Off-game: she probably just said that to discourage female rivals! 
On-game: Lord Halifax was the last peer seriously considered for the position of Prime Minister. Churchill won out instead.
The Halifax Explosion in 1917 was the world’s largest man-made explosion prior to the atom bombs. About 2000 people were killed and 9000 injured when the SS Mont Blanc, a French cargo ship loaded with wartime explosives collided with an empty Norwegian ship. It caught fire and 25 minutes later exploded. A tsunami and pressure wave also occurred and caused considerable damage.
The World’s Largest Axe is located in Nackawic, New Brunswick, Canada. The axe stands 15 metres (49 ft) tall and weighs over 55 tons. The axe-head is 7 metres (23 ft) wide. The concrete stump is 10 metres (33 ft) in diameter. It was commissioned, designed and built in 1991 by a company in Woodstock. There is a time capsule embedded in the head of the axe.
Joni Mitchell was invited to play at Woodstock but didn’t perform, because her manager was afraid she would miss her national television debut on The Dick Cavett Show after he saw how bad the traffic was. She later wrote the song “Woodstock,” which was a hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Graham Nash was her boyfriend at the time.
As a young adult Bing Crosby enjoyed carousing and drinking and actually received another nickname: “Binge” Crosby. He once spent two months in jail (weekends only) for DUI after a minor car accident, and surprised and shocked interviewers by advocating that pot be decriminalized.
Cathy Lee Crosby was an accomplished tennis player in her youth, playing Wimbledon twice and at one time ranked #7 in singles and #4 in doubles in the US.
The Tennis Court Oath was a key point in the French Revolution, marking the assertion by the Third Estate that they were the National Assembly and the beginning of the rejection of royal authority.
Until 1964, French women were not allowed to open a bank account or get a passport without their husband’s permission.
The Earl of Home rose to the top of the Tory heap to become British PM in 1963… but relinquished his noble title to serve, becoming Sir Alec Douglas-Home.
In play:
The French admiral the Comte de Grasse, whose fleet played a key role in bottling up Lord Cornwallis’s army at Yorktown in October 1781 and led to Washington’s and Rochambeau’s victory there, has since had three U.S. Navy warships named in his honor.
Elliott Buckmaster was the captain of the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown (CV-5) during WWII’s Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway.
There were three aircraft carriers in this Yorktown class: the USS Yorktown (CV-5), USS Enterprise (CV-6), and USS Hornet (CV-8). Of these, two of the three were sunk during WWII, and both in 1942: Yorktown during the Battle of Midway in June 1942, and Hornet during the battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in October 1942.
The Yorktown (CV-5) was replaced by another Yorktown (CV-10) launched in January 1943. During the space race and the Apollo missions, Yorktown was one of the recovery ships for the Apollo 8 mission, which was the first manned spacecraft to leave low earth orbit.
This Yorktown is now a museum ship in Charleston, SC
The Hornet(CV-8) was replaced by another Hornet (CV-12) launched in August 1943. During the space race and the Apollo missions, Hornet recovered the astronauts from Apollo 11, which was the first moon landing mission.
This Hornet is now a museum ship in Alameda, CA.
Despite a strong effort to save her as a museum ship, the World War II aircraft carrier USS Enterprise was scrapped in 1960. Her ship’s bell is displayed at the U.S. Naval Academy, and her stern plate was preserved and may now be seen in River Vale, N.J.
Off-game:
True, but he had to relinquish his title to do so. Halifax was considered as potential Prime Minister even though he would sit in the Lords. (At that time, it was not possible to relinquish a peerage.)
In-play: the Vale of Mowbray is a low-lying area in Yorkshire, notable for its rich agricultural land. The Coast-to-Coast trail runs through it. (Mrs Piper and I walked across the Vale some years ago when we hiked the C2C.)
Sylvia, a matchbox-sized Yorkshire Terrier owned by Arthur Marples of Blackburn, England, was the smallest dog in recorded history. The dog died in 1945 when she was two years old, at which point she stood 2.5 inches tall at the shoulder, measured 3.5 inches from nose tip to tail and weighed 4 ounces.
Before Mattel introduced Hot Wheels in 1969, the top 3 manufacturers of die-cast miniature car models - Matchbox, Dinky, and Corgi - were all British. Mattel now owns Matchbox and Dinky, while ('scuse me, whilst) Corgi remains British and independent.
The Queen has mentions that she is not going to get any more Corgis, in light of her advanced age.
The band Queen were all in an elevator when they found out Bohemian Rhapsody had topped the charts. They all jumped for joy and the elevator stopped. “We thought we’d all suffocate in the damned lift,” Freddie Mercury said.
Urbain Le Verrier theorized that a planet which he called Vulcan lay in between Mercury and the sun.
The reason Verrier postulated Vulcan existed was because of very slight differences in the observed orbit of Mercury compared to what Newton’s laws of motion predicted. Verrier assumed that the differences meant a small planet existed and its gravitational pull was affecting Mercury’s orbit. Similar observations of orbital variances had led to the discoveries of Uranus and Neptune.
Vulcan does not exist. The reason for the differences was that the massive gravity of the Sun actually bent the path of light close to the Sun, so that Mercury appeared slightly out of place when it was not.
Verrier’s observations were one of the first confirmations of Einstein’s theory of relativity - since energy and matter are inter-changeable, in cases of extreme gravity, energy is also affected by the gravitational pull.
There is a dormant volcano named Vulcan near Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is believed to have last erupted around 150,000 years ago.
On the first two weekends of each October, Albuquerque hosts the world’s largest international hot air balloon fiesta. (And it is something to behold.)