Paris Hilton has a brother and several friends who’ve been in rehabilitation facilities, but may have avoided this herself despite arrests for cocaine, marijuana, and DUI.
Violet & Daisy Hilton were a set of conjoined twins. born in Brighton, Sussex, England, on February 5, 1908 to Kate Skinner, an unmarried barmaid. Skinner’s boss Mary Hilton, who helped in childbirth, apparently saw commercial prospects in them, and thus effectively bought them from their mother and took them under her care. She displayed the twins from age 3 on, controlling them and keeping all the money they made.
Violet, Daisy, Rose, and Hyacinth are the four sisters in the BBC comedy series “Keeping Up Appearances”. Their maiden name was never mentioned.
There’s a musical about the lives of Violet and Daisy Hilton called Side Show.
Most of the film Jet Lag (Decalage Horaire), starring Juliette Binoche and Jean Reno as two strangers who get stuck at Charles De Gaulle Airport together (you can figure out the rest), is set at the Paris Hilton there.
Charles de Gaulle attended the Casablanca Conference at which Franklin D. Roosevelt imposed his terms for ending the war: “Unconditional surrender.” However, Allen Dulles, then the chief of OSS intelligence in Bern, Switzerland, maintained that the Casablanca Declaration was “merely a piece of paper to be scrapped without further ado if Germany would sue for peace. Hitler had to go.”
HMS Hyacinth was a Flower-class corvette of the British Royal Navy during World War II. Other ships in the class included such chest-poundingly nautical and manly-sounding names as Begonia, Buttercup, Candytuft, Honeysuckle, Lavender, Marigold, Periwinkle and Primrose.
ETA: Charles de Gaulle as a key Free French leader during World War II.
WWII Imperial Japanese Navy ship names for destroyers (2nd class) were for trees, flowers and fruits
The bean soup traditionally served in the US Senate restaurant every day is made with navy beans.
The toxic compound phytohaemagglutinin, a lectin, is present in many common bean varieties, but is especially concentrated in red kidney beans. Phytohaemagglutinin can be deactivated by boiling beans for ten minutes; the ten minutes at boiling point (100 °C (212°F)) are sufficient to degrade the toxin, but not to cook the beans.
British sailors were often called “limeys” because they sucked on citrus fruits to prevent scurvy. Oddly enough, Captain James Cook achieved the same result by feeding sauerkraut to his crew, as cabbage is an excellent source of Vitamin C.
The gin and tonic was ntroduced by the army of the British East India Company in India. To prevent malaria, the men were required to drink quinine, but cut it with gin to make it swallowable, with a twist of lime to mask some of the taste and take care of their Vitamin C requirement.
Almost 2,000 people die from malaria every day in Africa.
Half of the world’s population (3.3 billion people) are at risk from malaria.
Malaria symptoms can take between 10 days and 1 year to show.
In Thaland, mosquito-borne dengue (“breakbone”) fever is more prevalent than malaria. Since aspirin is contraindicated for this hemorrhagic fever, that drug is somewhat hard to find in rural Thai pharmacies.
It is a jailable offense to speak ill of the King of Thailand.
Margaret Landon’s semibiographical novel Anna and the King of Siam told the mostly-true story of Anna Leonowens, an English governess hired by King Mongkut (Rama IV) in the 1860’s to teach the English language and culture to his children.
Governor Alf Landon of Kansas was the Republican nominee for President in 1936, and he carried just two states: Maine and Vermont.
His daughter, Nancy Kassebaum, later represented Kansas in the US Senate.
Vermont’s capital, Montpelier, is the only state capital in the United States that does not have a McDonald’s fast-food restaurant within city limits.
Salt Lake City is the only state capital in the United States that has three words in its name.
St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, is the only state/provincial capital in North America with an apostrophe in its name.