Staten
Island is one of the five boroughs of New York City, in the U.S. state of New York, located in the southwest part of the city. Staten Island is the southernmost part of the
both the City and State of New York, with Conference
House Park at the
southern tip of the island and the state. The borough is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull, and from the rest of New York by New York Bay. With a 2013
Census-estimated population of 472,621, Staten Island is the least populated
of the boroughs but is the third-largest in area at 59 sq mi
(153 km2). The borough
is coextensive with Richmond County, and until 1975 the
borough was officially named the Borough of Richmond. As in much of North America, human habitation
appeared in the island fairly rapidly after the retreat of the ice sheet. Archaeologists have recovered tool evidence of Clovis culture activity dating from about 14,000 years ago. This evidence was first discovered in 1917 in
the Charleston section of the island.
Various Clovis artifacts have been discovered since then, on property
owned by Mobil Oil. See graphics,
including a chart showing population, counties and land areas of New York City's
five boroughs at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staten_Island
The Netherlands Antilles, also referred to informally as the Dutch
Antilles, was
an autonomous Caribbean country within the Kingdom of the
Netherlands. Although the
country has now been dissolved, all of its constituent islands remain part of
the kingdom under a different legal status and the term is still used to refer
to these Dutch Caribbean islands. The Netherlands Antilles consisted of two
distinct island groups.
The ABC Islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao are located in the southern Caribbean Sea, just off the Venezuelan coast. The SSS islands of Sint Maarten (actually a territory covering a bit
less than half an island),Saba, and Sint Eustatius are
in the Leeward Islands southeast
of the Virgin Islands near
the northern end of the Lesser Antilles, approximately 800–900
kilometers (500–560 miles) northeast of the ABC Islands. The Dutch colonized the various islands in
the 17th century and united them in the new constituent state of the
Netherlands Antilles in 1954. Aruba
became a separate state within the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1986. The Kingdom of the Netherlands dissolved the
Netherlands Antilles on 10 October 2010, reconstituting Curaçao and Sint
Maarten as new constituent countries and
Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba (the "BES Islands") as special
municipalities within the Netherlands.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands_Antilles
“The doctor’s code is, First—do no harm. The
politician’s code is, First—go on television." "In a solar eclipse, the moon does not
pass into the sun’s shadow, but instead passes between the sun and the earth,
obscuring the sun—causing the shadow.
The proper term is “occultation.”
The moon occults the sun, casting a small shadow onto the surface of the
earth. It is not a solar eclipse, but in
fact an eclipse of the earth."
A legal doublet is a standardized phrase used
frequently in English legal language which consists of two or more words which are near
synonyms. The origin of the doubling —
and sometimes even tripling — often lies in the transition of legal language
from Latin to French. Certain words were simply given in their
Latin, French and/or English forms,
often pairing an English word (or a more archaic Anglo-Saxon word) with a Latin or French synonym, so as to ensure
understanding. Find lists of commonly used legal doublets
and legal triplets at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_doublet
Ninth
Island is an island in Bass Strait in south-eastern Australia. It is approximately 1.3 km long,
550 m wide and covers an area of 32 ha. It is part of the Waterhouse
Island Group, lying
11.7 km from the north-eastern coast of Tasmania. It is partly privately owned and has been
badly affected in the past by grazing, frequent fires and, in July 1995, by the MV Iron
Baron oil spill which killed between 2000 and 6000 Little Penguins. The island forms part of the Ninth and
Little Waterhouse Islands Important Bird Area (IBA), so identified by BirdLife
International because
it holds over 1% of the world population of Black-faced
Cormorants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Island
Hawaiians have long
been an acknowledged presence in Las Vegas, and the city is sometimes called
the "ninth island." http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/feb/16/island-desert-how-hawaii-arrived-las-vegas/
Mexican standoff A stalemate where everyone has a weapon
pointed at someone else. All the threats
are equally balanced to ensure a Mutual Disadvantage; no one is walking away from this
standoff with what they came for — or walking away at all, since everyone
realizes that if you get to shelter, you can fire on them without suffering in
return. Sometimes the situation is
resolved in a civilized fashion with all involved parties realizing the
suicidal position they are in and agreeing to put down their weapons, usually
on a count of three to make sure no one ambushes the other. It's Older Than Radio and has been around long enough to be parodied in the play "The Critic",
first staged in 1779. The term itself,
however, originated in the 19th century - possibly in Australia, of all places
- regarding perceived political indecision in Mexico. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MexicanStandoff
ne
plus ultra Also nec
plus ultra or non
plus ultra. A descriptive phrase
meaning the best or most extreme example of something. The Pillars
of Hercules, for example, were
literally the nec
plus ultra of
the ancient Mediterranean world. Holy
Roman Emperor Charles V's heraldic
emblem reversed this idea, using a depiction of this phrase inscribed on the
Pillars—as plus ultra,
without the negation. The Boston Musical Instrument Company engraved ne plus ultra on
its instruments from 1869 to 1928 to signify that none were better.
Spain's most famous cheese, so named because it originally
was made only from the milk of Manchego sheep that grazed the famous plains of
La Mancha. It's sometimes called the
cheese of Don Quixote because Cervantes mentioned it in his novel, Don Quixote
of La Mancha. Manchego, also know as Queso Manchego, is a rich, golden,
semihard to hard cheese that has a full, buttery flavor that's still somewhat
piquant. The two versions that are most
commonly exported are curado, aged between 3 and 4 months, and viejo, aged 9 to
12 months. Another variation, Manchego
en aceite ("in oil"), has been ripened for 1 year, during which time
it's bathed in olive oil.
Find substitutes for Manchego Viejo and
Manchego Curado at http://manchego-cheese.com/manchego-cheese-substitute/
The Reading Railroad company that most people know from the Monopoly board game is
still going strong, but it's not laying down tracks any more. What is now Reading International Inc. has
turned into a Los Angeles firm that runs cinema complexes and live theater
venues in the U.S. and abroad, managing to fill seats during very challenging
times for the cinema industry. James J.
Cotter Sr. gained control of the Reading name in the early 1980s through his
holding company, Craig Corp. In 2001, a
merger of Craig, the Reading Co. and the Citadel Holding Corp. created Reading
International. Besides operating
cinemas, Reading is involved in real estate development and the rental of
retail, commercial and live theater facilities.
Reading International has more than 2,300 employees and 56 cinema
complexes with 476 movie screens in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. The U.S. is the biggest market, with 26
complexes. Domestically, the company's
complexes operate under brand names such as Reading, Angelika Film Center,
Consolidated Amusements, City Cinemas, Beekman Theatre and Village East
Cinemas. Five cinema complexes,
including the Reading Cinemas Gaslamp 15, are in the San Diego area. Reading, which works with major film
distributors and smaller, independent film companies, also handles live shows. It owns and operates three off-Broadway
theaters in Manhattan — the Union Square, Orpheum and Minetta Lane — and the
Royal George Theatre in Chicago. Ronald
D. White
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1207
October 22, 2014 On this date in
1746, the College of New Jersey (later
renamed Princeton University) received its
charter. On this date in 1836, Sam Houston was inaugurated as the first President of
the Republic
of Texas.
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