Too, there is a land border between the Australian state of Victoria and the island state of Tasmania. They drew a border across Bass Strait that avoided the main islands there like King and Flinders islands … but due to a survey error it went right through what is now Boundary Islet.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King paid for Julia Roberts parents hospital bill after she was born.
There’s a Best Bob Dylan studio albums (poll) FINAL thread running over in Cafe Society at the moment. I voted for Blood On The Tracks. I was just refreshing my memory on the track listing when I stumbled across this surprising fact. Blood On The Tracks won a Grammy in 1976 - but for what?
Best Album Notes - Pete Hamill (notes writer) for Blood on the Tracks performed by Bob Dylan. Cite.
j
Carrie Fisher was almost cast as Miss Scarlet in Clue. But for rehab, it would be a different movie. Not better or worse, but I’d have liked to see it.
She was cast and they got close to filming the movie while she was still in rehab. It took studio lawyers to stop the crazy plan of Fisher shooting during the day and going back to the facility each night.
Another crazy thing, the chandelier stunts were toned down because producer John Landis was on trial for the helicopter deaths on the Twilight Zone movie.
Ah! I only read a snippet of the story. Thanks!
I love Clue, and it’s production was batshit insane. Tom Stoppard worked on the script, then they tried and failed to recruit Stephen Sondheim. The first choice for Wadsworth died in the wings of a live theater performance, and they almost gave the part to Rowan Atkinson.
Could have done what Spielberg did with Tom Sizemore and Saving Private Ryan. Told him that if he were associated in any way with drugs that he would be fired and the entire movie reshot without him no matter the cost. Probably Sizemore’s longest time clean.
Well, it was Lynn’s first real directing job. And while John Landis was off shooting Spies Like Us, the remaining producers were also on cocaine and didn’t think it was a big deal. I got it slightly wrong - Fisher’s plan was quashed by the insurance company, not “lawyers.”
This is a random fact that I have known for some time; I was reminded of it today by a news article regarding a planned new (French) biopic. If this fact is well known in the US, I can only apologize.
Josephine Baker, the US-born singer, dancer, actress and all-round star was a real-life wartime hero of the French Resistance.
After the war, Baker was awarded the Resistance Medal by the French Committee of National Liberation, the Croix de Guerre by the French military, and was named a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur by General Charles de Gaulle.
It’s worth reading the full wiki - she was an astonishing, trailblazing woman (but not without her faults).
Baker refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States and is noted for her contributions to the civil rights movement. In 1968, she was offered unofficial leadership in the movement in the United States by Coretta Scott King, following Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. After thinking it over, Baker declined the offer out of concern for the welfare of her children
The planned biopic is a French production - Baker remains adored and revered in her adopted country, particularly in the Dordogne, where she settled after the war. Here’s a para from the news story in question:
Elle avait découvert le château des Milandes, à Castelnaud-la-Chapelle, dans les années 1930. En 1947, elle achète le demaine où elle passera plus de vingt ans avec sa famille arc-en-ciel (12 enfants tous de nationalités différentes, adoptés avec son mari Jo Bouillon) avant de devoir l’abandonner, ruinée.
She had discovered the Château des Milandes, at Castelnaud-la-Chapelle, in the 1930s. In 1947 she bought the property [I’m assuming *“demaine” is a typo] where she would pass more than 20 years with her rainbow family (12 children, all of different nationalities, adopted with her husband Jo Bouillon) before having to abandon it, bankrupted.
(My translation - I accept all blame for errors. Source.)
j
I was in the Paris Pantheon last month (where many great French notables - scientists, poets, politicians and heroes - are interred) and saw Josephine Baker’s tomb. My initial thought was ‘Really? Just another celebrity who got a bit famous for shaking her booty? That’s a bit cheap’.
Then I read the description and did some more research. Wow.
Gasp! (Trademarking a sound).
There’s a company training rats to wear little high-tech backpacks to perform search and rescue in disaster areas. The rats are being trained in Tanzania.
I hope they have little barrels of brandy hanging from their necks.
Very tiny barrels. One shot for each rescued. They call them St. Bernard’s rats.
A shot glass is 1.5 to 2 ounces, about (no standard size). That is, 44 to 60 mL. Those would be some pretty hefty beasts to be able to carry their locator gear together with the emergency supplies. …I most gratefully haven’t seen that many rats in my life, and I understand they ordinarily run from huge to much larger than huge. Any thoughts?
My thought: what if they learn to tap it and drink it themselves?
A quick google search informs me that a rat can carry a full pound and push as much as 15 pounds! Pizza Rat wasn’t even trying.
The article says they are using African Giant Pouched Rats, which according to Wikipedia reach 1400 grams as adults. The article says they are carrying a 140 gram backpack, which is double their planned weight for it. Adding another 40-60 grams would probably be doable if it were actually important.
These rats are larger than the Norwegian (brown) or black rats one typically sees as wild city rats. I’ve owned 19 pet Norwegian rats and the largest (who just died a couple of months ago) weighed about 830 grams at his maximum, but he was pretty obese. Most of mine have had a maximum weight of about 500-600. Wikipiedia says wild Norwegian rats normally reach up to 500 grams and black rats about half as much.
I haven’t expected all the geeking out about rats carrying a shot of booze (though I should have, it’s the Dope after all 
), but I have to object that a standard shot glass here in Germany is only 2 cl, and that’s what I was working with.