“Her fate is unknown.” snerk I guess you haven’t read Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. 
The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia is the second oldest in the United States (after Harvard), founded in 1693.
Harvard claims to be the oldest college (1636), but the first was the College at Henricus (Va) near Richmond, chartered in 1618. It was slow getting started and was a school for Native American children when it was destroyed in the massacre of English by the Powhatans in 1622 (known as the Indian Massacre of 1622).
Tommy Lee Jones played offensive guard for Harvard against Calvin Hill, Bryan Dowling and Yale in the famous “Harvard beats Yale 29-29” game in 1968.
Brian Dowling, the Yale quarterback, was the inspiration for the character BD in Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury comic strip - they were classmates at Yale when the strip started. For 34 years the character was never pictured without a helmet (football, as a player and coach, tin pot in the army and as a policeman).
The Yale lock was the first mechanism mass produced with deliberately non-identical parts.
In Doonesbury, the character of Zonker’s “Uncle” Duke was inspired by Gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson.
Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin, was the first manufacturer to deliver muskets with interchangeable parts to the US Army in 1809.
Playing off either-or of the two above: the American long rifle originated in Pennsylvania and was in production by a couple of German speaking smiths there by the mid 18th century, but became known as the Kentucky Rifle due to associations with settlers there (many of whom came from Pennsylvania) and possibly due to a song called Hunters of Kentucky, a version of which was used as a campaign song for Andrew Jackson.
Contrary to what is often shown in the movies and on TV, there should be no pause of a second or two between igniting the priming powder in the pan of a musket and the main charge going off. The big fizz coming out of the touchhole might look dramatic, but it’s called a “hangfire” and is actually one sign of a dirty musket. If it’s clean, the weapon will discharge immediately after you pull the trigger.
Hangfire in modern weapons is caused by old or miss-stored ammunition. It contributed to the demise of a 1990 Darwin Award nominated thief who stole a WWII vintage .45 and ammo to use in a convenience store robbery. In the course of the heist, he tried to shoot the clerk - and the gun did not go off immediately - he looked directly down the barrel, placing it up to his eye. Reportedly, his body was identifiable only through fingerprints.
When it was first issued by the US Army, the M 1911 .45 automatic was beyond state-of-the-art. In the movie The Wild Bunch, the head bandito tells renegade William Holden “That gun you have there is top secret, señor. You cannot even buy it on the open market.” (Or words to that effect.)
William Holden was the best man at Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s wedding.
Willaim Holden was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar three times: for Sunset Boulevard (1951), Stalag 17 (1954) and Network (1977). He won for Stalag 17.
The Dumont TV network was an early challenger to the big two networks (CBS and NBC). It failed primarily due to lack of money; there was a limit to the number of TV stations any entity could own, and the FCC ruled that stations owned by Dumont’s partner Paramount counted against their total. In the early days of the networks, it was the flagship stations that kept them afloat; without that income, Dumont was doomed.
“Afloat” is the operative word here. HMS Victory, which was once the flagship of Admiral Horatio Nelson and the largest and fastest British capital ship (and is to this day the official flagship of the Second Sea Lord), was launched 32 years before USS Constitution and is still in commission … but lies in drydock.
Four earlier British men-of-war were named Victory, including the flagship of the Rear Admiral against the Spanish Armada, and a ship that foundered with all hands in 1744, and was recently discovered at the bottom of the English Channel.
In French, the English Channel is called la Manche, “the Sleeve,” because it bears a resemblance to the heraldic charge known as a manche:
La Mancha is a region in central Spain which derives its name from the Arab “al-mansha”, meaning “the dry land”.
Spain has four official languages – Castilian (or “Spanish”), Catalan, Basque and Galician.
The Balearic Islands off the coast of Spain have 2 national languages Cataln and Castilian Spanish.
Juan Carlos, King of Spain, is credited with putting down an abortive military coup in February 1981 when he went on TV, denounced the coup as an attack on democracy, and sternly ordered the mutineers to stand down.