At 215 miles, the River Thames is the longest river that flows entirely through England. The River Severn is a few miles longer, but it flows partially through Wales.
The goddess of the River Severn in Celtic mythology is called Hafren or Habrenna in Welsh, and Sabrina in Latinized form. Sabrina is an important figure in Milton’s 1634 masque Comus, and the song of invocation to her is the masque’s most memorable passage:
Sabrina fair,
Listen where thou art sitting,
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of Lillies knitting
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair,
Listen for dear honour’s sake,
Goddess of the silver lake,
Listen and save.
Prince Charles’s difficulties in learning Welsh before his 1969 investiture as Prince of Wales was the subject of an episode of the third and most recent season of the Netflix dramatic series The Crown.
Charles Barkley was a star basketball player at Auburn University, and then with the Philadelphia 76ers, Phoenix Suns, and Houston Rockets in the NBA. Barkley played as a center in college, and as a power forward in the NBA, despite his relatively short height for those positions (he was listed at 6’ 6", but after retiring, he admitted that he was only 6’ 4"). He was an excellent rebounder, in part due to his stout build, which earned him the nickname “The Round Mound of Rebound.”
Mother, Victoria, and her children Jerrod, Nick, Eugene, and Audra Barkley ran their family ranch with half brother Heath near Stockton CA on the television western drama series The Big Valley. The show ran from 1965 to 1969 and was set at the Barkley family ranch, and the series was loosely based on the Hill Family Ranch which today is covered by the waters of Camanche Reservoir. A California state historical marker (image) standing at Camanche South Shore Park mentions the historic Hill Ranch. The reservoir contains the waters of the Mokelumne River. The historical marker is located near the town of Burson CA, at lat-long 38.207017, -120.921367 (gMap > Google Maps).
The Mokelumne River, 95 miles long, flows west from a rugged portion of the central Sierra Nevada into the Central Valley and ultimately the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, where it empties into the San Joaquin River-Stockton Deepwater Shipping Channel.
British actress Dame Judi Dench played Queen Victoria twice, twenty years apart, in Mrs. Brown (1997) and Victoria & Abdul (2017). She also played Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love (1998), winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the role.
Queen Victoria became Queen in June of 1837, less than a month after her 18th birthday. She ruled until her death in January of 1901. During her reign, she survived no fewer than eight assassination attempts, 3 of which occurred in 1842.
Dr. John H. Watson once complained that Sherlock Holmes had disturbed their shared lodgings at 221B Baker Street, London, by shooting his pistol at the wall to form with the holes the initials “VR” - for “Victoria Regina,” a Latin reference to the British monarch of the day.
The city of Regina is the capital of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.
The location of what would become Regina was selected to become the new seat of the territorial government by Edgar Dewdney, who was the lieutenant-governor of the North-West Territories; when it was selected, the area was called “Pile-of-Bones.”
The location was renamed Regina in 1882 by Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, who was the wife of John Campbell, the Governor General of Canada; she selected the name in honor of her mother, Queen Victoria.
Swift Current, the fourth city in Saskatchewan, is a rare example of a city and its political division having names that mean the same thing in different languages. Saskatchwan means “swift flowing river” in the Cree language.
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift is viewed as a fantasy and adventure story for children, and most people have heard only of the first section, where Gulliver lives with the tiny inhabitants of Lilliput. However, Swift intended it as a satire of British politics, European rivalries and philosophers, and human weakness in general; as satire, it was hugely popular when it was first published in 1726.
Swift boats were 50’ long US Navy fast patrol boats used extensively in Vietnam.
Shrimp boats on the Louisiana coast have evolved little from those introduced by Dalmatian oystermen nearly 200 years ago. They entered popular culture with the hit song “Shrimp Boats”, sung in a Cajun style by Jo Stafford in 1951.
New Orleans native Kermit Ruffins founded the Barbecue Swingers in 1992, a traditional jazz quintet. He is known for cooking on a barbecue at his shows. Every Thursday since the early 199’0s, they played a show at Vaughan’s Bar in the Bywater neighborhood which was very popular with both locals and visitors. His 2007 Basin Street Records release, Live at Vaughan’s was recorded during one of his performances there. They currently play a regular Thursday night gig at Bullet’s Sports Bar on AP Tureaud Ave.
The Cajuns in Louisiana are descendants of the Acadians, who were a French-speaking people who lived in eastern Canada. They were forced out of their homeland by the British in what is now known as the Great Expulsion.
ETA: Some of the Cajuns also also live in New Orleans.
The Ragin’ Cajuns is the nickname of the sports teams at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
The nickname “Ragin’ Cajun” has also been applied to a number of real and fictional people, including political consultant James Carville, retired U.S. Army general Russel Honore (who became well-known for leading military relief efforts in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina in 2005), stock car driver Hal Martin, and comic book superhero Gambit (of the X-Men).
Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign strategists James Carville and George Stephanopolous are prominently featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary The War Room. The film was codirected by Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker (and a former law professor of mine appears briefly in one scene of it).
Clinton Eastwood, Jr., born 1930 and better known as Clint Eastwood, is an American film actor and director. For The Eiger Sanction (1975), a spy movie about mountain climbing, when Eastwood and co-star George Kennedy were training as part of the movie plot, they trained in Monument Valley. In one training scene, they climb the Totem Pole, a 640-foot tall spire with an 18-foot diameter platform at the top.
Monument Valley is sacred land to the Navajo Nation. Climbing on the Totem Pole, a once popular climbing destination, had been forbidden for years. The film’s climbing advisor, Mike Hoover, negotiated permission from the tribal authorities for his team to climb the Totem Pole to remove pitons and other climbing hardware embedded in the structure by previous climbers, restoring the monolith to pristine condition. The ascent was made by two climbers from Moab, Eric Bjornstad and Ken Wyrick, who were tasked with preparing the summit for the helicopter film crew and removing existing hardware.
Upon attaining the summit, the professional climbers were helicoptered off and Eastwood and Kennedy were lowered onto the eighteen-foot wide summit for one of Eastwood’s happiest film-making memories, watching the sun setting over Monument Valley where many classic Westerns were filmed.
Clint Eastwood did all his own stunts for the movie.
https://is.gd/OAhNxR – images, Totem Pole Monument Valley
https://is.gd/1RMjU3 – images, Totem Pole Monument Valley Eiger Sanction
In 2005, Clint Eastwood became the oldest person to win the Oscar for Best Director for his work in the movie Million Dollar Baby. Eastwood was 74 when the movie was released.
At 77, Martin Scorsese could break Clint Eastwood’s record, as he has been nominated for Best Director for his work in The Irishman.
Walter Goodland was 84 when his death ended his term as governor of Wisconsin in 1947. He was the oldest person to ever serve as a state governor. He assumed office at the death or Oscar Rennebohm, so had the rare distinction of beginning and ending his term with a death.