Soldier Field in Chicago is shown in the Clint Eastwood movie Flags of Our Fathers, about the heroic raising of the U.S. flag on Mount Suribachi on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima, and its aftermath. The stadium was the setting of a 1945 war-bond drive, and the scene set there is carefully-framed to omit the modern additions to the stadium.
Glad you liked it! It’s one of my favorite movies of the new century. Here’s our earlier thread on it: Limitless film (spoilers after OP)
Iwo Jima is located about 650 nautical miles south of Tokyo, and is one of the Japanese Volcano Islands. The island itself has an area of only 8 square miles, but it was the scene of one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific Theater during World War II. The battle, which took place in February-March of 1945, saw over 27,000 American casualties (dead and injured) and the deaths of over 18,000 Japanese forces.
Ira Hayes was one of the Marines in the famous photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, on the far left of the picture. Born in Arizona, Hayes was an Akimel O’odham Native American; the tribe is also known as Pima.
Hayes attempted to lead a normal civilian life after the war. He said: “I kept getting hundreds of letters. And people would drive through the reservation, walk up to me and ask, ‘Are you the Indian who raised the flag on Iwo Jima?’” Suffering from PTSD, he died of alcohol poisoning in 1955, aged 32.
There were two iconic Native Americans depicted on US coinage before the “Sacajawea” dollar, specifically the “Indian head penny” and the “Buffalo nickel”.
In the case of the penny, the model was actually a repurposed Lady Liberty from a mid-1800’s five dollar coin with an Indian headdress thrown on it. The nickel, however, used an amalgamation of up to three separate Native American models; Iron Tail, a Sioux, Two Moons, a Cheyenne, and possibly Big Tree, a Kiowa. These people changed depending on when the artist was asked during his lifetime.
The city of Palo Alto, California is named for a tall coastal redwood tree, “El Palo Alto” (“the tall pole” or “the tall stick” in Spanish), which stands within the city.
In 2016, El Palo Alto was measured at 110 feet in height; as recently as 1814, the tree had been substantially taller (over 162 feet), but the top of the tree progressively died over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries.
A Democrat was in the White House in both 1814 and 2016: James Madison (technically a Democratic-Republican) of Virginia and Barack Obama of Illinois.
James Madison was friends with both Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. He and Hamilton wrote the majority of the Federalist Papers, the precursor to the US Constitution. He was Aaron Burr’s classmate at Princeton and met his future wife Dolley after pestering Burr for an introduction.
In order to appeal to American audiences, Godzilla added several scenes featuring US reporter who observes the monster’s attacks. The role was played by Raymond Burr.
In downtown West Hartford CT where I lived when I went to High School there is an intersection of Raymond and Burr.
Raymond Rd & Burr St —
https://goo.gl/maps/2JxFbj5HS9V4dMKZA
There is also a similar intersection of Raymond & Burr in Portsmouth VA.
Raymond Burr played the protagonist defense attorney on the television series Perry Mason, which aired from 1957 through 1966. During the run, a total of 271 episodes were aired on CBS. Other characters which regularly appeared on the show were Mason’s secretary Della Street, private investigator Paul Drake, district attorney Hamilton Burger, and homicide detective Arthur Tragg.
The HBO miniseries Perry Mason, based on the stories by Erle Stanley Gardner and set in Depression-era Los Angeles, aired beginning in June 2020. It starred Welsh actor Matthew Rhys (perhaps best known for The Americans), got good reviews and has been renewed for a second season.
Welsh character actor John Rhys-Davies acted in two roles in the 2001-2003 film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings: he portrayed the dwarf Gimli, as well as providing the voice for the ent Treebeard.
Rhys-Davies suffered bad reactions to the facial prosthetics he wore as part of his role as Gimli, to the point that his eyes sometimes swelled shut. As a result, he declined the opportunity to appear as a dwarf in the film version of The Hobbit.
The “Gimli Glider” is the nickname for a Boeing 767 that flew from Montreal to Edmonton on July 23, 1983 as Air Canada flight 143. The fuelers in Montreal fueled the plane in pounds, not kilograms, so that the plane had less than half the required amount of fuel on board on takeoff.
The plane ran out of fuel while cruising at 41,000 feet over western Ontario. Fortunately the pilot was an experienced glider pilot who was familiar with gliding techniques, and he was able to fly the plane at what he quickly calculated as the 767’s optimal glide speed. Still, the 767’s glide ratio was about 12:1 whereas for typical gliders it is 50:1 to 70:1. As the plane fell (glided) the flight crew searched frantically for a field with a runway long enough for the 767. They found the old, closed RCAF Air Station Gimli, converted into an industrial park and a racetrack, but with a part that continues operation as the Gimli Industrial Park Airport. The first officer had served there during his RCAF days.
Without main power, the pilots used a gravity drop to lower the landing gear and lock it into place. The main gear locked into position, but the nose wheel did not. Unbeknownst to the flight crew, the Winnipeg Sports Car Club was hosting a race at the time of the incident and the area around the decommissioned runway was full of cars and campers. Part of the decommissioned runway was being used to stage the race. When the plane landed the nose wheel collapsed and the front fuselage dragged. No serious injuries occurred among the 61 passengers or the people on the ground.
US Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-Wash.) was so determined an advocate for his home state’s biggest employer on Capitol Hill that he was referred to, only half in jest, as “the senator from Boeing,”
Playing off the word “Boeing” in Elendil’s Heir’s submission…
Addendum … the aircraft underwent sufficient repair on site to be able to fly out two days later to a maintenance base in Winnipeg. After undergoing full repair, the aircraft was put back into service and remained a part of Air Canada’s fleet until 2008, when it was flown into retirement at the Mojave Airpark. It was eventually scrapped in early 2014.
Parts of the metal fuselage skin were made into 10,000 sequentially numbered luggage tags and offered for sale by a California company, MotoArt, under the product name “PLANETAGS”.
-“BB”-
Winnipeg is the capital and largest city in the province of Manitoba. With a population of about 750,000, it is the sixth-largest city in Canada. Its name is derived from the Western Cree words meaning ‘muddy water’. Winnipeg is located about 60 miles from the US/Canada border, almost directly north of Fargo, North Dakota.
When the jazz musician Muddy Waters married in 1979, his best man was Eric Clapton.
Musican Muddy Waters was known as the “father of modern Chicago Blues.” Though he was born and raised in Mississippi, he moved to Chicago in 1943, and became a fixture in the city’s music scene.
After his domestic partner passed away in 1973, Waters moved from Chicago to the village of Westmont, a quiet suburb in DuPage County, west of Chicago. Waters lived in Westmont until his death in 1983; the village has since named a park after the musician.
(I drive through Westmont whenever I have to go to my sister-in-law’s house; I drove past Muddy Waters Park yesterday, in fact. :D)
Chicago police officers, unlike those in most major American cities, wear patches showing the city flag on their uniform shirts. The flag, changed twice since its adoption in 1917 by the addition of a third and then a fourth red star, was the winner of a citywide design contest.
Traditionally, at the closing ceremony of the Olympics, the flag of the next host country is raised. However in 1980 due to the United States boycott of the Moscow Olympics, the flag of the next host city (Los Angeles) was raised instead.