Orlando is the Italian equivalent of the French name Roland.
The French Open tennis tournament is often called Roland Garros. It is played in the Stade de Roland Garros (Roland Garros Stadium) in Paris. The stadium is named after the early French aviator.
The official name of the French Open tournament is Les internationaux de France de Roland-Garros (the “French Internationals of Roland Garros”).
Roland Garros is credited with developing the interrupter gear, which permitted machine guns to fire through the propeller arc, with higher accuracy than with offset positions. Legend has it that when his plane was shot down, the Germans discovered the apparatus and had it installed on their own fighters. In fact, Anthony Fokker had been working on the idea already.
Charlemagne’ paladin Roland, in legend, had a horse named Veillantif, whose hide was so tough that it was impervious to both sword and arrows. Late in the song-cycle, when Roland and his men were under siege they ran out of food, so they had to eat their horses. Since Veillantif was swordproof, they had to lower him down a well and drown him. Yeah, nearly all these old Frankish tales have amazingly sorrowful endings.
Spirit guitarist Randy California was one of many rock stars who died young, though his death wasn’t typical: he drowned rescuing his son from a rip current that was carrying him out to sea.
WKRP disc jockey John Caravella (aka Dr. Johnny Fever) temporarily took a gig as host of a disco-oriented TV show, using the alias “Rip Tide.”
Things we know about Dr. Johnny Fever’s pre WKRP backstory include that he was terrified of tornadoes due to growing up in a trailer park, had been to jail in Mexico at some point, and had been fired from a previous job for saying the word “booger” on the air.
Howard Hesseman who played Dr. Johnny Fever was a real radio DJ before becoming an actor.
In 1968, Dr. Fager set a record that still stands for the fastest mile ever run by a throughbred race horse on a dirt track; he ran a mile at Arlington Park in 1 minute and 34 1/5 seconds.
The sailfish, at 68m/290 km per hour, holds the speed record for aquatic creatures.
The Sargo-class submarine USS Sailfish (SS-192) was originally named Squalus. The Navy changed her name after raising her from the sea bottom near the Isles of Shoals off of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, where she had sunk in 1939 during sea trials from a main induction valve failure, drowning 29 of her crew The 33 survivors were rescued with the emergency chamber designed by LCDR Charles “Swede” Momsen, who led the rescue operation, and who also had invented the Momsen Lung.
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U.S. Navy submarines during World War II were named after fish, as USS Sailfish was. These days, subs are typically named after American cities (USS Los Angeles, lead ship of her class of attack sub) or states (USS Ohio, a Trident missile sub, or USS Virginia, lead ship of a new class of attack sub).
The 1999 Rage Against the Machine album “The Battle of Los Angeles” was named for a 1942 incident in which a stray weather balloon was mistaken for a Japanese attack, leading to massive use of anti-aircraft artillery. The “battle” also inspired the Steven Spielberg film 1941.
Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov is a retired lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces. On September 26, 1983, he was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported a missile being launched from the United States. Petrov judged that the report was a false alarm. This decision is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies, which could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war. Investigation later confirmed that the satellite warning system had malfunctioned.
The United States Congress passed legislation, over President Andrew Johnson’s veto, to reduce the size of the Supreme Court during Johnson’s single term, so that he could not appoint anyone to the court when vacancies occurred. When Johnson left office, the court was restored to nine members, and it has remained so ever since.
The approximately 1.5 million Mexican free-tail bats who live under the Congress Avenue Bridge have become the #1 tourist attraction in Austin, Texas.
Steve Austin, an Air Force test pilot and the world’s first bionic man in the Seventies TV show The Six Million Dollar Man, was played by Lee Majors.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada does not like being called Steve. In recent years, the only person known to have done so was President George W. Bush, with his penchant for giving nicknames to other people, whether they like it or not.
The different sounds used for voice synthesis modules to aid those with disabilities in communicating have names.
The version used by physicist Stephen Hawking is called Perfect Paul.
St. Stephen is believed to have been martyred by being stoned to death in Jerusalem after declaring Christ’s divinity before the Jewish elders. His heraldic symbol is thus typically three stones.