On April 20, 1979, a swamp rabbit swam towards President Jimmy Carter’s fishing boat in Plains, Georgia, in distress or possibly “berserk.”
A White House photographer had taken a picture of the incident, which was released later on during the administration of President Ronald Reagan.
The 1980 October Surprise theory refers to an allegation that representatives of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign made a secret deal with Iranian leaders to delay the release of American hostages until after the election between Reagan and President Jimmy Carter, pending Reagan’s win.
The Iran hostage crisis began in November 1979. 52 American diplomats and citizens were held hostage when a group of militarized Iranian college students supporting the Islamic Revolution and Ayatollah Khomeini took over the US Embassy in Tehran. The students were upset because the ex-Shah of Iran was admitted to the US for cancer treatment (for chronic lymphocytic leukemia) and not returned to Iran for trial and execution. The Americans were held hostage for 444 days, until 20 January 1981.
The movie Argo (2012) was based on the Canadian Caper rescue where CIA officer Tony Mendez, with support from Canada and England, extracted six diplomat hostages on 27 January 1980. Argo won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
OOC: “Argo fuck yourself.”
Carry on!
When La La Land was announce as the winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, only two people seemed aware it was an error due to the wrong envelope being given to the presenters. One was presenter Warren Beatty who noticed that Emma Stone’s name was on the envelope but was unsure what to do and froze. His co-presenter Faye Dunaway thought he was doing a bit, glanced at the envelope and announced La La Land as the winner. The other was La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz who, while accepting the award saw the correct envelope and announce Moonlight as the correct winner.
PricewaterhouseCooper representatives, whose job it is to step in when such errors are made, were nowhere to be seen. The one time in Oscar history when they had to correct a wrong announcement, they froze.
PricewaterhouseCoopers, headquartered in London, got its start in 1854 when William Cooper founded an accountancy practice in that city. Today its brands of firms can be found in 157 countries, employing 328,000 people. It is considered one of the ‘Big Four’ of accounting firms, along with Deloitte, EY and KPMG.
Originally, a cooper was an occupation and meant someone who made barrels (and buckets, casks, etc.)
The village of Cooperstown NY lies mostly within the town of Otsego, and the rest falls within Middlefield.
Significant land in the village belonged to writer and author James Fenimore Cooper, who lived much of his boyhood and the last fifteen years of life there. The village was founded by his father William Cooper on property that he owned. William Cooper was a judge.
Cooperstown is the home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, which was established in 1936 and dedicated in 1939.
I wanted to say that too!
Carry on.
Officials of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown initially proposed that Negro League players be part of a separate - call it “segregated” - wing of the museum, but backed off after strong public criticism. In 1971 Satchel Paige, the legendary pitcher, who went into the Majors when he signed with the Cleveland Indians at age 42 (then and still the oldest rookie ever), became the first Negro League player inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Jackie Robinson was the first African-American baseball player to play in the Major Leagues. When he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, he wore the number 42 on his uniform. Today, that number has been nationally retired, and teams honor his memory by wearing that number on their jerseys on that day.
After his death before the start of the 2022-23 NBA season, Bill Russell, late of the Boston Celtics, had his #6 jersey retired across the league, making him the first NBA player to earn that distinction.
Russell won 11 of the Celtics’ 17 championships.
Bill Clinton is the only President of the United States to have been born in Arkansas, or to have served as governor of that state.
Governors of the Australian states are appointed directly by the King, under their state constitutions.
King Charles III of Australia chose to use his first name from birth as his regnal name, but was under no legal obligation to do so. If his eldest son the Duke of Cambridge follows suit, he will be King William V; likewise, his eldest son would become George VII.
In the film Superman II, Lex Luthor promised to help General Zod take over the Earth, in exchange for rulership of Australia.
Originally, Lex Luthor had red hair. Then he was depicted (accidentally) in a newspaper strip as bald.
Lex Luthor first appeared in the daily Superman comic strips (1939) as a bald nemesis of Superman. In later comic book publications, his backstory was revealed as a childhood friend of Clark Kent (Superboy) from Smallville.
Lex Luthor has been portrayed on screen by several actors, including Gene Hackman, Kevin Spacey, Jesse Eisenberg, John Shea, Michael Rosenbaum, and Jon Cryer.
Arguably, Lex Luger’s most famous championship win was when he put the Torture Rack on nWo leader Hollywood Hogan to win the WCW World Heavyweight Championship cleanly on an August 1997 edition of Monday Nitro, on Nitro’s first-ever three-hour show.
He lost the title back to Hogan five days later at the Road Wild PPV.