Marge vs the Monorail was the first of many episodes to feature a cameo by Leonard Nimoy.
Leonard Nimoy was originally from Boston. Several non-canon Star Trek novels have given Cmdr. Spock’s mother, Amanda Grayson, Boston roots.
Winona Ryder, who played Amanda Grayson in the 2009 Star Trek reboot, is just six years older than Zachary Quinto, who played her son, Spock.
When he was starting out in Hollywood, Nimoy drove cab to make ends meet.
One of his passengers was a young senator from Boston, JFK.
Aside. I just want to quote The Simpsons.
I’ve heard those things are awful loud!
It rides as gently as a cloud
Is there a chance the track could bend?
Not on your life, my Hindu friend.
The ring came off my pudding can!
Take my penknife, my good man!
I swear that it’s your only choice!
Throw up your hands and raise your voice!
Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!
But Springfield’s streets are cracked and broken…
To bring knoodler and northern_piper’s trivia together
Wynona Ryder started in the Season 4 premier of Drunk History. The episode was called Boston.
Winona Ryder was born Winona Laura Horowitz in 1971 in Winona County, Minnesota. She was named after her birthplace and Laura Huxley, a family friend who was the wife of writer Aldous Huxley. Other family friends included Timothy Leary (Ryder’s godfather), poet Allen Ginsburg, and novelist Philip K. Dick.
In the 1968 Dragnet episode “The Big Prophet”, Liam Sullivan played Brother William Bentley, leader of the Temple of the Expanded Mind, a thinly fictionalized version of Dr Timothy Leary. Bentley held forth for the entire half-hour on the rights of the individual and the benefits of LSD and marijuana, while Joe Friday argued the contrary.
The actual name of Big Brother, the Stalinesque dictator in George Orwell’s dystopic sf novel 1984, is never revealed.
Cory Doctorow is the author of Little Brother, a YA novel that explores Orwellian themes of government control.
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy was so involved in the various initiatives of the administration of his older brother, President John F. Kennedy, that a common White House joke at the time was, “Little Brother is watching you.”
Initially John F Kennedy did not want to appoint his younger brother to the Attorney General position in his cabinet, but their father insisted.
In 1960, John F. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, was the first Catholic person elected President of the United States; in 2020, Joe Biden, Democrat of Delaware, became the second.
Of the 45 men who have held the office of President of the United States, 43 are known to have professed some manner of Christian faith; there is apparently no verified information about a professed religious faith or denomination for Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.
Of the 43 Christian Presidents, 35 were Protestant, four were Nontrinitarian Unitarians, two were Roman Catholic, and two were Restorationists.
Singer John Denver’s birth name was Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. His father, USAF Captain Henry John “Dutch” Deutschendorf Sr., was a pilot who flew the Convair B-58 Hustler. The Hustler was the first operational bomber capable of Mach 2 flight.
Dutch Deutschendorf set a number of air speed records in a Hustler in 1961, when John Denver turned 17.
John Denver supported Jimmy Carter in his campaign in the 1976 Presidential election. An avid pilot, Denver was killed in a single-fatality crash while piloting a recently purchased light plane in 1997 at age 53.
Jimmy Carter is the oldest former POTUS, at age 99. Second oldest was George H.W. Bush, who lived to be 94 years old. Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan both lived to the age of 93, and Herbert Hoover was 90 at the time of his death. No other president lived to be 90.
The POTUS with the most children, with 15 children, was John Tyler.
Five Presidents fathered no biological children: George Washington, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, and James Buchanan.
Buchanan, who never married, adopted his niece, Harriet Lane. Washington adopted the two children from the first marriage of his wife, Martha. Jackson adopted the nephew of his wife, Rachel, and was also the legal guardian to a number of other children.
Buchanan was rumored to have had relations with William R. King, a Southern Democrat who served as vice president under the previous administration. The two men lived together after Buchanan left the White House.
There were rumours, but King died two weeks into his term as VP, so didn’t live with Buchanan later.
King was sworn into office in Havana, where he had gone for health reasons. Came home shortly afterwards and died in his plantation.