Brother James was a somewhat eccentric Scots minister, who composed the tune “Brother James’ Air”, often used for a sung version of Psalm 23. He is not known to have played any musical instrument, but “he was aye hummin’,” according to one of his neighbours.
“Brother” is the name traditionally given to a male lay in the Christian Church. The title represents a significant way of being in the ecclesial community in which he is a Brother of Jesus Christ, who told his followers: “And you are all brothers.” In this context the use of the corresponding term is in the plural, because a Brother can only be so in the company of other Brothers, in the context of fraternity, and never individually.
Brother Maynard (Eric Idle) is the keeper of the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch in the 1975 Arthurian epic comedy, Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
The film Monty Python and the Holy Grail was financed, in part, by the rock groups Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, and by musician Ian Anderson (of the band Jethro Tull). This was due to the Pythons being unable to convince film studios to finance the project, and because the musicians saw it as a good tax write-off.
The ‘real’ Jethro Tull was an English agronomist and inventor who was born in 1674 and died in 1741. Although trained as a lawyer, he instead chose to operate his father’s farm and, in 1701, he invented and perfected a horse-drawn seed drill that planted the seeds in neat rows. This was a huge advance over the current practice of planting by scattering the seeds by hand. Tull’s methods of farming and cultivation eventually helped lay the basis for modern agriculture techniques.
Max Baer, Jr, son of heavyweight boxing champion Max Baer, Sr, is best known for portraying Jethro Bodine in The Beverly Hillbillies. After the show ended, Baer found problems getting more acting offers due to being typecast as a yokel. He turned to working behind the camera, writing, producing, and directing. Baer wrote and produced the drama Macon County Line (1974), in which he played Deputy Reed Morgan, the highest-grossing movie per dollar invested at the time. Made for US$110,000, it earned almost US$25 million at the box office, a record that lasted until The Blair Witch Project surpassed it in 1999.
LNI610, and ETH302.
LNI610 was Lion Air flight 610. On 29 October 2018 the flight, a Boeing 737 MAX with 189 souls on board crashed into the Java Sea 13 minutes after takeoff, killing all 189 passengers and crew.
ETH302 was Ethiopian Air flight 302. On 10 March 2019 the flight, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 with 157 souls on board crashed near the town of Bishoftu, Ethiopia 6 minutes after takeoff, killing all 157 passengers and crew.
In less than five months, 346 people died in crashes in the Boeing 737 MAX. Between March 2017 and March 2019, the global fleet of 387 aircraft operated 500,000 flights and experienced two fatal crashes, having an accident rate of 4.0 accidents per one million flights, whereas the previous Boeing 737 generations averaged 0.2 accidents per one million flights.
Before he sold his first novel, Thomas Pynchon was a technical writer at Boeing. He never mentioned to his coworkers that he wrote fiction; they only discovered it was V. was published.
Alan Moore’s graphic novel V for Vendetta, later adapted into a movie by the Wachowskis, features the title character V, a secretive but deadly freedom fighter opposed to a post-World War III British fascist regime, quoting and reading from Thomas Pynchon’s book V.
English actor Hugo Weaving has starred in a number of popular science-fiction, fantasy, and comic-book films, including as Agent Smith in the Matrix films, as Elrond in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, as V in V for Vendetta, as the voice of Megatron in the Transformers films, and as the Red Skull in Captain America: The First Avenger.
Some facts and rumors about The Matrix:
- Will Smith, Nicolas Cage, and Johnny Depp turned down the role of Neo
- Janet Jackson wanted to play Trinity but was set to go on tour
- Sean Connery turned down Morpheus because he didn’t understand the script (he also passed on Gandalf for the same reason)
- Reeves had just undergone spinal surgery prior to filming
- The scene where Neo vomits was unscripted; Keanu had eaten a chicken pot pie that didn’t agree with him
- Hugo Weaving based Agent Smith’s voice on the directors’ manner of speech
Janet Jackson was born in 1966 in Gary, Indiana, the youngest of the ten Jackson children. After the early success of her brothers group, The Jackson 5, the family moved to Los Angeles in 1969. Janet first appeared onstage with her brother Randy; she was 7 years old when they performed at the MGM Casino in Las Vegas. She released her debut solo album when she was 16 years old, and has since sold over 100 million records.
Jimmy Jam (James Samuel Harris III) and Terry Lewis are musicians and music producers, who have had a partnership since the early 1980s. They were members of the band Morris Day and the Time, before focusing on record producing – the duo are particularly known for their work with Janet Jackson, with whom they have collaborated on nine songs which reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
The historical musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, about the seventh President of the United States, closed on Broadway after just 120 performances. Hamilton, about the first Secretary of the Treasury, is still going strong seven years after it premiered on Broadway, with ongoing productions in London, Sydney and Hamburg, and three U.S. tours to date.
The portrait of Alexander Hamilton has been on the obverse side of the US $10 bill since 1929. Prior to that, a slightly larger sized bill was issued with a portrait of Andrew Jackson on the obverse.
The source of the portrait on the $10 bill is John Trumbull’s 1805 painting of Hamilton. The $10 bill is unique in that it is the only denomination in circulation in which the portrait faces to the left. It also features one of two non-presidents on currently issued U.S. bills, the other being Benjamin Franklin on the $100 bill.
1776 is a film musical from 1972, based on the 1969 Broadway musical of the same name; the film’s plot centers on the events leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The film starred William Daniels as John Adams, Ken Howard as Thomas Jefferson, Howard Da Silva as Benjamin Franklin, David Ford as John Hancock, and Blythe Danner as Martha Jefferson; the first four all were reprising their roles from the Broadway version.
The largest US bill in circulation today is the Ben Franklin $100. Bills no longer in circulation but remain legal tender are the following.
Previously there has been the William McKinley $500 bill. The last $500 bill rolled off the presses in 1945, and it was formally discontinued 24 years later in 1969. Today it is legal tender. Most $500 notes in circulation today are in the hands of dealers and collectors.
+
+
The original $1,000 bill featured Alexander Hamilton, and later Grover Cleveland. Like the $500 bill, the $1,000 bill was discontinued in 1969.
+
+
The $5,000 bill was initially issued to finance the Revolutionary War and was only officially printed by the government when the Civil War began. The bill was graced with a portrait of James Madison. President Richard Nixon ordered that the bills be recalled in 1969 due to fear of criminals using them for money laundering activities.
+
+
Salmon P. Chase was the only person ever on the $10,000 bill. He was never President, but he was governor of, and senator from, Ohio, Secretary of the Treasury under Abraham Lincoln, and a chief justice of the Supreme Court. This was the largest denomination ever printed for public consumption.
+
+
Woodrow Wilson was on the $100,000 bill, which was actually a gold certificate that was never circulated or issued for public use. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing created them during the Great Depression in 1934, for conducting official transactions between Federal Reserve banks.
The $100,000 Candy Bar was invented in 1964 by Nestlé. The candy manufacturer was inspired by the slew of hit game shows like “The $64,000 Question,” “Twenty-One,” and “The Big Surprise.” On the “Big Surprise” the contestant chose a subject area and was asked to answer ten questions ranging in value from $100 to $100,000. In the early 1970s the name was changed to “$100,000 Bar,” and then by the mid-80s it was called “100 Grand Bar.” It’s made from caramel and crisped rice, coated with chocolate.
Twenty-One was a popular TV quiz show, which ran on NBC from 1956 until 1958. The show was the central subject of the 1950s quiz-show scandal, as it had (unknown to viewers) become rigged and choreographed; it was pulled off the air once the fixing became public knowledge.
The 1994 film Quiz Show dramatized the scandal, and specifically the rigged competition on Twenty-One between contestants Charles Van Doren and Herb Stempel.
Jeopardy! originally aired in 1964 and is one of the longest-running game shows of all time. Creator Merv Griffin wanted to create a successful quiz show of the ‘question and answer’ type since there had not been one since the quiz show scandals of Twenty-One and The Big Surprise in 1956.
The Jeopardy! record for the longest winning streak is held by Ken Jennings who won 74 consecutive matches in 2004. Jennings won $2,522,700 over his 75 episodes, for an average of $33,636 per episode.
The record holder for lifetime Jeopardy!-related winnings is Brad Rutter, who won nearly $5.2 million in cash and prizes beginning in 2000. Counting all prizes that he won, he has achieved a cumulative total of $5,129,036 in winnings.