New York State chief judge Sol Wachtler was famously quoted by Tom Wolfe in The Bonfire of the Vanities that “a grand jury would ‘indict a ham sandwich,’ if that’s what you wanted.”
The Battle of the Plains of Abraham was unusual in that both of the commanding generals, Wolfe and Montcalm, were killed.
The US dropped more ordinance on Laos during the Secret War than in all of World War II. That included more than 250 million cluster bombs on the Plain of Jars, an archaeological area filled with thousands of megalithic stone jars thought to have been used for burials.
The jars in the Plain of Jars in Laos are each big enough to hold a person. The largest of these jars weighs more than six tons.
(Laos is a beautiful country. I always enjoy being there. Not been to the Plain of Jars, however.)
Napalm, manufactured by Dow Chemical during 1965-69, is a hideous weapon related to ancient “Greek fire.” The U.S. military inflicted huge casualties with it, dropping 15,000 tons of napalm on Japan in 1945, 30,000 tons during the Korean War and almost 400,000 tons during the Vietnam War. Targets for napalm bombing included Laos’ famous archaeological landscape, the Plain of Jars.
“Greek fire” and its variants have been used in battle for centuries and dates back to at least 800 B.C.
800 is the sum of four consecutive prime numbers: 193 + 197 + 199 + 211.
John Turner was the only Prime Minister of Canada who did not have a seat in either House of Parliament during his tenure as Prime Minister.
The supervillain Turner D. Century, who wanted to return society to its circa 1900 ideals, and was willing to destroy modern San Francisco with a hypersonic weapon to do it, first appeared in Marvel Comics’ Spider-Woman #33. Although he had no superpowers of his own, he had a flying bicycle and an umbrella flamethrower. He regularly appears in SDMB discussions of the lamest comic-book villains ever.
Bertie Wooster absent-mindedly almost walked off with Sir Watkyn Basset’s umbrella while sneering at a cow creamer in an antique shop.
Worcester, Massachusetts is pronounced “wooster” by it’s natives.
The Battle of Worcester was the final battle of the English Civil War, and the last battle fought on English soil. The Parliamentarians defeated the Royalist forces led by Charles II. Charles fled and at one point in escaping from England, took refuge in an oak tree for a day, leading to the common pub name of “The Royal Oak.”
The light cruiser USS Worcester was the third ship of that name to serve in the U.S. Navy. She was commissioned in 1948 and decommissioned just ten years later. Among her junior officers was my future father-in-law.
Warner Brothers showed the first color newsreel on January 5, 1948. It covered the Tournament of Roses Parade and the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.
I’m calling “foul” on this one. I grew up in Boston, and I never heard it call anything but “Wister.”
Back in game: When Charles Schultz was the Grand Marshall for the 1974 Rose Parade, he made his only person reference in his Peanuts strip:
Linus: What are you watching?
Lucy: The Rose Bowl Parade. Some of these floats are really beautiful.
Linus: Has the Grand Marshall passed by?
Luch: Yes. But he wasn’t anyone you ever heard of.
Charlie Brown on one of the Peanuts TV specials stated that one of his favorite pieces of music was “Linus and Lucy” by Vince Guaraldi.
Linus Pauling is the only person to be awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes, for Chemistry in 1954 for essentially creating the field of molecular biology, and for Peace in 1962 for instigating the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The only other three multiple winners are Marie Curie, John Bardeen, and Frederick Sanger. Only Pauling and Curie won theirs in different categories.
The largest nuclear production industry in the world, Electricite de France, has accumulated a debt of more than US$30 billion, making it the most endebted company in the world
French-Vietnamese actress France Nuyen is best known for her first role, as francophone-only Liat, daughter of Bloody Mary and love interest of Lt. Joe Cable, in the film South Pacific. She met Robert Culp, whom she later married, while shooting an episode of “I Spy”.
Matthew Morrison (Will on Glee) also played Lt. Joe Cable on Broadway.