From 1958 to 1962, Merv Griffin hosted ‘Play Your Hunch’, a game show produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman. It ran on all three networks.
In the James Cameron sf undersea action movie The Abyss, one character, making a pun about a Multiple Independent Targetable Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) and the usual opening of Merv Griffin’s talk show, reveals the nuclear weapon by saying, “Heeeeeere’s MIRV!”
Merv Griffin created both Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.
Merv Griffin was born in San Mateo CA, just south of San Francisco. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake when the Bay Bridge was shut down for repairs, the next nearest bridge crossing the bay to the east bay was the San Mateo bridge.
Retired Judge Burt Griffin, a former staff attorney for the Warren Commission, has written a new memoir about his experiences. His principal responsibility at the time was determining if Jack Ruby acted on his own or at the behest of anyone, such as the Mafia, who might want to silence Lee Harvey Oswald.
Hale Boggs (D-LA), Democrat House Majority Leader and member of the Warren Commission, publicly questioned the final report issued by the Commission, in particular the actions of former FBI head J. Edgar Hoover. Boggs later disappeared while flying from Anchorage to Juneau, Alaska, along with three other passengers. He is presumed dead as of November 24, 1972. His wife Lindy assumed his seat for the remainder of his term, following a special election.
Comet Hale-Bopp was discovered by two observers, Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp, both working independently, and both first identifying the comet on the night of July 23, 1995. The comet was visible to the naked eye from Earth for over eighteen months in 1996-97.
Hale-Bopp is believed to have made its most recent previous trip into the inner solar system in 2215 BC; it may have been observed in ancient Egypt during this time, as the pyramid of Pepi II (a pharaoh who had died a year earlier) makes reference to what may have been a comet, accompanying him in his journey in the heavens.
18239 Paseo Victoria, Rancho Santa Fe CA is just a 20 minute drive from the Camp Pendleton main gate (map, https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZhiczdhhtRmiKHUK9). The house there is where 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult killed themselves in March 1997 when Comet Hale–Bopp passed by. They all took phenobarbital mixed with apple sauce or pudding and washed it down with vodka, and then they tried plastic bags around their heads to induce suffocation. Each had $5.75 in their pocket in reference to a Mark Twain story which said $5.75 was “the cost to ride the tail of a comet to heaven.” No such passage from the writings of Twain is known to exist.
Mark Twain and his wife loved to shop while on their many travels. In the main bedroom of his home in Hartford, Conn., now a museum, you can see the elaborately-carved wooden headboard they bought in Europe. Twain asked that it be put at the foot of their bed instead, because he enjoyed looking at it and couldn’t see it if it was behind him.
Record producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange served as producer for numerous hit rock albums in the 1970s and 1980s, by bands such as the Boomtown Rats, AC/DC, and Def Leppard. In the 1990s, he produced the albums of his then-wife, country singer Shania Twain.
Shania Twain’s first number one hit was “Any Man of Mine” in 1995.
“Stand By Your Man” is a song recorded by American country artist Tammy Wynette in 1968. It proved to be the most successful record of Wynette’s career, and while it has been derided by feminists it has risen to become the number one single on CMT’s list of the Top 100 Country Music Songs.
Pastor Jay Bakker’s church used rainbow-colored communion bread to celebrate the legalization of gay marriage in Minnesota. He is the son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.
Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker were the original hosts of The 700 Club until a falling out between Jim and founder Pat Robertson forced Jim to leave Robertson’s Christian Broadcast Network and start his own PTL network. It was reported that staffers destroyed the Bakkers’ set after their departure. Robertson took over hosting The 700 Club and changed the format from a Christian variety to a Christian talk show.
Tammy Faye Bakker became an advocate for accepting homosexuals in the 1980s, during the height of the AIDS epidemic; she was one of the few conservative Christians who publicly did so. She felt that, when the evangelical Christian community ostracized her in the wake of PTL’s downfall, it was the gay community which rallied to her.
Tammy Faye Messner divorced Jim Bakker in 1992, following his conviction and imprisonment for fraud and conspiracy. She then married Roe Messner, a Kansas developer who became famous for building over 1700 churches, including several megachurches. Tammy Faye was diagnosed with cancer in 1996 and succumbed to the disease in July of 2007 at the age of 65. Her cremains are buried in the Messner family plot in Waldron Cemetery in Kansas, southwest of Wichita near the Oklahoma border.
The USS Kansas was a Connecticut-class battleship which sailed with the Great White Fleet, sent around the world by President Theodore Roosevelt as a symbol of American naval might and reach. She was decommissioned in 1921. There has not been another ship of that name in the United States Navy since then.
The Great White North is a 1981 comedy album, by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, portraying their SCTV characters Bob and Doug McKenzie. The album reached #1 on the Canadian RPM album chart, and #8 on the U.S. Billboard chart; a single from the album, the song “Take Off,” which features guest vocalist Geddy Lee of Rush, was also a top 20 hit in the U.S.
The Great White Hope is a phrase coined by writer Jack London to describe James J. Jeffries before his prizefight with heavyweight champion Jack Johnson. The phrase has been tagged as a nickname to at least 7 other boxers, including William Barbour, Gerry Cooney, Luther McCarty, Tommy Morrison, Jerry Quarry, Jess Willard, and Willie de Wit.
It appears as though James Jackson Jeffries was the original Great White Hope.
Black heavyweight boxing world champion Jack Johnson was posthumously pardoned for his 1913 Mann Act conviction, thought by many to be racially-motivated, by President Donald Trump in 2018, with the backing of Sylvester Stallone, Mike Tyson, Ken Burns and John McCain, among others.