President Roosevelt told a reporter the raid had been staged from “our secret base in Shangri-La”, which was the fictional isolated Himalayan kingdom in James Hilton’s novel “Lost Horizon”. The US Navy extended the taunt by naming an Essex-class aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La.
President Roosevelt named the presidential summer retreat Shangri-La in 1942. It is known today as Camp David.
David was a prolific painter during the French Revolution and the early Napoleanic period. His paintings of the Death of Marat and of Napolean crossing the Alps are icons of this period in French history.
Peter Weiss’s play, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (usually referred to as Marat/Sade) was based upon the fact that the Marquis de Sade (for whom “sadism” was named) did direct plays for inmates while he was committed to the insane asylum in the title. It won the Tony Award for best play in 1965.
Marquis Grissom, then an outfielder for the Montreal Expos, caught the fly ball that produced the final out of Dennis Martinez’s perfect game on July 28, 1991.
The Starfleet science vessel USS Grissom, under the command of Capt. Esteban, was destroyed by Klingons while orbiting the Genesis planet in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
Genesis chapter 46 appears to have a simple arithmetic error. Some think this is not a mistake, but a cryptic way to tell us that Joseph’s wife Asenath was his own niece.
When Peter Gabriel left Genesis, the remaining bandmembers auditioned several other musicians before deciding to simply promote drummer Phil Collins to lead singer.
Eric Burden was the original lead singer for The Animals before leaving in 1969 to become lead singer for War.
The alleged causus belli for the War of Jenkins’ Ear between Britain and Spain was that a Spanish coast guard boarded a British merchant ship commanded by Jenkins and in the resulting melee, severed Jenkins’ ear. Jenkins later displayed the severed ear before Parliament.
The Speaker of the House of Commons in the British Parliament is customarily dragged to his or her chair after election to symbolize the reluctance of past Speakers to hold what could be a dangerous post, given royal abuses of power.
Parliament cigarettes promoted their recessed filter as an advertising point.
Camel cigarettes advertised the positive health benefits of smoking and claimed that “More doctors smoke camels than any other cigarette!”
President George H.W. Bush delighted in sailing a Cigarette boat off the Maine coast. The boat had been captured and forfeited by a bigtime drug dealer.
The Maine lobster, aka American lobster or Homarus americanus, is found on the Atlantic coast, chiefly from Labrador to New Jersey. It can weigh more than 40 lbs., making it the heaviest crustacean in the world.
Zeke the Wonderdog is a Labrador retriever that catches frisbies at the halftime of Michigan State University football games.
Although born in New Rumley, Ohio, dashing young cavalry officer George Armstrong Custer rose to fame in the Civil War leading Michigan troops.
George Custer is the second most written-about Civil War figure, after Abraham Lincoln.
George Custer was the first commander of Fort Abraham Lincoln in the Dakota Territory in 1873 and it was from there that he departed with troops on the 1876 campaign that ended at Little Big Horn.
The 7th Cavalry Regiment avenged its defeat at Little Big Horn by massacring 300 Lakota Sioux under Chief Big Foot camped on the banks of Wounded Knee creek, 29 December 1890.