The Top of the World Highway in the Yukon Territory runs for 79 miles from near Dawson City in the Yukon Territory following Yukon Highway 9 to the west, to the junction with the Taylor Highway near the small town of Jack Wade AK. Its east end is actually the West Bank of the Yukon River, across the river from Dawson City YT.
English comedian/actor Richard Dawson (birth name Colin Emm) gained his greatest fame on American television in the 1960s and 1970s. His breakthrough role was as Corporal Newkirk on the situation comedy Hogan’s Heroes. After that show was cancelled, Dawson was a cast member on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, was a regular panelist on the game show Match Game, and served as a frequent guest host for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. He then became best-known as the flirtatious original host of the popular game show Family Feud.
The Yellow Kid is considered the first newspaper cartoon character, appearing in the comic panel Hogan’s Alley in 1895. He was a bald boy who wore a long yellow dress, on which his words were written, a precursor of the speech balloon. The yellow ink was the source of the term “yellow journalism.”
The Yellow Band is a sedimentary sandstone rock high on the summit route of Mt. Everest. It is a distinctive feature of the Lhotse Face which requires about 100 meters of rope to traverse it. The Yellow Band is the first rock a climber touches on the route up Everest and is very obvious when one has reached this point in the climb—one’s crampons hit hard rock. The top of the Yellow Band is at 25,000 feet.
The Yellow Oval Room on the second floor of the White House was first decorated in yellow damask in 1809 by Dolley Madison, wife of President James Madison. The President’s and First Lady’s bedrooms and other private rooms open off it or are nearby.
The word oval is a derivation of the Latin word ‘ovum’, meaning ‘egg’. In nature, magnolia leaves tend to be somewhat oval in shape. An oval is not necessarily an ellipse. All ellipses are ovals, while some ovals are ellipses. An ellipse is an oval with two axes of symmetry, while an oval has at least one, and some may have two axes of symmetry.
Benjamin Franklin wasn’t only a skilled writer, politician, and scientist—he was also an avid swimmer. Franklin began swimming as a child in Boston, which led to one of his first inventions: oval palletes worn on the hands so he could swim faster. His enthusiasm for the sport continued throughout his life and was so well-documented that he was eventually given an honorary induction into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale FL.
Boston is a city of about 35,000 on the east coast of England in the county of Lincolnshire. It is located about 100 miles north of London. Boston was the home to a large contingent of Puritans who emigrated to the New World, and they renamed a town in Massachusetts after their home town. The original name of Boston, Massachusetts was Tremontaine, named for the three hills in the area
Albert DeSalvo, AKA The Boston Strangler, was convicted of killing all 13 victims, though there were doubts that he committed all the murders. Up until his death in prison, he maintained that he didn’t murder all of the women. However, in 2013, DNA evidence proved that he killed the last victim Mary Sullivan.
The five Sullivan brothers – George Thomas, Francis ‘Frank’ Henry, Joseph ‘Joe’ Eugene, Madison ‘Matt’ Abel, and Albert ‘Al’ Leo – were World War II sailors of Irish-American descent who, while serving together on the light cruiser USS Juneau, were all lost when their ship was sunk by enemy action on November 13, 1942. Although it was US Navy practice at the time to not assign family members to the same ship, it was not strictly enforced and, in fact, when the five brothers enlisted in January of 1942, it was with the stipulation that they serve together.
As a direct result of the Sullivans’ deaths, along with the deaths of four of the five Borgstrom brothers within a few months of each other two years later, the U.S. War Department adopted the ’Sole Survivor Policy’, intended to protect members of a family from the draft during peacetime, or from hazardous duty under other circumstances, if they had already lost family members to military service.
The five Sullivan brothers hailed from Waterloo, Iowa. Today in Waterloo there is the Sullivan Brothers Veterans Museum, and also the Sullivan Brothers Memorial Park, a public park located where the Sullivan brothers’ childhood home used to stand.
The Sullivans’ story partly inspired the 1998 Steven Spielberg movie Saving Private Ryan. The brothers’ shared sacrifice has been twice honored by names given to destroyers in the United States Navy. The second was commissioned in 1997 and is still in service. It is, I believe, the only American warship with the definite article “The” beginning its name.
Prior to beginning filming of Saving Private Ryan, most of the main cast went through a tough ten-day “boot camp” training session, led by Marine veteran Dale Dye, founder of a company (Warriors, Inc.) which specializes in training actors to portray soldiers.
Dye and director Steven Spielberg intentionally did not include actor Matt Damon (who portrayed Private James Ryan) in that training period – as the rest of the characters were meant to feel resentful of Ryan, Dye and Spielberg felt that they didn’t want the other actors to bond with Damon over the shared experience.
Bryan Cranston, born in 1956, is obviously best known for his portrayal of Walter White in the AMC series Breaking Bad, for which he won four Emmys. He also won an Emmy as a Producer of the same show. White’s non-television acting career began in 1981, when he was the voice for two of the characters in the movie The Call of the Wild: Howl Buck. His first onscreen film appearance came in 1987, when he played a paramedic in Amazon Women on the Moon.
@Elendil_s_Heir thank you for that article and video interview. I’ve been a fan of Daly Dye and had forgotten that he worked with Oliver Stone for Platoon.
In play: actor Brian Keith served in the Marine Corps in WWII. He was a rear gunner in a SBD Douglas Dauntless dive bomber during missions against the Japanese naval base at the town of Rabaul, Papua New Guinea. The town lies inside the Rabaul caldera, or Rabaul Volcano. The Volcano erupted in 1937 and killed over 500 people.
(Not in play: I was familiar with the story about Dye and the actor training for Saving Private Ryan, as his wife, Julia Dye, is an old friend of mine, and she had shared some of the stories from that with me – she works with Dale in Warriors, Inc., and is, herself, an accomplished stuntperson and stage combat specialist.)
In play: Former U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, served in the Marine Corps as an intelligence officer during World War II. McCarthy also flew in a dozen combat missions, as a gunner-observer, though these were generally low-risk missions. After one such mission, McCarthy was allowed to shoot as much ammo as he wanted (primarily at coconut trees), which earned him the nickname “Tail-Gunner Joe.”
During his political career, McCarthy significantly exaggerated his combat experience, and the dangers he faced; due to his “stolen valor” claims, his political opponents mocked him with sarcastic use of the “Tail-Gunner Joe” nickname.
Far be it from me to stand up for Joe McCarthy and his actions on the political stage, but to accuse him of “stolen valor” is, I believe, a little harsh. Did he enhance his war stories? Of course; but I’m sure he’s not the only ex-GI who did (or will in the future).
And at least he answered the call and served… unlike Commander Bone Spurs.
in play:
During WWII, gun crew members on bomber aircraft generally did not get individual credit for destroying enemy aircraft, as War Department policy was for the members of the crew to think of themselves as a single unit and act as a team rather than an individual.
However, this did not prevent M/SGT Michael Arooth, the tail-gunner on “Tondelayo”, a B-17 of the US Army Air Force, from eventually attaining “Triple Ace” status after destroying a total of seventeen enemy aircraft over the course of fourteen missions (a flyer is generally considered an “Ace” after five air-combat victories). He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for this achievement.
Tondelayo was a role played by Hedy Lamarr in the 1942 movie, White Cargo. She was apparently popular with the GIs. Tondelayo has been painted as nose art on a B-17 and a B-25.
George Carlin was fond of the name Tondelayo and gave it to several women mentioned in passing in his early standup routines, perhaps most memorably Tondelayo Breckinridge (who invariably introduced herself by saying, almost defiantly, “I’m salty!”).
Myra Breckinridge was a 1970 comedy film, based on Gore Vidal’s 1968 novel of the same name. The film depicts a man, Myron Breckinridge (played by Rex Reed), who undergoes a sex-change operation, becoming Myra (played by Raquel Welch).
The film also featured two actors who would later become major stars: Farrah Fawcett (in her second film role) and Tom Selleck (his first film).
