Barney Frank is the first cousin of Shemp Howard.
They aren’t first cousins. They are only related by marriage.
I am sorry. I provided a cite. Still, I am sure you are right.
Just setting the record straight. This relationship is one of my favorite factoids. You were close, it was Shemp’s wife who was directly related to Frank according to the wiki. One time I pointed out to someone that Barney Frank was related to Shemp and they said “Well, that explains the voice”. My wife once texted me to brag that she was attending a congressional meeting with Barney Frank". I texted back “Ask him about Shemp” which she says made her laugh loudly at an inappropriate time. So you’ve got a far more interesting fact than some of the other ones here.
“In September 1925, Shemp married Gertrude Frank (March 12, 1905 - May 17, 1982), a fellow New Yorker. They had one child, Morton (February 26, 1927 – January 13, 1972). Gertrude Frank Howard outlived her husband and son, and was living when her first cousin Barney Frank (born 1940, the son of her father’s brother) became a US Congressman.”
(bolding mine)
I am very sorry. If I could I would remove my post.
Today I learned about Jack Parsons, born Marvel Whiteside Parsons, who was a rocket propulsion expert who helped found JPL and a rocket and missile propulsion company called Aerojet (now known as Aerojet Rocketdyne). He was also an occultist and buddy of both L. Ron Hubbard and Aleister Crowley. He was accused of espionage and wound up blowing himself up in his basement. All this before he turned 38.
From the sound of things, he lived the sort of life no one would believe if encountered in a work of fiction.
The Beatles’ “Second Album” was their third album released in the US.
It was the second released on Capitol Records. Their early albums had different names and different song selections, depending on which country they came from.
The many differences between the Beatles US and UK albums in the early days was due to how records were released at the time.
The UK had three formats: albums, singles, and EPs (extended play, with two songs on a side). The latter was rare in the US. UK albums generally had 14 songs on a record, while US albums had 12. And UK record buyers got upset if a song was in more than one format; they didn’t like buying albums if they already had the single or EP versions. It was considered a ripoff
So Capitol was able to play fast and loose with the US albums, taking the singles and EPs and including them on albums. US record buyers would buy an album even if they already had a single from it.
After “Yesterday . . . and Today,” the Beatles insisted Capitol release albums with the same track listings as in the UK.
Perhaps NSFW Drunk History episode about Jack Parsons
Drunk History didn’t always get 100% of the facts right but…
My contribution…in another thread, some were pondering whether Reggie Jackson’s strikeouts outweighed his home runs etc. Reading up on Reggie in Wikipedia, it turns out that he was quite an all-around athlete before focusing solely on baseball.
Jackson graduated from Cheltenham High School in 1964, where he excelled in football, basketball, baseball, and track and field.[7] A tailback in football, he injured his knee in an early season game in his junior year in the fall of 1962. He was told by the doctors he was never to play football again, but Jackson returned for the final game of the season.[8] In that game, Jackson fractured five cervical vertebrae, which caused him to spend six weeks in the hospital and another month in a neck cast. Doctors told Jackson that he might never walk again, let alone play football, but Jackson defied the odds again.[8] On the baseball team, he batted .550 and threw several no-hitters.[9]
I just heard the story of Domino’s Pizza anti-mascot, The Noid, it’s decline and reemergence.
It seems in 1989, Kenneth Lamar Noid (his real last name), a mentally ill guy, thought the advertising campaign was a personal attack, so he entered a Domino’s in Chamblee, Georgia and pulled a gun, taking two employees hostage for five hours.
Mr Noid made the kidnapped employees call headquarters, explaining he wanted $100,000 cash and a white getaway limo. He then offered to exchange a hostage for a copy of The Widow’s Son. Police brought him a copy of the book, but he reneged.
Noid eventually got hungry and ordered his hostages to make him two pizzas. While he was eating, the hostages saw their chance and escaped. Police arrested him. He was tried and found not guilty by reason of mental disease. A few years later he killed himself.
Today is the 94th Anniversary of Charles Lindbergh landing in France and the 89th Anniversary of Amelia Earhart landing in Ireland.
I’m familiar with his family, including Ade, Huma and Para.
Even though pyrite crystallizes with cubic symmetry, the faces of the cubes can distort in such a way that the resulting crystals look like dodecahedrons (think of each square face replaced with a pair of pentagons):
They clearly forgot to avoid the noid
Are you sure? I have an import copy of Revolver which has a couple more songs than the U.S. version. (It might be German though).
The extra songs on Revolver came from Yesterday…And Today. Had to be after Revolver.
Hanna-Barbera was threatened to be sued by baseball player Yogi Berra for the similarities between his name, and the newly-introduced H-B cartoon character Yogi Bear in 1958. The suit was withdrawn when it was claimed that the similarity of the names was “just a coincidence.”
However - there was another lesser-known H-B character near the same time “Augie Doggie” from the “Quick Draw McGraw” show, whose name was possibly based on the name of the baseball umpire, Augie Donatelli. No lawsuits there.
This is one of a series of name “coincidences” that are not at all convincing, but the plagiarist always claims that to avoid financial obligations. It’s almost completely impossible to believe that “Yogi Bear” doesn’t derive from “Yogi Berra”. There’s nothing even remotely similar i sound to "Yogi Bear’, and no real justification for calling the character that.
Similarly, I can’t believe that “Baby Ruth” candies aren’t named after baseball player “Babe Ruth”, whose career was on the rise when the candy was introduced. The “official” explanation, that it was named after Grover Cleveland’s daughter (after he’d been out of office for almost a quarter of a century, 17 years after she’d died, and she wasn’t all that popular, anyway) is absurd.
Similarly, claims that Skippy peanut butter wasn’t named after the (at one time very popular) comic strip character “Skippy” are equally absurd (especially after you look at the period advertising, which blatantly copies elements of the strip. And, besides, Percy Crosby, creator of the strip, had already trademarked the name)
Hadn’t heard about Augie Donatelli, but I don’t follow baseball. Not surprised that Hanna Barbera ripped off names, though. They were blatantly ripping off actors’ vocal styles for their characters for years (Phil Silvers, Jimmy Durante).
It is probably a lot harder to rip off someone’s name like that these days. Hanna-Barbera would not have seemed like a gold mine to lawyers at the time so Yogi may have been advised that it wasn’t worth the effort to sue them. And maybe told nobody would remember the bear with a name like his for very long anyway. Pretty soon people will start to think his nickname ‘Yogi’ was copied from the bear.
Up until about 30 seconds ago I always thought that. Is it not so?