while waiting in line at immigration.
El Alto, Bolivia is the highest major metropolis in the world, with an average elevation of 4,150 m / 13,615 ft.
Alto, Wisconsin, is a township of only 1,100 people, but has six churches, all active and well attended. The towh also has the state’s largest cheese factory and its annual fair rivals the hereby county fairs.
In choral music for mixed voices, “alto” describes the lowest part commonly sung by women. But it can also be a male part, above tenor, also called countertenor.
The Xerox Alto is the first computer designed from its inception to support an operating system based on a graphical user interface (GUI), later using the desktop metaphor.
For more than 50 years, the Defense Department has used 8-inch floppy disks to control the operational functions of the United States’ nuclear arsenal - until now.
This past June, the Air Force finally replaced the floppy disk with a new “highly secure solid state digital storage solution” in the Strategic Automated Command and Control System (SACCS) that coordinates the Pentagon’s land-launched nuclear missiles, nuclear-missile-armed submarines and long-range strategic bombers.
SACCS, which attained full operational capability in January 1968 and ran for decades on an IBM Series/1 computer system dating from the 1970s, is the primary network used by US Strategic Command to transmit Emergency Action Message (EAM) to nuclear-capable forces.
The 8-inch floppy disk was the first of its kind to be produced commercially by IBM. Invented in the late Sixties, IBM began marketing the disks in 1971. If optimally configured, the 8-inch disk could store up to 1.2 megabytes of data.
Today’s DVDs, double sided and double density, can store over 17 GB. That’s over 14,000x the capacity of a 1.2 MB 8” floppy.
The Beatles song “I Saw Her Standing There” was originally titled “Seventeen”. Paul McCartney was 20 when he wrote it in 1962 and his then-girlfriend Celia Mortimer was seventeen at the time herself.
McCartney commented on his writing the lyrics: “I had ‘She was just seventeen,’ and then ‘never been a beauty queen’. When I showed it to John, he screamed with laughter, and said ‘You’re joking about that line, aren’t you?’”
John Lennon and George Harrison, The two Beatles who used their given first and last names, were both victims of violent assaults by fans and both died young. But (James) Paul McCartney & Richard Starkey (Ringo Starr) are both still alive into their 70’s.
John Lennon sang backup and played guitar for Elton John’s 1974 cover version of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” under the fake name of Dr. Winston (his middle name) O’Boogie.