The name “Susan” is believed to derive from the ancient Egyptian word for lotus flowers.
Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was quite a clotheshorse in his day, and had very expensive suits made in which the stripes were made of his tiny, repeatedly stitched signature.
Flags with stripes were fairly common in 18th century British culture. See for instance the “gridiron” flag of the British East India Company. Those flags influenced the design of the US flag.
Connecticut and Rhode Island were the only two states that never ratified the 18th Amendment establishing Prohibition.
Rhode Island did not vote in the first Presidential or Congressional elections in 1778-1789 because it had not yet ratified the Constitution.
Jacqueline Bouvier married John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1953 in Rhode Island’s oldest Catholic church.
The word “catholic” is defined as (among other things): “broad-minded; liberal”. No irony there, huh?
Yes, definite irony there. Welcome to the game, I Love Me, Vol. I.
Reminds me of the line from the Nicene Creed, “We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.”
Synonyms for “catholic” include universal, diverse, diversified, wide, broad, broad-based, eclectic, liberal, latitudinarian; comprehensive, all-encompassing, all-embracing, and all-inclusive.
Antonyms include narrow.
An all-inclusive resort provides at least three meals a day, soft drinks, most alcoholic drinks, tips, and possibly other services in the base price. The first chain to apply the business model was Club Med, founded in Belgium in 1950.
On November 28, 1942, Holy Cross upset undefeated Boston College 55-12, putting an end to their undefeated season and saving the lives of some of the BC players, who had planned to celebrate their undefeated season at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub. That night, the nightclub burned down in the second deadliest single building fire in US history.
Christopher Cross is the only recording artist to win the quadruple Grammy grand slam – Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist – for his debut album “Sailing” (1980).
Only two people have won the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar & Tony Awards) grand slam and a Pullitzer Prize: Marvin Hamlisch and Richard Rodgers.
Danica McKellar from “The Wonder Years” and Natalie Portman from many movies both have an Erdős–Bacon number below 10 - that is the total of one’s Kevin Bacon separation number from acting appearances, and one’s Paul Erdős separation number from co-authoring mathematical papers. Baseball great Henry Aaron claims a Erdős–Bacon number of only 3, having once autographed a baseball that Erdős had previously signed, and appeared in the film Summer Catch.
Henry “Hank” Azaria by his own estimation has done “literally 100, 150 different characters’” voices on The Simpsons.
In Canada, the $100 note is the highest note currently issued by the Bank of Canada. The $1000 note is no longer issued, as banks rely now on electronic transfers. The $1000 note was increasingly used primarily in drug deals and money laundering.
John the Apostle of Jesus Christ is believed to have been born in the year 6 A.D. and died in the year 100 A.D., which would make him 94 years old at death (and worth only six points in the Celebrity Deathpool).
There’s a rival tradition that the apostle John was never in Asia Minor and died an early death by martyrdom, circa 64-70 A.D. (And therefore worth 30 or more points.)
John Cleese’s family’s surname was originally Cheese, but his father Reg had thought it embarrassing and changed it when he enlisted in the army in 1915.
Hmm. The Constitution wasn’t even submitted to the states for ratification until 1787.
In play:
J.R.R. Tolkien noted, in a coolly cutting 1938 letter to a German publisher, that he had served in the British (he wrote “English”) Army during World War I.
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-have-no-ancestors-of-that-gifted.html
“A Day in the Life” was the last song on the Beatle’s “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”. It includes the line “I saw a film today, oh boy / The English Army had just won the war”, a reference to John Lennon’s appearance in the black-comic film How I Won the War as Musketeer Gripweed.