News, Entertainment, Enlightenment
The last big battle fought solely by American Indians was the Battle of Pima Butte when the Yuma, Mohave, Apache and Yavapai attacked a Pima village on June 1, 1857. The Pimas won.
You like New Wave music? Then you must like Bossa Nova. Boss Nova means new wave in Portuguese. Actually, a better translation would be “new trend” but why would we argue with Wikipedia?
You know Portuguese is the language of Brazil right?
The largest landowner in Britain is Richard Buccleuch, the 10th Duke
of Buccleuch and Queensberry, who has 240,000 acres. It’s about a 10th of what is owned by John Malone, whose 2.2 million acres makes him the largest land owner in the U.S.A. Of course, as Britain has only about 2 percent the land area of the United States, the Duke does stand out a bit more.
The largest elephant ever recorded was 13 feet 2 inches and weighed an estimated 24,000 pounds. It was shot in Angola in 1956.
The job of King of Norway has been around since 872. Harald Fairhair was the first to hold it.
The United States Post Office used a nuclear missile to deliver mail in 1959. It worked. They removed the warhead of course.
The ad hoc postal vehicle was a Regulus I, a subsonic cruise missile, that was specially equipped with landing gear. It was fired from the submarine USS Barbero in the Atlantic Ocean to Mayport Auxiliary Naval Air Station in Florida about 100 miles away. Postal personal were on hand with trucks to transport its 3,000 letters — all signed by postmaster general, Arthur E. Summerfield — to the addressees, mostly politicians and dignitaries.
Despite the success, the idea didn’t catch on. At least as of yet.
You think the omnibus at Disney World is just an old-fashioned early 20th century thing? Not really. You see them every day on city streets. Omnibus is a Latin word meaning “for all” which was applied to a “long-bodied, four-wheeled public vehicle with seats for passengers” in 1829. Yes, omnibus and bus — the shortened name — mean the same thing.
Scranton was the first city to use a streetcar operated entirely by electric power. It happened in 1886. It’s why it is sometimes known as The Electric City.
France exported $11 billion worth of wine in 2019. It is the world’s largest wine exporter.
The first man who died in the construction of the Hoover Dam was George Tierney, a surveyor who drowned in the Colorado River on Dec. 20, 1922 while mapping out a location. The last man to die was Patrick Tierney, an electrician’s helper, on Dec. 20, 1935. Yes, Patrick was George’s son.