The 1939 Lincoln Continental was the first US car to have its spare tire mounted vertically, in a decorative case, behind the trunk. The trunk was therefore no longer occupied by the bulky spare, but it became difficult to access instead. Edsel Ford gave the car the name because he liked the look of that feature on cars he’d seen on the European continent. Legend has it that Henry Ford II did not like the fact that the Thunderbird’s spare took up so much trunk space that he couldn’t fit his golf clubs in there, and instructed his designers to give the car a “Continental kit” to move the tire outside, no matter the effect on handling that the aft weight caused.
The name was echoed by the Fifties-revival group “Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids”, who played the group Herbie and the Heartbeats in the film American Graffiti.
George Washington was attending the Second Continental Congress in 1775 as a representative from Virginia when John Adams of Massachusetts nominated him to lead the New England-dominated army massing outside Boston. Washington left the room to permit his fellow representatives to freely discuss the nomination, and when he was chosen by acclamation, told them that he didn’t think he was up to the job.
The Boston Public Library is the third largest in the United States with more than 14,000,000 volumes.
While the Library of Congress had the most (29,550,000), and Harvard University is second with more than 15,000,000 .
The Library of Congress was founded by purchasing Thomas Jefferson’s library. The previous library in Washington was destroyed when the British burnt Washington in the War of 1812.
During the sack of Washington, at what would become known as Ft. McNair, nearly 50 British officers and men were killed when one of them dropped a lit match down a well in which Americans had hidden gunpowder before their retreat.
Laser physicist Dr. Ronald McNair, a South Carolina native, was the first African-American to die in a space travel accident, when the shuttle Challenger was destroyed by a too-cold O-ring in 1986. He had previously been the second African-American to fly in space, after USAF Col. Guion Bluford.
Barbara Feldon, who played Agent 99 on “Get Smart”, broke into television right after her graduation from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Tech in 1955 by winning the grand prize on “The $64,000 Question”, in the category of William Shakespeare.
Before Get Smart, Feldon did commercials (most notably forTop Brass). She then started getting guest star gigs, including a role where she played a spy wannabe on The Man From U.N.C.L.E (“The Never-Never Affair”)
The national flags of neighboring islands Australia and New Zealand both include the Union Flag in the canton, honoring the key role of Great Britain in their settlement.
The Union Flag (aka Union Jack) consists of the crosses of Sts. George, Andrew and Patrick superimposed on a blue field. The current version has been in use since 1801 when Ireland united.
Wales, having been politically and legally absorbed into England in its entirety centuries ago, is not reflected heraldically in either the Union Flag or the British monarch’s coat of arms.
Graça Machel has been First Lady of both Mozambique and South Africa. As Mozambique’s first post-independence Minister for Education and Culture, she married Samora Machel, later the country’s President, who died in a plane crash in South Africa in 1986. A friend of Nelson Mandela, she married him in 1996.
In 1976 following a bitter court battle, Robert W. Gore was granted the U.S. patent for a porous form of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE.) The waterproof material made from this fabric is known as Gore-Tex.
Because of his penchant for showing a lot of blood and gross scenes (such as showing a woman having her tongue ripped out*), 50s film director Herschell Gordon Lewis was dubbed “The Godfather of Gore.”
*Actually, it was a lamb’s tongue. However, it had been improperly refrigerated and partially rotten. The tongue was sprayed with disinfectant and put into the actress’s mouth. This was probably grosser than what was portrayed on screen.