I was reading a book recently that my son gave me and came upon a piece of information that made me think “I bet no one else at the SDMB knows this except me!” And I felt very special for all of 30 seconds.
I’m talking of something that you would know without using Mr. Google.
Does anyone else have some knowledge like that, that they would want to share?
My show-and-tell:
I was reading a book relating the history of the Lego minifigure. The book said: “X is one of only two actors that has been immortalized twice in a minifigure character”. They didn’t say who the other actor was, but some quick thinking told me the obvious answer: the other actor is Harrison Ford, who is represented in an Indiana Jones minifigure and also a Han Solo minifigure.
So the other actor was Harrison Ford, but who is X?
Even more interesting: before posting this, I looked to see if I could find the information via Google. I could, and I found out that this actor is now represented via three different minifigures, so my book is a little out-of-date, and this actor must hold the record.
Who is the only actor that is represented in three Lego minifigures?
Not sure if is is “Google-able” or not, but I always found it interesting and nice:
You know that popular photo from the Vietnam War that shows a bunch of kids running through the streets (and the middle one–a girl–is naked because of her clothes having burned off)?
Well, that girl and the pilot who dropped the bomb were reunited years later, where the pilot tearfully apologized to the girl and she forgave him.
So I always thought it was cool that that photo sort of had a happy ending. Don’t know how many people know that story about that photo.
That’s very bizarre. I don’t really have anything that can top that.
Alright, did you know that Tom Hanks & Sally Field starred together in Punchline (1988) as a romantic couple, and then four years later starred together in Forrest Gump, where they played mother & son?
My American History professor told us that the pistols used in the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, which were supplied by Hamilton as he was the challenged party, had a hair trigger that could be enabled if you knew the trick to it. A trick that Hamilton obviously would know and Burr, as obviously, would not. Burr was known to be a very good shot, and Hamilton was known to be a poor shot.
Not that this did Hamilton any good. ETA: It’s also not known if Hamilton took advantage of that hair trigger.
I’ve never tried to verify this, but I’d love to find a cite.
There is a town named Perth along Highway 7 west of Ottawa, Canada. If you draw a line straight through the middle of the earth from this town, you emerge at a point in the Indian Ocean. The closest large city to that point is Perth, Australia.
The town of Condon in Eastern Oregon (they currently estimate the pop. at 685) was the boyhood home of William P. Murphy, Nobel Prize in Medicine, and
Linus Pauling, Nobel Prizes in Chemistry and Peace. In terms of per capita ranking of Nobels, that has to be the best.
There are 48 freckles on the face of the title character in the children’s TV series Howdy Doody, one for each state in the Union when the series premiered.
My dad… Working security as an off-duty police officer, is the guy who kicked Phil Collins out of the Pump Room in the Ambassador East Hotel. Mr Collins was provided a jacket and this was the inspiration behind his album “No Jacket Required”…
Actor Chuck Conners (of Rifleman fame) is one of only 12 athletes in the history of American professional sports to have played for both Major League Baseball and in the NBA.
I just found out this morning that the producers of Columbo first approached Bing Crosby to play the lead in the series. Bing Crosby? What a complete miscasting that would have been.
You can find out more about the girl here. Apparently, she is now a Canadian citizen, and was recently granted an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by our local university.