In his 1996 memoir and nonfiction detective book My Dark Places, author James Ellroy reopened the mystery of his mother’s 1958 murder, hiring a retired Los Angeles homicide detective to look into the cold case.
Despite the best efforts of the LAPD, the 1947 “Black Dahlia” murder was never solved. Boston native and aspiring actress (like every other young woman in LA) Elizabeth Short’s body was found in Leimert Park, severed at the waist, with her mouth slashed open to her ears, and posed with her arms over her head. More than 50 people have confessed to the murder, and more have done so with every novel or movie based on the case. Authorities blamed the media frenzy and interference for destroying their chances of finding the murder.
The dahlia are a group of flowering tubers native to Mexico and central America. Seeds were imported to and successfully grown in Madrid in 1789. The plant was named for Swedish botanist Anders Dahl, but in parts of Europe it was called the Georgia, after the naturalist Johann Gottlieb Georgi of St. Petersburg, Russia.
Arlene Dahl is the mother of Lorenzo Lamas, and appeared with him in the 1991 flick Night of the Warrior, which was the last film in which she acted (although she’s still alive, and could conceivably take a role in future).
Lorenzo Lamas’s father was Fernando Lamas, an Argentinian actor best remembered today for inspiring his marriage to professional swimmer and sometime actress Esther Williams and for posthumously inspiring a Billy Crystal SNL character whose catch phrases were “You- look- mah-vellous!” and “It is better to look good than to feel good!” .
Charles Laughton’s one directorial effort, Night of the Hunter had Robert Mitchum as a mad preacher with the words “LOVE” and “HATE” tattooed onto his knuckles. He chases after two children in order to get their mother’s money (he had killed her) and ends with the line “They abide,” which was echoed in The Big Lebowski
Two film noir movies that featured Robert Mitchum as a tattooed psychotic villain were remade in 1991: Night of the Hunter was remade as a TV movie starring Richard Chamberlain in the Mitchum role and more famously Cape Fear was recast with Robert Deniro (and Mitchum in a cameo role). Ben Stiller did a parody of Cape Fear at the time with Eddie Munster as the villain.
The Cape Hatteras Light on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, built in 1870, was moved back from the encroaching waves of the Atlantic Ocean in 2000. The brick lighthouse was covered with motion-sensitive electronic sensors while it was slowly relocated, but engineers say it was never in much danger of toppling due to its extremely low center of gravity.
The first banks were probably the religious temples of the ancient world, and were probably established in the third millennium BC. Banks probably predated the invention of money. Deposits initially consisted of grain and later other goods including cattle, agricultural implements, and eventually precious metals such as gold, in the form of easy-to-carry compressed plates. Pythius, who operated as a merchant banker throughout Asia Minor at the beginning of the 5th century BC, is the first individual banker of whom we have records.
Traveling tradesmen, including moneylenders, often transported a board to fairs and marketplaces to ply their wares, including coin exchange or moneylending where legal. The board was called, in Italian, a banca, the origin of our term bank. When a person was forbidden to do business due to anything from bad debts to fraudulent practices to not paying rental fees their board was broken- banca rotta meaning “board broken”- the origin of the word bankrupt.
In 1929, Hugo Gernsback – creator of Amazing Stories and considered one of the founders of the science fiction genre – was declared bankrupt after three of his creditors claimed he could not pay his bills (as was the law at the time). Gernsback claimed that the creditors had been manipulated by rival Bernarr Macfadden, that he had the money to pay but, according to practice at the time, he would pay them when the bills were due. Gernsback did have a reputation for slow payment, so it was likely he was dragging his feet, so the creditors (all of which had business relationships with Macfadden) were urged to take action in the courts instead of coming to Gernsback for their checks.
Gernsback lost control of Amazing Stories. He reentered the field with Wonder Stories (later becoming Thrilling Wonder Stories), but his influence was gone. The Hugo Award, one of SF’s greatest honors, is named after him.
Herbert Hoover was inaugurated President of the United States on March 4, 1929, succeeding Calvin Coolidge. The stock market collapse just seven months later triggered the Great Depression and fatally damaged him politically. He badly lost his race for reelection in 1932 to Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Harry S Truman was the only 20th century US President that did not earn a college degree.
There have been five British Royal Navy warships named HMS President, the fourth of which was the former U.S. Navy frigate USS President. She was a sister ship of the famous USS Constitution, captured in 1815 and broken up three years later.
The USS Constitution was nicknamed “Old Ironisde” because cannon balls could not penetrate its oaken hull. Built in 1797, it is still a commissioned ship in the US Navy, and the oldest commissioned naval vessel stil afloat. In 1830, when rumors circulated the ship would be scrapped, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., wrote the poem that immortalized the ship’s nickname.
A digitized version of the USS Constitution appeared in the 2003 Russell Crowe/Paul Bettany movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World as the French frigate Acheron.
The French frigate Méduse ran aground off the coast of what is now Mauretania in July 1816. Fearing the ship would sink before it could be floated off, a raft was constructed to ferry the crew to shore. However, the ship had to evacuate with only a single raft (of several planned) ready. Over 140 people crowded onto the raft, which was set adrift. Fights broke out over food and water, and as people tried to crowd to the center to keep from falling off. When food ran out, the survivors resorted to cannibalism. The raft was rescued after over two weeks at sea, with only 15 men alive, and five of those died after rescue. The event was the subject of the painting, The Raft of the Medusa
Mauritania and Madagascar are the only two countries not currently using decimal-based currency. The Mauritanian ouguiya (the base unit) contains five khoums.
The Zimbabwean dollar has undergone astonishing hyperinflation in the past ten years. By December 2008, annual inflation was estimated at 6.5 quindecillion novemdecillion percent. In April 2009, Zimbabwe abandoned printing of the Zimbabwean dollar, and the South African rand and U.S. dollar became the standard currencies for exchange. The government does not intend to reintroduce a national currency for the foreseeable future.
Z-dollars from 2008: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Zimbabwe_Hyperinflation_2008_notes.jpg
The countries of Nambia, Zambia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe may actually meet at one point. It’s clear that Namibia, Zambia, and Botswana meet at one point, and that Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Botswana do also, but no one is absolute sure if these two points are really one.