Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde (c. 1512-58) invented the equal sign (=) and introduced the plus (+) and minus (-) signs and algebra to Britain.
Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, was the first English King from a Welsh family.
The Ford Model A was available in multiple styles, including the Tudor and Fordor. Other names included Coupe , Business Coupe, Sport Coupe, Roadster Coupe, Convertible Cabriolet, Convertible Sedan, Phaeton, Town Car, Victoria, Station Wagon, Taxicab, Truck, and Commercial.
Bernard Castro invented the modern convertible bed (one that could be folded to become a couch) in 1931. Selling them as “Castro Convertibles,” it made him a multimillionaire.
Fidel Castro had hopes of being a professional baseball player in the U.S. before he became a Cuban revolutionary leader.
Eureka Valley is the official name for San Francisco’s Castro District. But the core shopping and entertainment area on Castro Street as well as the Castro Theatre have made “The Castro” the common reference.
Catcher Jason Castro is a Houston Astro, as well as a graduate of California’s Castro Valley High School.
Sam Houston, arguably the most famous Texan, was actually born in Virginia. He served as governor of Tennessee before going to Texas.
Sam Houston supported the Compromise of 1850, diffusing a confrontation between the South’s slave states and the North’s free states. In a speech about the Compromise he said, “A nation divided against itself cannot stand.”
Eight years after that and 155 years ago today, on 16 Jun 1858, Senate Nominee Abraham Lincoln gave his “House Divided” speech, saying, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” This is based on the bible’s Matthew 12:25.
The Compromise of 1850, which in hindsight made the Civil War probably inevitable, passed in no small part due to support by Daniel Webster, a New Hampshire native serving as a Massachusetts Senator, who had always been a staunch leader of abolitionism until then. Horace Mann described him as being “a fallen star! Lucifer descending from Heaven!” James Russell Lowell called Webster “the most meanly and foolishly treacherous man I ever heard of.” Webster’s formerly glorious career was destroyed by his decision.
A Webster quote from his earlier career, decrying nullification, “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!” adorns the stage at Boston’s Faneuil Hall, still the site of many political events.
Giving each of the new states the same number of representatives in the Senate and representation based on population in the House of Representatives, an idea championed by Roger Sherman of Connecticut among others, became known as The Great Compromise, The Connecticut Compromise, and Sherman’s Compromise.
Susan Sarandon was pregnant during production of Compromising Positions and it was agreed upon by all parties that the best way to work around it was to incorporate loose-fitting clothes into her character’s wardrobe which worked out fine since she was playing a former investigative journalist turned suburban stay-at-home mom.
Every year, 11,000 Americans injure themselves while trying out bizarre sexual positions.
About 32 Americans die every day due to gun violence, a rate far in excess of other Western industrialized nations.
About 155,000 people die every day. That’s based on the CIA World Factbook’s entry that as of July, 2005, there were approximately 6,446,131,400 people on the planet, and the death rate was approximately 8.78 deaths per 1,000 people a year.
In Sayers’ “Murder Must Advertise”, Lord Peter Wimsey goes incognito using his middle names, “Death Bredon.” He explains that most people with the given name Death pronounced it to rhyme with “teeth”, but he preferred to rhyme it with “breath.”
Peter O’Toole is only one of five actors to be nominated for an Oscar twice for playing the same role in two separate films. He was nominated as Best Actor for Henry II in Becket (1964) and for Henry II in The Lion in Winter (1968). The others are Paul Newman as Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler (1961) and The Color of Money (1986), Bing Crosby as Father O’Malley in Going My Way (1944) and The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945), Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather: Part II (1974)and Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth I in Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007). Furthermore, O’Toole is the only one of these five who was nominated for playing the same character (at two different stages in his life) in two totally different films, neither of which was a sequel or prequel to the other.
Near the Bovington Tank Museum in Bovington, Dorset, England, is a memorial and tree by the side of the road. The memorial (image) reads:
Near this spot
Lawrence
of
Arabia
crashed
on his
motorcycle
and was
fatally
injured
13th of May 1935
T.E. Lawrence, riding his Brough Superior motorcycle, had come upon a dip in the road obstructing two boys riding their bicycles. Lawrence swerved to avoid them, lost control of his motorcycle, and crashed. Wikipedia describes that here. Lawrence died six days after the crash, on 16 May 1935. Wikipedia’s picture of T.E. Lawrence bears quite a striking resemblance to Peter O’Toole.
The garden behind the Garden Museum, in the Lambeth section of London, includes the tomb of Captain William Bligh of HMS* Bounty*, decorated by a stone sculpture of a breadfruit. It was formerly the churchyard of St. Mary-at-Lambeth, the deconsecrated church that now houses the museum.
The tune The Lambeth Walk gave its name to a Cockney dance first made popular in 1937 by Lupino Lane. The story line of Me and My Girl concerns a Cockney barrow boy who inherits an earldom but almost loses his Lambeth girlfriend. It was turned into a 1939 film The Lambeth Walk which starred Lane. The choreography from the musical, in which the song was a show-stopping Cockney-inspired extravaganza, inspired a popular walking dance, done in a jaunty strutting style. The craze reached Buckingham Palace, with King George VI and Queen Elizabeth attending a performance and joining in the shouted “Oi” which ends the chorus.