Samuel F. B. Morse is best known as inventor of the telegraph, but was also a successful painter. One of his most famous paintings today is “Gallery of the Louvre” which is a nice snapshot of the look of the museum at the time, and is includes a representation of its most famous painting, the Mona Lisa.
Samuel L Jackson was an usher at Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s funeral.
The Samuel Adams beer brand’s original recipe was developed in 1860 in St. Louis, Missouri by Louis Koch, who sold under the name Louis Koch Lager until Prohibition, and again until the early 1950s.
Louis XV, known as Louis the Well beloved (Louis le bien aimé), was the last King of New France.
When France surrendered its claim to New France to the British in 1763, his long-time mistress, Madame de Pompadour, was reported to have said, “Now at last the King can rest.”
The only fatal Concorde flight in the 27-year history of the Concorde was Air France flight 4590 which crashed on takeoff from Charles de Gaulle on 25 July 2000.
Charles de Gaulle caused an international incident when, on a tour of Canada, he appeared on a balcony in Montréal and said to the crowd, “Vive le Québec libre.”
In his early days in the army, Charles de Gaulle had the nickname of “The Tall Asparagus.”
A recipe for cooking asparagus is in the oldest surviving cookbook, Apicius’s De re coquinaria, Book III from the 3rd Century A.D.
Stockton, California bills itself as the “Asparagus Capital of the World”. So does Hadley, Massachusetts.
Penn Jillette and Teller were introduced to one another by Weir Chrisimer, and they performed their first show together at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival on 19 August 1975. From the late 1970s through 1981, Penn, Teller, and Chrisimer performed as a trio called “The Asparagus Valley Cultural Society” which played in San Francisco at the Phoenix Theater.
The most famous theatre in Venice, Italy is La Fenice, so named because of its role in permitting an opera company to “rise from the ashes”, like a phoenix, despite losing the use of two other theatres to fire. Giuseppe Verdi’s operas Attila, Rigoletto, La traviata and Simon Boccanegra all premiered there. La Fenice itself was destroyed by an arson fire in 1996, but was rebuilt and reopened in 2001.
Robert Dole, Republican of Kansas, resigned both his U.S. Senate seat and his post as Majority Leader in 1996 in order to focus on his campaign against incumbent President Bill Clinton, Democrat of Arkansas. Dole lost the race in November and retired from politics.
The United States towns named after 19th century politician DeWitt Clinton include Clinton, Arkansas; DeWitt, Arkansas; Clinton, Connecticut; Clinton, Illinois (located in DeWitt County); Clinton, Indiana; Clinton, Iowa; Clinton, Louisiana; Clinton, Massachusetts; Clinton, Michigan; Clinton, Mississippi; Clinton, Missouri; Clinton, New Jersey Port Clinton, Ohio; Port Clinton, Pennsylvania; DeWitt, Illinois {located in DeWitt County; DeWitt, Iowa {located in Clinton County);DeWitt, Michigan ; {located in Clinton County) and DeWitt, New York
Bill Clinton’s dad died before he was born; when he was in the White House, he learned about and met his older half-brother.
I assume you don’t mean Roger Clinton, who was younger and knew Bill as a child. Huh. I’d not heard of another one.
In play: The first ruling king to visit the White House was King David Kalakaua of the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii). President Ulysses S. Grant hosted him in 1874. Royal food testers sampled the White House dinner for the king.
Nope, different guy; he died four years ago:
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/22/us/clinton-s-lost-half-brother-to-neighbors-he-s-just-leon.html
In play:
During their discussions at Appomattox Court House in April 1865, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant remembered meeting Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee during the Mexican War years earlier, but Lee confessed that he did not recall doing so.
Never heard of him. What a claim to fame.
In play: The Civil War’s U.S. Brig. General Alexander Schimmelfennig had the longest surname of any American general, 14 letters long.
In his memoirs, Grant described an incident with Confederate general Braxton Bragg. Before the war, Bragg was second in command in a post, and also the acting quartermaster. When the commander was away, Bragg put in a request to himself as quartermaster requisitioning supplies. A quartermaster, he denied the request. Then Bragg, as acting commander, ordered himself as quartermaster to provide the supplies to himself. When the commander returned and heard about the exchange, his response was, “Bragg, you have quarreled with every officer in the army, and now you are quarreling with yourself.”
The city of Grants Pass, Oregon was named to honor General Ulysses S. Grant’s success at the Siege of Vicksburg in May and June, 1863. Grant and his Army of the Tennessee defeated the Confederate forces of General John C. Pemberton.
President Ulysses S. Grant and his defeated foe, formed Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, met briefly at the White House on May 1, 1869. No record remains of their conversation, but it is thought to have been purely social.