This is going to take a bit.  I’m going to try and keep the sentences brief but sorry for the length. 

I’m half English and spent a lot of my childhood summers in England.  I developed an interest in English history which my Mom likes to encourage still.  She bought me this DVD set for Christmas:

I’ve been working my way through it, watching an episode every few days or so.  The episode I was watching most recently is entitled The Conquest.  For you history buffs this refers to The Battle of Hastings which was an enormous turning point in England’s history.  Basically the king of England, Edward the Confessor had, for reasons too convoluted to explain (although I will if you ask J ), left no heir.  In the vacuum several nobles had claim to the throne.  The most prominent were Harold (a Saxon) and William (a Norman) who lives in France.  William later became known as William the Conqueror because he assembled an enormous fleet, sailed to England and killed off nearly all of the English lords and nobility in the Battle of Hastings.  He supplanted every English institution with his own nobility and from that point forward England was no longer a Saxon country but a Norman one.

Anyway, the place where Harold (the defeated one) amassed his troops before battle was called by the Normans (William’s bunch) Sanguelac which means “Lake of Blood”.  You may not get the Star Wars reference there because we pronounce the word incorrectly, but it give it your best French accent and the word is unmistakably “Sarlacc”.  This is another historical nod in Star Wars much like the Witch of Endor.

Now if you knew that already and read all this way then my apologies.  Take it for what you will but I think the parallels between the Battle of Hastings and the fight with Jabba’s bunch in ROTJ are interesting and now when someone asks you what Sarlacc means you can tell them.

Anyone know of any other ones?

-TK5911