An early numbers in Evita entitled ‘Oh What a Circus’ features the newly deceased Evita Peron’s supporters singing a catchy requiem in Latin:
Salve regina mater misericordiae
Vita dulcedo et spes nostra
Salve salve regina
Ad te clamamus exules filii Eva
Ad te suspiramus gementes et flentes
O clemens o pia
Translation:
Hail oh queen mother of mercy
Our life sweetness and hope
Hail hail oh queen
To you we cry exiled sons of Eve
To you we sigh mourning and weeping
Oh clement oh loving one
The first circus in the city of Rome was the Circus Maximus. After being rebuilt several times, the final version of the Circus Maximus could seat 250,000 people; it was built of stone and measured 400m in length and 90m in width.
George Nelson was the pseudonym for Lester Joseph Gillis. In the 1930s, George Nelson robbed banks and murdered people and was better known as Baby Face Nelson.
In Canada, banks are under the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal government, unlike the position in the US where they are subject to concurrent federal and state regulation. It is believed that the stability of the Canadian banking system flows partly from the single federal regulation.
In 1947, The Truman Doctrine was a policy set forth in a speech whereby President Truman stated the United States would support Turkey and Greece with economic and military aid to prevent their falling into the Soviet sphere. Many historians consider it the start of the Cold War and the start of the containment policy to stop Soviet expansion.
The origin of the phrase “cold turkey” for giving up drug usage completely and abruptly is unclear, but the phrase became widespread and popular after Mickey Spillane used the term in the Mike Hammer novel*** I, the Jury.***
Hammerfest, Norway is the northernmost city in the world. More northerly but less-populated municipalities, including Barrow, Alaska, are formally towns, not cities. Hammerfest is home to the Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society (Norwegian: Isbjørnklubben); a museum displaying the history of Arctic hunting.
Almost the entire town of Hammerfest was destroyed by the Germans in World War II, when they retreated from it. There is only one building in town constructed prior to 1945.
When it was first constructed in 1931, the Empire State Building had a docking station for zeppelins and other dirigibles. High winds made that impractical, and only one zeppelin ever landed there.
In the 1949 movie musical, On the Town, Frank Sinatra’s character wanted to see the “tallest building in the world–the Woolworth Tower”. His cab driver pointed out that the Empire State Building was now taller.
In his later life, Woolworth’s founder Frank Winfield Woolworth could often be found playing with his immense organ at his country home.
No, really: he learned to play keyboards later in his life and he commissioned an enormous pipe organ for his country home, Winfield (for his middle name) and had it installed in a room that had celestial symbols painted on the walls and ceiling to reflect his belief in astrology and spiritualism.
Robert Todd Lincoln’s home, Hildene, is home to one of the few working player organs in the world. The instrument worked like a player piano, but were no where as popular. It is a highlight of the tours of the house.
Edwin Link developed early versions of flight simulators in his father’s player piano factory in Binghampton, NY late in 1929 after the stock market crash. The flight simulators used the pneumatic technology from player pianos to provide control inputs based on the pilot’s flight control movements. Flight simulators were marketed by the Link Company in 1929.
Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel, the dystopic Player Piano, about life after the takeover of the machines, was inspired by his time working for the PR department of General Electric in Schenectady, NY. He cheerfully admitted stealing from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which in turn had been stolen from Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We.
In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut himself appears to his character, science-fiction author Kilgore Trout, and “sets him free”. Philip Jose Farmer then wrote and published a novel, Venus on the Half-Shell, using the pseudonym Kilgore Trout. Vonnegut’s next novel, Jailbird, has Kilgore Trout in jail serving a life sentence for treason.
Thomas Jefferson made little secret of the fact he wanted Aaron Burr found guilty of treason, but Burr’s defense attorney, Edmund Randolph, who had been the first Attorney General of the U.S. and was a former Secretary of State like his cousin Thomas Jefferson, got an acquittal.