Egyptian war chariots were the shock troops of their day for centuries in the ancient world. Since they were drawn almost exclusively by stallions, the king of Kadesh, a city state fighting against and hopelessly outgunned by Thutmose III, drove mares in heat across the battlefield to distract the Egyptian stallions. Supposedly it worked for that battle; it was reportedly tried in other battles over many centuries to mixed results.
In Lady and the Tramp, Lady is apparently in heat when she breaks free from her mistress’s mean old aunt, since she’s chased through the park by a pack of male dogs and after spending the night with Tramp has puppies sometime before Christmas.
(Amazing how I missed this when I was six years old, but hey, that’s Disney for you! :rolleyes: )
Tramp was also the dog’s name on MY Three Sons
It being the early 1960s when the show debuted, Steven Douglas, the patriarch on “My Three Sons,” played by Fred MacMurray, earned his living as an aerospace engineer.
Novelist Nevil Shute, best known for his post-nuclear apocalyptic novel On the Beach and his novel about a civilian returning to Australia from a Japanese internment camp, was equally accomplished as an aerospace engineer and start-up managing director, under his full name of Nevil Shute Norway. While still in his 20’s, Norway was the assistant chief engineer on the R.100 airship project, and traveled on her on her sole voyage, from the UK to Canada and back. When the UK government cancelled the airship program after the crash of the competing R.101, he co-founded and managed Airspeed, Ltd., one of the most innovative of the pre-war British aircraft firms.
Norwegian Vidkun Quisling assisted the Germans in their invasion of that country on April 9, 1940 and became its leader upon the successful attack. On April 19, 1940 the Times of London first used the term “quisling” to exemplify an Axis collaborator and it eventually gained general usage and still, today, means sneaky and traitorous.
The Norwegian government tried, convicted and executed Vidkun Quisling after World War II.
Caryl Chessman, the red light bandit, convicted of serial rape, robbery and kidnapping (moving one victim 22 feet from the car she had been in which was deemed enough to satisfy the kidnapping law and make him eligible for death) was given the death penalty in California and executed in 1960 by anti-death penalty governor Pat Brown, the father of the current and past governor Jerry Brown. Though he avoided between 9 and 12 dates with the gas chamber, the execution finally was held and the pellets of poison gas had been dropped when the telephone rang and it was a judge’s secretary telling the warden that a stay of execution had been granted. The warden told her it was too late to stop. She had previously misdialed the number trying to reach them.
In the movies, the role of Caryl Chessman was played by William Campbell, the actor best known for playing Trelane, the Squire of Gothos, and the Klingon Captain Koloth on STAR TREK TOS.
“The Campbells are Coming” is the traditional piping tune of Clan Campbell, said to have been composed for the 1715 uprising. While the English lyrics are a typical call to arms, the Gaelic lyrics are actually a complaint by the piper about the poor hospitality he received at a Campbell wedding.
Scots Gaelic, Irish, and Manx are the three living members of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic family of languages. The three surviving Brythonic languages are Welsh, Cornish, and Breton, with Cornish having undergone something of a revival in the last 40 years or so.
The Welsh flag shows a red dragon on a white and green field. It is not part of the Union Flag of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as Wales is considered to have been long ago absorbed by England both politically and heraldically.
The name Wales is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word wehlas, meaning “foreigners.” Cornwall, once referred to as West Wales, comes from Kernowehlas, Kernow being the name of the land in the true Cornish tongue.
The traditional Cornish pasty, which has Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status in Europe, is filled with beef, sliced or diced potato, swede (also known as a yellow turnip or rutabaga - referred to in Cornwall as turnip) and onion, seasoned with salt and pepper, and is baked. Today, the pasty is the food most associated with Cornwall regarded as its national dish, and accounts for 6% of the Cornish food economy.
Pasties emerged in burlesque and striptease in the 1920s as a way to avoid breaking the law by performing topless.
In the 1974 soft-core SF spoof Flesh Gordon, the eponymous hero uses “power pasties” that act like ray guns to defeat the evil Emperor Wang of Planet Porno, who had been bombarding the Earth with Sex-rays.
The Emperor and King Penguins are the only two living species of the genus Aptenodytes (without feathers or wings). A third species, Ridgen’s Penguin extinct and only known from fossil bones of Early or Late Pliocene age.
In the Batman universe, the Penguin’s real name is Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot. The Riddler is Edward E. Nigma, the Catwoman is Selena Kyle, and the Joker in the Burton movie was Jack Napier.
The actor who played The Penguin in the '60s TV show was Burgess Meredith, who was the former husband of Paulette Goddard, who was the former wife of Charlie Chaplin, who directed Countess of Hong Kong with Sophia Loren, who appeared in Grumpy Old Men 2 along with Burgess Meredith.
In the TV series “Connections,” science historian James Burke incorrectly states that a musket fired a one-pound ball. They normally fired one-ounce balls.