Col. Giuseppe Galliano was one of Italy’s great military heroes in the First Italo-Ethiopian War, having regrouped his battalion of aboriginal Eritreans and routed the Dervishes at the Battle of Agordat. He lost his life, along with his entire Askari force, at Adwa defending against an Abyssinian charge. Galliano was the first Italian officer to be awarded two Gold Medals of Military Valor.
Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was the only head of state to address both the League of Nations and the United Nations.
Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia attended John F. Kennedy’s state funeral in November 1963. Several observers noted how President Charles de Gaulle, representing France, towered over him.
Members of the Rastafarian religion, founded in Jamaica, worship Haile Selassie as either the Second Coming of Jesus, or as God the Father. The name comes from Haile Selassie’s pre-coronation name, Ras (Prince) Tafari.
The singer, Prince, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As a child his nickname was Skipper.
The father of singer Etta James has never been identified, but has been rumored to be Alan Hale, Jr., who was best known for playing Skipper on Gilligans Island, and pool player Rudolph Wanderone, a.k.a. Minnesota Fats. (James herself repeated the Minnesota Fats rumor.)
There are 29 locks & dams on the upper Mississippi River managed by USACE to help control and manage the river’s flow. These range from Minnesota in the north to Missouri/Illinois to the south, in three districts: St. Paul, Rock Island, and St. Louis. Below St. Louis, all the way to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico, there are no locks on the river.
The Sandy & Beaver Canal was a short canal with 90 locks, running primarily through Columbiana County, Ohio. It was finished in 1848 and was almost immediately rendered obsolete by railroad expansion. Local historians Max Gard and William H. Vodrey wrote the definitive history of the canal in 1952.
Off-game
Gotta work it in somewhere, eh?
On-gameCanada’s Historyis a magazine devoted to, we’ll, Canada’s history.
It was originally called The Beaver, but had to change its name a few years ago because Internet searches for the on-line version were leading Canada’s impressionable youth to … undesirable … web-sites that did not assist them with their school history homework. :eek:
The current North American beaver population has been estimated to be 10 to 15 million; one estimate claims that there may at one time have been as many as 90 million.
Beaver Cleaver’s real first name on Leave it to Beaver was Theodore.
Beaver tail is considered non-meat by the Roman Catholic Church and therefore is acceptable to eat during Lent and on Fridays.
Sundays are not part of the 40 days of Lent.
Almost all Bourbon Street bars and businesses close promptly at midnight following Mardi Gras to observe the end of revelry and the beginning of Lent.
Shrove Tuesday is a name used in much of the English-speaking world to refer to Mardi Gras. In many Episcopal churches* it is traditional for the men of the parish to make and serve a pancake supper for fellow members of the congregation on Shrove Tuesday–the idea being to use up the last bits of fat before Lent begins.
*and for all I know in other denominations as well
It happens in some Lutheran churches too.
The birthdays of Martin Luther King (January 15), Robert E. Lee (January 19), and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson (January 21) have all been celebrated as the main January holiday by various states in the former Confederacy; in Virginia the same day was celebrated as all three (King-Lee-Jackson day).
Camp Shelby, MS is a military base near Jackson, MS. It is not a US Army base, as many think, but rather is a state-owned military training site. It is the largest such state-owned military training site in the United States, including Alaska.
The novelist and historian Shelby Foote, hired to write a short history of the Civil War, saw it turn into a multi-decades, three-volume task that he likened to “swallowing a cannonball.”
The Marvel New Mutant character with the code name “Cannonball” was born Sam Guthrie.