Ellen Ternan was the mistress of Charles Dickens. Her middle name was Lawless. Dickens was forty-five when he met Ellen Ternan and she was eighteen, slightly older than his daughter Katey.
Charles II had at least 15 mistresses.
Charles II’s mistress Nell Gwyn, a low-born commoner with whom he had two sons, was the last thing on his mind at his death - his last words were “Let not poor Nelly starve”. His successor James II obeyed by setting her up for life with an estate, although he also pressured her and her sons to convert to Catholicism.
Journalist Nelly Bly, known for traveling around the world in less than 80 days and successfully pretending to be a patient in a mental institution, among other things, took her pseudonym from a light-hearted song (in which the heroine is neither asleep nor dead) by Stephen Foster.
Stephen Foster died penniless, the usual fate for all US songwriters until ASCAP came along to insist on royalties for using a song.
January 13 is officially Stephen Foster Memorial Day in the United States.
Stephen Foster’s *Beautiful Dreamer *was regularly performed by the Beatles while touring in 1962 and 1963.
Foster’s Lager is an internationally distributed Australian brand of lager. The European rights to the brand are owned by Heineken International.
The Australian Parliament combines features of the British and American systems, hence the nickname: “Washminster”.
The world land speed record for a wheel-driven (as opposed to rocket- or jet-driven), four wheel car was set at Lake Eyre, South Australia on 17 July 1964 at 403.10mph by Donald Campbell driving his car, the Bluebird-Proteus CN7.
That record still stands today, over fifty years later.
The symbol of a bluebird as the harbinger of happiness dates back thousands of years and is found in many cultures. One of the oldest examples was found on oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty of China, (1766-1122 BCE), where a bluebird was the messenger bird of Xi Wangmu, the ‘Queen Mother of the West’ who began life as a fearsome goddess.
I’ve never heard that term before.
Maybe it’s an Americanism…? Searching on the term yields many results, although it’s not evident how many of those come from the US, and how many from AU.
Harbinger Winery is located in Port Angeles, WA, which is along the Strait of Juan de Fuca in the Salish Sea.
The 1982 Milwaukee Brewers, winners of the American League pennant, were nicknamed “Harvey’s Wallbangers,” because of the team’s power hitting (wall banging) under mid-season manager Harvey Kuenn. After a mediocre 23–24 start to the season, manager Buck Rodgers was fired. Under Kuenn, the team went 72–43 (.626), led the Major Leagues in home runs and total bases, and produced the highest team OPS+ since the 1931 New York Yankees.
The Curse of Rocky Colavito is a phenomenon that supposedly prevents the Cleveland Indians baseball team from winning, be it the World Series, the American League pennant, reaching postseason play, or even getting into a pennant race. Its origin is traced back to the unpopular trade of right fielder Rocky Colavito for Harvey Kuenn in 1960.
Of all of the “perfect” pitchers in major league baseball history, defined as those with 0 career losses and a 0.00 career earned run average, the one with the most career wins (3), and therefore the most perfect of all time, was Rocky Colavito.
The most recent perfect game in the National League was thrown by Matt Cain of the San Francisco Giants on 13 Jun 2012. Cain tallied 14 strikeouts, tying Sandy Koufax for the most strikeouts in a perfect game. The Giants scored 10 runs, making this the highest scoring perfect game.
It was the first perfect game in Giants franchise history, the second of 2012, and the 22nd in MLB history.
Among those in attendance at David Wells’s 1998 perfect game were future perfect game thrower David Cone (in the Yankee dugout), and, in the stands, perfect World Series game thrower (and fellow Point Loma High School alum) Don Larsen.
Don Larsen pitched for the San Francisco Giants from 1962 to 1964. In 1962 the Giants won the NL pennant after finishing the season tied with the LA Dodgers atop the NL West. The Giants defeated the LA Dodgers in a 3-game tiebreaker, 2 games to 1.
The 1962 series was the last MLB tie-breaker to use a three-game format, as the NL subsequently adopted the single-game style used in the American League (AL).
The Giants went to the World Series, only to lose to the NY Yankees in 7 games.
(My post used some of the most beautiful words to Giants fans: “The Giants defeated the LA Dodgers…”) 