Cleveland, Ohio has had four mayors of color since its founding in 1796: Carl Stokes (the first such mayor ever elected of a major American city), Michael White, Frank Jackson and the incumbent, Justin Bibb.
Justin Timberlake, who was born in Memphis in 1981, first rose to fame as the lead singer of the boy band NSYNC. In 2002, he released the first of his five studio albums, four of which rose to the #1 album in the US. From 2008-2012, he paused his musical career in favor of acting, and he had five starring roles in movies during that time.
Justin Timberlake’s movie debut was in On the Line, where he had a small, uncredited role as a makeup artist. Incidentally, Lance Bass and Joey Fatone, both members of NSYNC along with Justin, had starring roles in the movie.
EDIT: I just discovered Justin appeared in Longshot; both movies were released in 2001, but Longshot was released one day earlier than On The Line.
Randy Bass was an American baseball player. A power-hitting first baseman, Bass posted impressive performances in the minor leagues during the 1970s, but was never able to break into the majors as a full-time player.
After his contract with the Texas Rangers expired in 1982, Bass moved to Japan, where he became a star player for the Hanshin Tigers of Nippon Professional Baseball. He won two Triple Crown awards (leading the league in batting average, home runs, and RBIs) in Japan, and in 1986, he hit .389 – the highest single-season batting average ever recorded in that league.
A “Black and Tan” is half of a pint of Bass Ale with half of a pint of Guinness Draught floated on top.
The original dispute that led to the creation of the Guinness Book of World Records was the question of which is Europe’s fastest game bird, the golden plover or the red grouse. (It’s the golden plover.)
The question of whether a European swallow was stronger than an African swallow was a pertinent point in Monty Python & the Search for the Holy Grail, in which King Arthur used to thwart the Bridgekeeper and cross the Bridge of Death.
The Monty Python comedy troupe enlisted the assistance of several musicians and other celebrities to invest in the production of their 1973 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The financiers included:
- Led Zeppelin
- Pink Floyd
- Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull
- Elton John
- Michael White (a stage and film impresario)
- Charisma Records (a record label)
- Heartaches (a cricket team, founded by lyricist Tim Rice)
One difference between pythons and boas are that pythons lay eggs while boas give birth to live young.
Pink Floyd bandmates would break from recording to watch episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969 - 74).
The theme music composer for Monty Python’s Flying Circus is John Philip Sousa (1854-1932). Known as the “American March King”, Sousa’s best-known marches are “The Stars and Stripes Forever” (the National March of the United States), “Semper Fidelis” (the official march of the US Marine Corps), “The Liberty Bell”, “The Thunderer”, and “The Washington Post”. Sousa served in both the US Marine Corps and the US Navy. In the Marine Corps he rose through the ranks to become a Sergeant Major, an enlisted rank, and in the Navy he achieved the rank of Lieutenant Commander, an officer rank.
John Philip Sousa, renowned for marching bands, played the violin when he was young.
John Philip Sousa was ranked as one of the all-time great trapshooters and was enshrined in the Trapshooting Hall of Fame. He was a regular competitor representing the Navy in trapshooting competitions, particularly against the Army.
BBC made use of a recording of Sousa’s “The Liberty Bell” as the Monty Python’s Flying Circus theme song, in part, because it was in the public domain and the network would thus not have to pay any royalties.
I was there to hear the US Marine Band play the tune at the 1993 Presidential Inauguration.
Bill Clinton was sworn in for the first of his two presidential terms in January of 1993. Clinton, who succeeded George H.W. Bush as president, was himself succeeded by George W. Bush. Clinton is thus the only person whose tenure as US President was in between the presidential tenures of a father and son.
“Parliament-Funkadelic” (sometimes shortened to “P-Funk”) is the general term used to refer to a funk music collective, led by George Clinton, which has recorded and toured, typically under the names “Parliament” and “Funkadelic,” since the 1960s.
Due to the ever-shifting nature of the groups’ membership, when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, a total of 16 musicians, including Clinton, were inducted, making them the single largest group to become members of the Hall.
Brad Pitt beat out George Clooney, Mark Ruffalo, Dylan McDermott and Robert Downey Jr. to get the part of JD in ‘Thelma and Louise’ (1991).
Singer-songwriter Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in 1941 in Minnesota. His paternal grandparents had emigrated from Odessa in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine) in 1905, and his maternal grandparents emigrated from Lithuania in 1902. Dylan grew up among a tight-knit Jewish community in Hibbing, Minnesota.
In 1914, Carl Wickman and Andrew “Bus Andy” Anderson, started a bus line between Hibbing and Alice, Minnesota, which would eventually become Greyhound Lines, the world’s largest bus transportation company.
Micropachycephalosaurus is the dinosaur with the world’s longest name. The micropachycephalosaurus is only tall enough to take a bite out of your calf. Which would make you fall on the ground, writhing in pain, and then he’d easily eat the rest of you*.
Micropachycephalosaurus has the longest name of any dinosaur, with 23 letters in the genus name alone, while the full binomial, Micropachycephalosaurus hongtuyanensis, contains 37 letters.
Micropachycephalosaurus was first discovered near the Hongtuyan train station on the Shandong Peninsula of eastern China.
* — except that it was herbivorous.
The People’s Republic of China does not have a separate navy; its fleet is known as the People’s Liberation Army (Navy), or PLAN, as typically translated.