It reminds me of an SNL Weekend Update bit, Jane Curtain anchor. They showed a picture of Roy Rogers on his horse. “Roy Rogers has said when he dies, he wishes to be stuffed and mounted on top of his horse Trigger, already stuffed and mounted. Dale Evans added that she would also like to be stuffed and mounted, but not necessarily in that order.”
Superman wasn’t the first Man of Steel.
In Zip Comics #1, Feb. 1940, John Sterling jumps into a vat of molten steel. And dies instantly. No, wait, he had covered himself with chemicals first, and came out with super-powers: invulnerability, great strength, and the ability to fly using the magnetic fields of airplanes. He became Steel Sterling, the Man of Steel.
Superman, who was the Man of Tomorrow, had to wait for the character to disappear before DC started officially calling him the Man of Steel. Unoffically, there was a newspaper headline in Action Comics #6, Nov. 1938, talking about the “Mysterious Man of Steel.” I leave it to fans to discuss the implications.
Wasn’t there an area in the Balkans where there was an unusual number of claims of long-lived men, but it turned out that in their youth they had started lying about being older to avoid the military draft?
If all of the people who died of COVID in the US were to come back to life and live in the same city, that city would be the 19th most populous city in the country with a greater population than Denver.
The modern peace sign was designed by Gerald Holtom for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958.** The vertical line in the center represents the flag semaphore signal for the letter D, and the downward lines on either side represent the semaphore signal for the letter N. “N” and “D”, for nuclear disarmament, enclosed in a circle.
If you’re ever in Amarillo TX…to be honest, I didn’t understand how some of it’s connected to peace, exactly. The signs tell dates like 12-3-80 (John Lennon shot) and 2-1-03 (Space Shuttle disaster).
The “peace” hand sign, with two upraised fingers, originated in WWII as a “victory” sign. One of its early users was Winston Churchill. I find it amusing that he sometimes flashed it with his palm facing him, unaware, due to his aristocratic upbringing, that it was an offensive gesture when delivered that way.
My father claimed there was an area like that in the hills of Pakistan, of all places. I’ve also seen similar claims about the Georgian SSR, Okinawa, rural Italy and other places. What they all had in common were poor birth and death records; almost certainly these were children pretending to be their parent. In the case of Okinawa I believe it was basically a pension scam.
Oh, Winnie was very aware of what it meant. It’s not like he spent his whole life surrounded by only aristos. He was a serving member of the British military, remember. I’m quite sure he had seen “two fingers up” more than once in his life.
You can travel from Portland, Oregon to Los Angeles crossing only nine counties.
The same person was the first to greet Hank Aaron after he broke Babe Ruth’s home run record and Pete Rose after breaking Ty Cobb’s hits record. It was Steve Garvey, the first baseman of the opposing team at the time.
…and there’s a reason they wanted to call someone the Man of Steel. Doc Savage was already the Man of Bronze, starting with the first issue of his magazine in 1933. I’m not surprised more than one publication leaped on the “Man of Steel” title – it one-ups Doc Savage.
Some ads for Doc Savage were even headlined “Superman”, well before Superman appeared in the comics.
There was a German film called The Man of Steel (Der Mann aus Stahl) released in 1922. But I can’t find any information on what it was about. I doubt it was a superhero film.
Wouldn’t that be “Man of Silver”?
Or is that the Lone Ranger?
Well, you know, Ioseb Besarionis dzе Jughashvili took the nom de Revolution of Stalin, which means “Steel”
As a Cub fan since 1984, I’m morally obligated to read “Steve Garvey” with the same venom that Red Sox fans read “Bucky Dent.”
Michelle Stacy, perhaps best known as the “Girl With Coffee” in the movie Airplane! (“I take it black…like my men.”), was also the voice of Penny in The Rescuers.
I listened to a team of Mormon missionaries place almost comical emphasis on the fact* that when the city of Nauvoo, Illinois was founded by the Latter-Day Saints (or just Joseph Smith? My attention was wavering until the next line woke me up), they made sure to lay it out like …[dramatic pause]… a grid.
"Annnd, it became the first city ever to use A GRID!"
And they looked so smugly at us, at each other, then back at us with a series of little nods and expressions that said “Your entire religion and view of the universe has just been upended by streets at right angles. Where’s your God now?”
*I’ve always assumed that Dat Dere Interweb could debunk that in a second, but I’ve never looked it up. Leave the Mormons proud of their grid, and the Hoosiers proud of… their lack of a river?
All the comic book writers read the pulps and “borrowed” elements for their strips, and not just superheroes. Look at the Black Bat for a series of overlaps and outright steals.
It’s just fun to go through the early comics and stumble across ever earlier examples of now-famous tropes. Dick Cole, the Wonder Boy, e.g., was treated with gamma rays in his origin issue, Blue Bolt #1, June 1940, to help make him the perfect human with exceptional strength and intelligence.
Ken Strickfaden is best known - to the extent he is known at all - for providing the Tesla coils and other electrical equipment seen in Frankenstein (1931) and other films and serials, including Young Frankenstein (1974). According to IMDB, he was also the uncredited stunt double “for Karloff as the monster under electrical sparking equipment.” And he doubled Boris again uncredited in Mask of Fu Manchu (1932).
There’s an excellent biography of him out there – Kenneth Strickfaden – Dr. Frankenstein’s Electrician by Harry Goldman. Strickfaden was giving demonstrations almost until the time he died. He provided some of the original equipment for Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, but he had been doing that for years He did TV show effects in the 1960s and had done effects for Blackenstein the year before Young Frankenstein.
Strickfaden took up with electrical musician Charles D. Willard and his wife Kittie in California in the 1910s at Willard’s Temple of Music (which had performed at Revere’s Wonderland), and ended up “inheriting” Willard’s extensive collection of spark-producing instruments, which probably incorporated into his repertoire of film effects.
You’ll have to explain this one to us dropouts.
Looking at a map, it appears that if you’re determined to stay on land you can’t leave Oregon to the south or the east without crossing at least 5 counties after leaving Multnomah. There’s no way that I can see to get to L.A. by only crossing 4 more counties via some combination of California and / or Nevada.
If you were to a) fly and b) do it in international waters you could conceivably travel from PDX to any number of airports in Los Angeles County and do so only crossing 2 counties, not including Multnomah or LA (those would be Washington and Tillamook, which are between Multnomah and the pacific ocean). Fly east from PDX, cross Washington and Tillamook, fly as far as you need to reach international waters, turn south and follow the coast until you reach Santa Monica and head inland and find a place to park. Et voilà! 4 counties total.
Not seeing how 9 is possible. The lowest number going over land is 13 total (including Multnomah and LA, so I guess you’d be “crossing” 11 counties), if my shitty eyes and this tiny US counties map I found online aren’t deceiving me. So what am I missing?