Vincent Edward “Bo” Jackson played both professional football (Raiders) and baseball (Royals, White Sox, Angels). He is the only professional athlete in history to be named an All-Star in both baseball and football. Jackson won the Heisman Trophy while playing collegiate football at Auburn University, had a slugging percentage of over .700 for the Auburn baseball team, and twice qualified for the NCAA nationals in the 100-meter dash.
Florence Griffith-Joyner, who set the women’s world record for the 100-meter dash in 1988, designed the Indiana Pacers basketball uniforms in 1989.
The Joyner family had three athletes who won Olympic gold medals in track and field in the 1980s:
- Jackie Joyner-Kersee competed in the long jump and the heptathlon in the 1984, 1988, 1992, and 1996 Summer Games, medaling in all of them (including three gold medals)
- Her brother, Al Joyner, won the gold medal in the triple jump at the 1984 Summer Games
- Al’s wife, Florence Griffith Joyner, competed in several sprint events at the 1984 and 1988 Summer Games, and won five medals, including three golds at the 1988 Seoul Games.
One notable site to visit in Florence, Alabama is the W. C. Handy Home, Museum, and Library, celebrating the life and work of the man often called “The Father of the Blues”. The town also holds a week-long W. C. Handy Music Festival during the summer.
“W.C.” is old-fashioned American slang for the water closet, or toilet.
The term WC for water closet is still used occasionally in the UK, from where it migrated to Europe. The Marseille tourism site states proudly that it has installed free public toilets, “La Métropole Aix- Marseille a installé, en début d’année 2020 des WC publics, sanisettes gratuites.” Map searches of Barcelona come up with many WC hits including “WC Adaptado Publico Municipal”.
Until the Victorian era, most public toilets in Western nations were male-only, which meant that women either had to improvise to relieve themselves, or stay close to home. The latter solution is sometimes called the ‘urinary leash’, which reflected the prevailing attitude that women should stay at home as much as possible.
A Victorian house generally means any house built during the reign of Queen Victoria. During the Industrial Revolution, successive housing booms resulted in the building of many millions of Victorian houses which are now a defining feature of many British towns and cities.
The term “painted ladies” is sometimes used to describe Victorian and Edwardian houses, which have been painted using several different bright colors to emphasize the houses’ architectural details.
The term came to prominence in describing such houses in San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s, but has come to be applied to such houses in other American cities, as well.
A particularly well-known example of such houses is the “Postcard Row” or “Seven Sisters” houses on Steiner Street in San Francisco; the houses appeared in the opening credits of the TV show Full House.
“The Seven Sisters” refers to a consortium of East Coast liberal arts colleges for women, which originally included Mount Holyoke College (the oldest of the seven, founded in 1837), Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Barnard, and Radcliffe colleges.
The “Seven Sisters” name comes from Greek mythology, specifically the Pleiades, the seven daughters of Atlas who Zeus changed into stars.
Vassar started admitting men in 1969. In 1977, a formal merger was signed between Harvard and Radcliffe, and by 1999, Radcliffe College officially dissolved into Harvard University.
(Proud parent of a Seven Sisters grad here!)
The Seven Network (commonly known as Channel Seven or simply Seven) is a major Australian commercial free-to-air television network. It is owned by Seven West Media Limited, and is one of five main free-to-air television networks in Australia. The network’s headquarters are located in Sydney. As of 2014, it is the second largest network in the country in terms of population reach.
The Seven Sisters of Sussex are a series of chalk cliffs by the English Channel, between the towns of Seaford and Eastbourne in southern England.
After being cast in the part of Seven of Nine, actress Jeri Ryan acknowledged she had hardly even seen Star Trek, and had no idea what the Borg were. To prepare her, the producers gave her a copy of Star Trek: First Contact and the Star Trek Encyclopedia the day before she was due to test for the part.
Michael Dorn has appeared as a regular cast member in more episodes of Star Trek (TV and movie) than any other actor.
Michael Dorn’s Star Trek character, a Klingon named Worf, lost two significant others under tragic circumstances.
He had a lover named K’Ehleyr, a half-Human, half-Klingon ambassador for the Klingon Empire, who was the mother of their son Alexander; she was murdered by another Klingon, Duros, in the ST:TNG episode “Reunion.”
Later, after Worf transferred to Deep Space Nine, he fell in love with, and married, the Trill Jadzia Dax. Jadzia was murdered by the Cardassian leader Gul Dukat (who was, at the time, possessed by a Pah-wraith) in the ST:DS9 episode “Tears of the Prophets.”
“The Tears of a Clown” is a song written by Hank Cosby, Smokey Robinson, and Stevie Wonder. It was originally recorded by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, first appearing on the 1967 album Make It Happen.
The song was not released as a single until 1970. After it rose to #1 on the charts, the album was re-released under the new title The Tears of a Clown.
Hank Azaria appeared in The Birdcage and Mystery Men, as well as a recurring role on Friends and, of course, in multiple voice roles on The Simpsons.
The Birdcage is a 1996 American comedy film directed by Mike Nichols, adapted by Elaine May, and starring Robin Williams, Gene Hackman, Nathan Lane, and Dianne Wiest. It is a remake of the 1978 Franco-Italian film La Cage aux Folles .
Gene Hackman has been nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two. He won Best Actor for his role in the 1971 detective drama The French Connection, and won Best Supporting Actor for his work in the 1992 western Unforgiven.
Gene Hackman played a career U.S. Army noncommissioned officer in the Cold War thriller The Package, striving to foil an assassination plot against a Soviet leader (who looked an awful lot like Mikhail Gorbachev but was never identified by name) while the latter is visiting Chicago.
Pretty good movie, too, with Tommy Lee Jones as the assassin.