“Although black in the source novel, Tidyman’s original draft screenplay had Shaft as white. However, [Gordon] Parks cast African American actor Richard Roundtree as the eponymous hero.[[12]]"
The footnote leads to: Hughes, Howard (2006). Crime Wave: The Filmgoers’ Guide to Great Crime Movies. London: I.B. Tauris. I do not own this book and cannot comment on it.
From the same Wikipedia article: “Melvin Van Peebles claimed that the success of his film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song caused Shaft to be changed from a “white movie” into a “black one”.[16] In fact, filming of Shaft began in January 1971, several months before the release of Van Peebles’ film, with Roundtree already confirmed in the lead role.[17][18][19] The story is set in the same month, as shown by a calendar on Shaft’s office wall.”
While Shaft may have been white in the initial screenplay, Mr. Van Peebles’ claim that his film caused a change in ethnicity of Shaft’s character seems clearly false.
I listened to a little of the podcast. One of the less clueless hosts relates a story (just past 25:30) about meeting Michael Murphy, mentioning his role in Brewster McCloud and Mr. Murphy claiming he was “aggressively pursued” to play Shaft. I did not find it very compelling and suspect Mr. Murphy may have been joking.
The Vasa was a Swedish warship that capsized on its maiden voyage. The primary reason was its center of gravity was too high. But there were other problems, like poor metrology:
The use of different measuring systems on either side of the vessel caused its mass to be distributed asymmetrically, heavier to port. During construction both Swedish feet and Amsterdam feet were in use by different teams. Archaeologists have found four rulers used by the workmen who built the ship. Two were calibrated in Swedish feet, which had 12 inches, while the other two measured Amsterdam feet, which had 11 inches.
It was pulled from the bottom, preserved and put in a museum in the 1960s. Lots of wooden artifacts were recovered in nearly pristine condition.
The UK and its overseas possessions went from September 2, 1752 directly to September 14, 1752 as they changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. Sez Wikipedia:
They also moved the start of the year from March 25 to January 1. Which means that George Washington’s birthday was not only moved from February 11 to February 22; it was also moved from 1731 to 1732.
I had assumed that the Yu-Gi-Oh! stories were created as a tie-in to the trading card game, but apparently the trading card game (from 1999) came several years after the Japanese manga series debuted (in 1996).
Marvel Cave is about 500 feet deep, one of the deepest in Missouri. One of its rooms, the Cathedral Room, has a ceiling over 200 feet high and it was the site of a world record.
On July 7, 1963, an underground altitude record was set by Don Piccard by flying a hot air balloon around the massive room. Later, in 1994 five hot air balloons were flown simultaneously in the Cathedral Room in celebration of the 100th anniversary of giving cave tours.
Okay railfans. TIL you can buy old rail cars, locomotives, hand cars, and other equipment. Need a new small house, 85’ x 10’, they are available - watch out for shipping.
Poop. You can’t see anything but one picture unless you create an account. (Yes, I could, but tonight I’m tired of signing up for things. Maybe tomorrow.)
A few years ago we had to call a plumber because everything in the house just stopped draining one day and we had no idea what the problem was. The result was that we learned that tissue paper (eg Kleenex etc) is not simply an unscrolled version of toilet paper. This had happened shortly after both my wife and I had had really bad head colds with tons of congestion and we were blowing our noses a lot, into tissue paper, and then flushing it.
Toilet paper is designed to be flushed, and tissue paper isn’t.
He was also the announcer in “A League of Their Own.”
He deserves some sort of award for best autobiography title: Fall Down Laughing: How Squiggy Caught Multiple Sclerosis and Didn’t Tell Nobody.
He was diagnosed in 1984 but the book came out in 2002.
