Tell us an interesting random fact you stumbled across (Part 1)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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This leads to a trivia Gotcha: Name the four pairs of U.S. President who were close blood relatives.
Everybody gets Bush, father and son; Adams, father and son; Harrison, grandfather and grandson; but who is the 4th pair?

Most will guess the Roosevelts, but Teddy was of the Oyster Bay Roosevelts, and Franklin of the Hyde Park Roosevelts. They’re distant 5th cousins.

Zachary Taylor and James Madison make up the correct 4th pair: they are 2nd cousins, both being great grandsons of James Taylor. (That James was one of the “Knights of the Golden Horseshoe Expedition” who discovered the Shenandoah Valley and claimed it for King George. He is mentioned here although he doesn’t have his own Wiki page.)

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You left our what I think is the most interesting fact of all. The name of the cartoon (and the dog) was inspired by Frank Sinatra’s scat singing in “Strangers In the Night”.

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Back in 1980, there was this terrible thing called “Galactica 1980.” It was a retooled version of the original Battlestar Galactica, and the only cast member to return was Lorne Greene, who I can only assume was doing it to publicly humiliate himself for some awful sin I don’t know about. It also featured seventies child star Robbie Rist, best known today as Cousin Oliver from The Brady Bunch, as a child genius of the sort often found on seventies television shows.

It was a terrible, terrible show. Even I thought it was terrible, and I was a teener with no taste whatsoever at the time. Even the people who WORKED on it ranged from hating it (Lorne Greene) to not being terribly proud of it (producer Donald Bellisario, creator Glen Larsen.) It stands today as an example of what happens when the network executives run amok and override all the creative types while not really knowing what they’re doing, sometimes to the point of working at cross purposes with each other.

The basic thrust of Battlestar Galactica was space opera; a ragtag fleet fleeing towards Earth, with regular space battles with the enemy Cylons. The new retooled version didn’t LIKE space battles; too expensive to film. So they began recycling other science fiction tropes, one of which was “What happens when the bad guy time travels back to WWII and decides to help Hitler conquer the world? My gosh! The good guys have to time travel back, too, and STOP him!” And this was the plot of a two part episode.

The next episode was supposed to involve the escape of the bad guy, who time travels back to some other era of Earth history in order to screw around with destiny, and the good guys doing likewise in order to stop him; this was apparently supposed to happen several times, as the bad guy escaped via time travel, and the good guys had to go after him. For some reason, this was vetoed by the network, and they went on with other plots, many of which involved cute space children and were widely hated by the fan base; I’m guessing because they couldn’t afford Gary Coleman.

But producer Donald Bellisario got an idea about a whole series based around a hero who time travels throughout history… every episode… fixing things that went wrong the first time. He would later rework this premise into a much better, more entertaining, less insulting and more successful show called Quantum Leap, which survived well past its first season.

That being said, if Galactica had lasted into 1981, would they have renamed it “Galactica 1981?” The world may never know.

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Lorne Green may have done it for money. Until the mid to late 60s actors did not get paid every time a show was shown in reruns. Bonanza was on until 73 so he did get some of that money.

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I haven’t read the entire thread yet, but has anyone mentioned a possible contender for a leading role in some iteration of the Marvelverse, Iron Snail?

Ok, its really called The Scaly Foot snail, but the outer layer of its scaly foot is made of iron sulfide.

Scishow has an interesting video about it that I came across the other day, but I can’t seem to make a link to it.

Here is the next best thing a wiki link

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I always thought it was sort of interesting that your intellectual property rights to your own face and likeness were kind of fuzzy for most of the 20th century. Universal Pictures made loads of money off “Dracula” and its sequels and its merchandise… until Bela Lugosi Jr. got his law degree, passed the bar, and made it a holy fraggin’ crusade to nail down the idea that just because your contract doesn’t mention likeness rights, the studio doesn’t get to take them for granted.

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A number of martial arts styles and schools of swordplay have been developed exclusively for use in theater and motion pictures. The entire idea is to look impressive without actually harming or touching your opponent.

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Name the album that stayed on Billboard for 950 weeks. Hint: at the time, it was known as the “Billboard Top LPs and Tape Chart.”

[spoiler]Pink Floyd/Dark Side of the Moon.

Have you seen this tee shirt?
https://www.aafnation.com/products/pink-freud-dark-side-of-your-mom-parody?variant=31487713312829&fbclid=IwAR0P0nPQj7XdkzyZoZI2zmGupQPRcilVkbLQc9FQGX82i4ua07wscUeB1n8
[/spoiler]

And what was the first #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100, in 1958? Hint: Not Beatles, not Elvis, but a heart throb.

Ricky Nelson/Poor Little Fool.

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The worst episode of the show was the two-parter with Wolfman Jack.

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The only number in the English language - when written out in words - that has its letters in alphabetical order…

Forty.

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The only word in the English language that has three consecutive pairs of letters?

(BTW - it happens to appear on this webpage)

Bookkeeper

And while I’m at it, I know of two English words that have all 6 vowels (ie, inluding “Y”) in order;

Abstemiously; Facetiously

j

PS: if I’m wrong about the “only” word thing, I’ll be very pleased to be put right!

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and drawrof backwards is forward

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On Feb. 12, 1809 Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born.

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What’s a golden sombrero? That’s when a batter strikes out four times in one game. Says Wikipedia:

The term derives from hat trick, and since four is bigger than three, the rationale was that a four-strikeout performance should be referred to by a bigger hat, such as a sombrero.[1] The term was coined by San Diego Padres player Carmelo Martínez in the 1980s[2] and first appeared in print when Leon Durham was quoted as using it in 1984.[3][4]

If you strike out five times in a game? Platinum sombrero -or- Olympic Rings. Six times?

(Per wikipedia) A horn refers to a player striking out six times in a game; the term was coined by pitcher Mike Flanagan after teammate Sam Horn of the Baltimore Orioles accomplished the feat in an extra-inning game in 1991.[6][7] Alternate names for this accomplishment are titanium sombrero or double platinum sombrero.[8]

The wikipedia page is pretty interesting. You’d have to be a good enough player that they wouldn’t send you down to the minors, of course; still, the record for number of golden sombreros in a career is 27.

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I recall being amazed Dark Side of the Moon was on the chart so long.

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I owe you one.

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Alaska railroad has a train that leaves Fairbanks every day. Another train leaves Anchorage. At the midpoint the crews switch trains so both crews end up back home that day.

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Well that explains why that math word problem exists! :smiley:

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I almost stopped reading that post, due to PTSD from having so many story problems in school.
(In case you need proof that school is like Hell…)

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Australian cricketer Mark Waugh once made 4 scores of zero in succession. He briefly earned the nickname ‘Audi’.

In summarising individual scores in a game, a bowler’s performance per innings is listed as ‘Wickets (outs) taken, for runs conceded’. So ‘4 for 23’ or ‘2 for 96’ etc. Taking five wickets in an innings is known as a ‘Michelle’ (Pfeiffer).