Wenceslas Square is one of the main city squares and the centre of the business and cultural communities in the New Town of Prague, Czech Republic.
Pilsner Urquell is a brand-name Czech beer produced in Plzeň (or Pilsen) and is the original Pilsner.
The Czech Republic and Slovakia (combined name: Czechoslovakia) peacefully separated on January 1, 1993.
Private Eddie Slovik was the only soldier executed for desertion by the US Army in World War 2.
[del]The first gasoline-powered car manufactured in what was then Austria-Hungary was the 1897 Präsident. It was produced in what is now the Czech city of Kopřivnice by Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau-Fabriksgesellschaft, which later changed its name to Tatra and still manufactures trucks after discontinuing passenger car production in 1999.[/del]
Charlie Sheen’s first screen appearance was in the made-for-TV movie The Execution of Private Slovik, which starred Charlie’s father Martin in the title role.
Doctor Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed the use of a new device for a more humane form of capital punishment to the French National Assembly. Though he did not invent the guillotine, and was against capital punishment in general, it quickly was given his name. Legends arose that Guillotin was beheaded with his own device, but that was due to confusions when another Dr. Guilllotin was executed that way. The Guilllotin family petitioned the government to give the device another name, but by then it was too late.
According to The Perfect Master, a severed head can (briefly) remain conscious after decapitation.
First published in 1820 by Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow features a character named Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman. Sleepy Hollow is a village in New York, about 30 miles north of New York City and along the Hudson River just north of the Tappan Zee Bridge.
ETA: The Headless Horseman was a soldier decapitated by a canonball during the American Revolutionary War.
(side question: did people really name their children Ichabod??)
Warren Zevon’s third, and best known, album Excitable Boy included the track “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner”, about another apparition who roams the earth after a violent decapitation. Besides the title track, the album included “Werewolves of London” and “Lawyers, Guns, and Money”.
Earl Warren took part in a bet with his law clerks as to who would succeed him as Chief Justice of the United States in 1969, and correctly picked Warren Burger.
See’s Candies, headquartered in South San Francisco, was founded in 1921 by Canadian Charles See and was one of the early investments of Warren Buffett in 1972.
(My 3,000th post, BTW!)
Astronauts Charles Bassett and Elliott See, who had been chosen by NASA in the second group of astronauts, were killed in the crash of their T-38 in St. Louis while in training to be the crew of Gemini 9.
Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, and John Young were also part of that NASA Astronaut Group 2 along with Elliott See. So was Ed White, who died in the Apollo 1 fire with Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee.
Elliott Gould was married to Barbra Streisand from 1963-71.
Captain Joseph Patterson of the Chicago Tribune liked young cartoonist Chester Gould’s Plainclothes Tracy comic strip, but hated the title. Since detectives were sometimes called “dicks,” Patterson renamed the strip*** Dick Tracy.***
Apparently quite a few did, as you would expect of just about any character in the Bible.
In play: The Chicago radio station WGN’s call letters reflect the station’s ownership by the Chicago Tribune, which styles itself the World’s Greatest Newspaper.
The Hartford Courant, continuously published since 1764, is “America’s oldest continuously published newspaper”. Its slogan is, “Older than the nation.”
The USS Hartford was Flag Officer David Glasgow Farragut’s flagship during the 1864 Battle of Mobile Bay, when Farragut famously declared, “Damn the torpedoes - full speed ahead!”
Charles Macintosh, a chemist born in Glasgow, is credited with having invented the raincoat. In the UK, a raincoat is still called a mackintosh or mac.
Sidney Farber, considered the father of modern chemotherapy, accidentally discovered a powerful anti-cancer chemical in a vitamin analogue and began to dream of a universal cure for cancer.