Monday Trivia No. 16

These notable men, mostly but not exclusively Americans, have something in common. This signal honor carries an implication that winds up seeming just a bit odd after it is conferred. In alphabetical order, the list is:

Ethan Allen, George Bancroft, William H. Bates, Simon Bolivar, Daniel Boone, John C. Calhoun, George Washington Carver, Henry Clay, Thomas Alva Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Nathaniel Greene, Nathan Hale, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, Sam Houston, Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson, Kamehameha I, Francis Scott Key, Robert E. Lee, Glenard P. Lipscomb, George C. Marshall, John Marshall, Casimir Pulaski, Sam Rayburn, Hyman Rickover, L. Mendel Rivers, Will Rogers, Richard B. Russell, Fredrich William Von Steuben, Henry L. Stimson, Tecumseh, Mariano Vallejo, John Warner, Daniel Webster.

This is not an exhaustive list; to make the list exhaustive I would have to include a number of U.S. Presidents (but not all of them). What do these men all have in common?

Burt Likko

Pseudonymous Portlander. Homebrewer. Atheist. Recovering litigator. Recovering Republican. Recovering Catholic. Recovering divorcé. Recovering Former Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. House Likko's Words: Scite Verum. Colite Iusticia. Vivere Con Gaudium.

7 Comments

  1. Oh I know this one but
    1) I used to do this for a living
    2) It’s technically still Sunday.

    (John Warner is the most recent addition to the list, right?)

  2. There were Navy submarines named after all of them. I’m missing what’s odd about that.

    • What’s odd about it (to me) is that the vessels in question would all be referred to as “she” or “her” despite having masculine names.

      I seem to have misused the auto-post function — which is set to either GMT or Central European time instead of a zone here in the U.S.

      • Are there any LOOG followers in those time zones? I just returned from two weeks in CET myself, but didn’t keep up here because the ship’s WiFi was hideously expensive.

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