No prime minister of Canada has ever been assassinated; only one of Great Britain has been.
William Gladstone was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on four separate occasions, a feat matched by no one else. He was 84 when he resigned the last time, also a record.
Lewis Carroll anagrammed “William Ewart Gladstone” thus–“wild agitator; means well”.
In Disney comics, Gladstone Gander is a perpetually lucky bird. Although there are conflicting accounts of his relation to other avian characters, the now generally-accepted story is that he is Donald Duck’s first cousin.
The town of Gander, Newfoundland exists as a support structure for its international airport, which is now not so important a refueling point for transatlantic flights as it used to be in the propeller years during and after the war. It did return to prominence on 9/11, as the airport and town accepted 39 airliners and their passengers when all flights to and in the US were grounded - the effort was dubbed “Operation Yellow Ribbon”.
The Newfoundland breed of dogs is descended from a breed indigenous to the island known as the lesser Newfoundland, or St. John’s Dog. With the possible exception of the Chihuaha, it is the only dog native to the Americas.
The coyote is also a native American dog. It is one of the few American animal species
whose range has increased since 1492.
The National Hockey League’s Phoenix Coyotes are the former Winnipeg Jets. The new Winnipeg Jets are the former Atlanta Thrashers. Atlanta lost its previous NHL team, the Flames, to Calgary, but without a name change.
Calgary hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics.
Calgary’s hockey teams have played in the Calgary Stampede Corral, an arena built for the Calgary Stampede rodeo. In the early days, the boards were a few inches higher than standard, causing some difficulties when opposing teams leapt over them to get onto the ice.
Ice hockey is the only North American team sport allowing substitution in the flow of the game.
Enya’s breakthrough hit was 1988’s “Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)”. The Orinoco reference is to the London studio where it was recorded.
Four of Enya’s relatives (sister, brother and uncles) were the original members of the group Clannad, who scored a number one hit with “I Will Find You”, the theme song from the film Last of the Mohicans.
James Fenimore Cooper named the character he designated as the “last of the Mohicans” Uncas, after a sachem of the Mohegans who had allied his tribe with the British in King Philip’s War and emerged with them locally dominant. However, Cooper had confused the two tribes - the Mohicans lived in the Hudson Valley (and are not extinct, just relocated to Wisconsin), and the Mohegans in eastern Connecticut. The tribal Mohegan Sun Casino is located in Uncasville, CT.
The USS Kearsarge, which defeated the Confederate commerce raider CSS Alabama off the coast of Cherbourg, France in June 1864, was a Mohican-class steam sloop of war.
Cherbourg was the last port successfully reached by RMS Titanic. After her launching in Belfast, she sailed to Liverpool and then Southampton before crossing the Channel to pick up more passengers.
The first song on Alice Cooper’s first album Pretties for You was “Titanic Overture,” an instrumental.
The last TV acting role of Desi Arnaz, Sr., (full name Desiderio Alberto Arnaz ye de Acha), as a Cuban fashion photographer on an episode of the sitcom Alice. (Available on YouTube.)
Desi Arnaz wanted to keep ethnic jokes out of I Love Lucy. The one exception he made was to allow his on-screen and real-wife wife, Lucille Ball, to mock Ricky Ricardo’s Cuban accent.
Alabama farmgirl Lillie Mae Faulk married traveling salesman Archulus Persons and had one son, Truman Streckfus Persons, before the short marriage dissolved, whereupon she dumped her child with the relatives who kept her younger sister Marie in Alabama, changed her name to Nina, and went to NYC to seek her fortune. When she moved to 5th Avenue with her second husband, Cuban businessman Jose Capote, she sent for her now 10 year old son who took his stepfather’s surname. Lillie Mae “Nina” Capote committed suicide when her husband lost his money; in the 21st century her baby sister Marie Rudisill became famous as the foulmouthed Fruitcake Lady on Jay Leno.