Mark Twain blamed Sir Walter Scott for the American Civil War- he thought Scott’s romanticization of battle, knights, honor codes and chivalry poisoned the minds of American Southerners, and made the Civil War all but inevitable.
Sir Walter Scott survived polio as a child.
Off-Game:
Newfoundland was never part of the Province of Canada, and did not join the Dominion of Canada at Confederation in 1867. It joined Confederation on April 1, 1949.
On-Game: Walter Scott was the first Premier of Saskatchewan, serving from 1905 to 1916. He suffered from a serious mental illness (variously described as depression or bipolar) and was normally only in Saskatchewan for half the year. In spite of that, he was a very successful Premier, laying the foundations for many of Saskatchewan’s government institutions.
The name “Saskatchewan” was derived from a Cree Indian phrase meaning “fast flowing river.”
The classic garage rock song “Dirty Water,” was first recorded by the California rock and roll band The Standells, and was actually a mock paean to Boston’s then-famously polluted Charles River.
The Standells appeared as themselves on an episode on*** The Munsters,*** and played the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” That episode also gave Herman a chance to try his hand at Beat poetry.
Herman was created in 1815 at the University of Heidelberg by Dr. Victor Frankenstein.
Athletic teams at Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio are named “Student Princes”, after the Sigmund Romberg operetta about student life at the German school of the same name.
When Cleveland, Ohio was a settlement of a few families, there was an outbreak of malaria. One boy, Seth Doan, saved their lives by caring for them and grinding corn so they could eat.
There remains a small but vocal group of Americans who insist that the federal income tax system is invalid, because Ohio’s admission to the Union was not carried out properly, meaning Ohio isn’t really a state.
Until recently, the Income Tax space in the board game Monopoly offered players a choice of paying $200 or 10% of their total holdings. Nowadays it’s simply a flat $200 deduction; I personally don’t think I ever chose the percentage option unless I was playing a Monopoly video game, since doing all that arithmetic on one turn is too much like, y’know, SCHOOL. 
In Canada, the first Income Tax was a temporary measure introduced in 1917 to finance the Great War. The trial period has not yet come to an end.
The first US income tax law came into existence in 1862. Due to the gigantic expense of the Civil War, a person earning between $600 and $10,000 paid a yearly tax rate of 3%, while those that made more were taxed higher.
Even today, many U.S. Southerners will vehemently correct any “Yankee” who refers to the Civil War as such, preferring the term, “The War Between the States”. As said in an old Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon, “Weren’t nothing civil about it!”
The American Civil Liberties Union is America’s self-proclaimed guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in the USA.
The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, banning the sale, manufacture, transportation, importation and exportation of intoxicating liquors in the United States, kicked off prohibition when it was ratified in 1920. It was a disaster, to put it mildly, and it was repealed with the 21st Amendment in 1933. To this date, it’s the only amendment to be repealed in its entirety-- although several smaller passages of the Constitution have been rendered moot by future amendments. (The 13th Amendment banning slavery, for example, invalidated the “three-fifths” clause).
The rebellious Russian Decembrists supported liberal tsarevich Constantine over the more militaristic and autocratic tsarevich Nicholas. The Decembrists’ slogan was “Constantine and Constitution.” More than a few of them allegedly believed that Constitution was Constantine’s wife.
Saint Nicholas inspired the modern-day version of Santa Claus. The TV special Santa Claus is Coming to Town tells the story of how Kris Kringle came to be Santa Claus.
The Nicholas Brothers – Fayard and Harold – were African-American dancers know for their acrobatic and exuberant routines. Fred Astaire once said that their “Jumpin’ Jive” dance number in Stormy Weather was the greatest movie musical sequence he had ever seen.
The Tony-winning Broadway 1981 version of Charles Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby went on for 9 hours; there was a lengthy intermission to allow the audience to go out for dinner, in the middle.