back on thread topic:
Augustin-Jean Fresnel was the commissioner of French lighthouses when he invented the Fresnel lens.
His name is one of only 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.
Former NFL QB Earl Morrall passed away today. He is well known for the NFL’s only perfect season, the '72 Miami Dolphins, when he took over for the injured Bob Griese and led Miami to Super Bowl VII. In that perfect 17-0-0 season, as starting QBs Bob Griese’s record was 6-0, while Earl Morrall’s record was 11-0.
The Eiffel Tower was originally planned as a temporary structure and was due to be demolished in 1909. It was saved because of its usefulness as a radio antenna.
When Paris felt the Nazis in 1940, the French military cut the cables to the elevators on the Eiffel Tower before withdrawing from the city. Hitler never made the 70 story trip to the top, though a swastika flag was placed there. Hitler did specifically order the destruction of the Eiffel Tower when the Nazis evacuated Paris, but like most of his orders for the destruction of Paris it was ignored.
The French are the world’s biggest consumers of psychotropic drugs. About one fourth of the population admits having taken anti-depressants or tranquillisers over the past year.
Studies suggest that the most religious states are also the highest in antidepressant usage, with Mormon dominated Utah being the number one state in antidepressant usage and most of the remaining top 10 being Bible Belt states. New England states, among the least religious in the nation in spite of their religious origins, are among the lowest users of antidepressants.
Studies suggest? Do you have any facts to back up this assertion, Sampiro?
So easily googled that I’m not sure of the need, but, sure:
Utah Leads Nation in AntiDepressant Usage
Two Studies Find Depression Widespread in Utah
Salt Lake Tribune: Nearly 1 in 5 Utah Women Use AntiDepressants
Yale University Study Maps Mental Health Medication in United States
There are others as well, of course. If you wish to take issue, could you please do so in a separate thread? This one is already long enough without a hijack.
In the election of 1888, Democrat Grover Cleveland was attacked for blocking the statehood of North and South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming because they were likely to go Republican, and favoring statehood for Utah because it would be strongly Democratic.
The NSW Supreme Court building in Darlinghurst, an inner-city suburb of Sydney, was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as having a dedication year that required the longest string of Roman numerals: MDCCCLXXXVIII (1888).
A series of short sketches on the British comedy show Mitchell & Webb deals with the odd naming of the West Indies, Virginia, and New South Wales.
That humour got very laboured very quickly.
The best-known work by Soviet composer Dmitri Kabalevsky is the Galop from his suite “The Comedians”, originally written as incidental music for a children’s play called The Inventor and the Comedians, by the Soviet Jewish writer Mark Daniel. It is often recorded and performed with the “Masquerade Suite” (written for Mikhail Lermontov’s play) by fellow Soviet composer Aram Khachaturian, better known for his “Sabre Dance”.
At the beginning of The Phantom of the Opera’s Act !!, half the performers in the “Masquerade” are manikins, as the cost of hiring real actors would have been too high. The Phantom in his Red Death costume also lipsycs to pre recorded music, as singing in that outfit was impossible.
The Edgar Allen Poe short story “The Masque of the Red Death” is set during the time of a plague. Prince Prospero tries to hide from the plague by staying locked away in his abbey.
The Tempest has traditionally been considered Shakespeare’s last play, with Prospero’s vow to leave “this rough magic” being interpreted as a poetic farewell by Shakespeare himself, as he retired to Stratford.
Shakespeare is thought to have been inspired to write The Tempest by learning of the wreck in Bermuda of the Sea Venture on her way to Jamestown, Virginia. The flagship of the London Company, she was the first purpose-built emigrant ship, intended to carry settlers to Virginia. Sea Venture was also the namesake of a cruise liner which operated between the USA and Bermuda in the 1970s for Flagship Cruises, before being obtained by Princess Cruises, which renamed her Pacific Princess. She was subsequently used in the television show “The Love Boat.”
The Queen of Bermuda is Elizabeth II. Top Chef had an episode where the contestants got to meet the “King of Bermuda” [offtopic, I knew there was no King of Bermuda which i painfully explained to Mrs Cad when they mentioned it on TC] implying they were going to meet real royalty.
Roy Rogers was “King of the Cowboys”; his wife Dale Evans was “Queen of the West.” AFAIK, Trigger didn’t rule anything.
Elton John’s 1975 album “Rock of the Westies”, which included the song “Island Girl”, was only the second album ever to debut at #1 on the Billboard Top 200 chart, following only his own “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy”, which included the song “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”.