As a negotiated condition of her divorce Diana, Princess of Wales, was not entitled to retain the style “Her Royal Highness.” There has been some speculation that her son William will restore it posthumously upon taking the British throne.
Archduke Ferdinand of Austria is believed to have coined the term “royal highness” for himself om a trip through Europe in 1633 when he had to address every two-bit duke and baron he met as “your highness.” The term was later popularized by Gaston, the son of Henry IV of France and his children.
Various styles of address for various officials include “Your Excellency” for an ambassador or prime minister, “Your Grace” for Catholic/Anglican/Orthodox clerics above the rank of bishop, “Your Serene Highness” to hereditary heads of state below king (e.g. prince, grand duke), and “Your Magnificence” (Ihre Pracht) for the president of a German university.
Although the Constitution and U.S. law prescribe no particular style for the President of the United States, he is often addressed as “Your Excellency” in diplomatic communications.
The USS Constitution, moored in Cambridge, MA, is the oldest commissioned naval warship still afloat, launched in 1797.
Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber’s company Really Useful Groups currently owns seven London theatres: The Palace Theatre, the London Palladium, the Theatre Royal, the New London, the Adelphi, Her Majesty’s theatre, and the Cambridge, one of London’s youngest theatres.
In addition to being chemical elements, Palladium and Xenon were dance club/discotheque-type places in Manhattan in the 1980’s.
Ei-ichi Negishi, a co-recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, calls his home The Palladium in honor of the catalytic element in the “Negishi coupling” reaction he discovered. The house is about a mile from where I sit as I type this.
The Hollywood Palladium is a theater on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. It was built in a Streamline Moderne, Art Deco style and includes an 11,200 square foot dance floor with room for up to 4,000 people. The Los Angeles Times publisher Norman Chandler funded the construction at a cost of $1.6 million in 1940. I’ve seen the English Beat there.
The patron saint of England is St. George. The English flag shows the cross of St. George, which is a red cross on a white field. This is a component of the Union Flag (also known as the Union Jack), which also shows the crosses of St. Patrick ([Northern] Ireland) and St. Andrew (Scotland), together representing the United Kingdom.
Denmark possesses the world’s oldest national flag, the Dannebrog.
A white cross on a red background, according to legend the original
fell from the sky into the hands of Danish King Valdemar II Syr
(the “Conqueror”) who at the time was leading his army in a crusading
battle against the heathen natives in Estonia. The Est had surprised the
Danes in camp, and the battle had been going badly. Inspired by their
new flag the Danes won the battle, and remained in control of north
Estonia for over 100 years.
The Dannebrog also served as the Norwegian flag during the ca.1383-1815
union of Denmark and Norway.
The copycat Swedes came up with a flag featuring a cross under similar
circumstances in war against the heathen Finns.
Vilgot Sjoman’s 1967 and 1968 films “I Am Curious (Yellow)” and “I Am Curious (Blue)” were named after the colors of the Swedish flag.
Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg! was a comic book series in the 80s featuring the adventures of Reuben Flagg, Plexus Ranger, in Chicago in 2031, when the US has become a corrupt dystopia. Chaykin wrote all 12 of the first year’s issues, consisting of four interlocking four-issue arcs.
There are New Chicagos in both California and Indiana. A planet of that name was also the site of a rebellion in the opening chapters of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s classic sf novel The Mote in God’s Eye.
My absolute most favorite line from The Perfect Master ever, in reference to the origin of the phrase “hep, hep hooray”:
Finlay Peter Dunne, a reporter in Chicago in the 1890s, created the character of saloonkeeper Mr. Dooley, commented satirically on the events of the day, notably on the Spanish-American War.
When the series Deadwood was popular there was more research into the historical figure on whom the character of saloonkeeper/brothelkeeper Al Swearengen was based. It had been reported for years that he died penniless while trying to hop a train, but new investigation revealed he was more likely murdered in Denver in 1904. (The real person has little in common with the TV character save for being a pimp/barkeep in Deadwood; for one thing he was an Iowa farmer [with an identical twin] until he was 30 and probably much less nuanced in his evil than his TV counterpart.)
The title of the 1995 Andy Garcia film Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead comes from a Warren Zevon song of the same name, recorded on his 1991 album “Mr. Bad Example”. The lead character’s name, “Jimmy the Saint,” comes from the Bruce Springsteen song “Lost in the Flood,” from the album “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.”
Andy Garcia played Vincent Mancini, illegitimate son of Santino “Sonny” Corleone and his mistress Lucy Mancini, in Godfather 3. Readers of the original Puzo novel knew that it would be impossible to work a child of this union into the novel as Puzo went into far more detail about Lucy’s vagina than any reader could possibly have wanted.
Mario Puzo was originally hired to write the screenplays for Superman and Superman II but much of his work was discarded or rewritten. He does retain credit as one of the screenplay writers, as well as the writer of the story.