Congress passed a special bill permitting William R. King to be sworn as Vice President by a U.S. diplomat in Cuba, as no one was sure if an oath administered abroad would otherwise count.
Rufus King served (briefly) as Veep to President Pierce.
And Jefferson Davis was Pierce’s Secretary of War. Later, Davis would use this experience to be effectively his own Secretary of War while serving a President of the Confederate States of America.
Jefferson Davis of Mississippi didn’t serve a Confederate President, he was the one and only Confederate President, from 1861-1865.
From Lake Itasca in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River drops about 1,500 feet in its 2,340 mile length. It takes 90 days for a drop of water at Lake Itasca to travel to the Gulf of Mexico. During those 90 days that drop of water descends in elevation, on average, about 7½” a mile. That’s about 26 southward miles per day, and a drop of 16’ in elevation per day.
In 2005, a woman filed a lawsuit against Michael Vick (at that time, the starting quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons), alleging that she had contracted genital herpes from him, and that he had failed to inform her that he had the disease. She also alleged that Vick had sought out treatments at several clinics for his herpes, under the pseudonym “Ron Mexico,” and thus, had known of his condition.
When this story became public, many fans bought customized Falcons jerseys, with Vick’s #7, and the name “Mexico” on the back, until the NFL banned the customization of jerseys using that name.
My error: the two men lived together prior to their respective presidential elections.
In play:
Rod Smart was an NFL player who started his career with the Las Vegas Outlaws in the XFL. He was known for having the phrase, “He Hate Me” on the back of his uniform, where players’ names appear.
The Las Vegas Posse was a CFL expansion team in 1994. It was part of the CFL’s ill-fated attempt to expand to the US. The team folded after one dismal season (playing football in the summer heat of Las Vegas) in spite of an attempt by Jimmy Buffet to buy the team and move it to Miami, and attempts by the CFL to move it to Milwaukee.
The CFL held a dispersal draft of the Posse’s players. The team and the CFL were so disorganized that the Ottawa Rough Riders drafted a Las Vegas player who was dead; no-one knew he had died in a car crash, until the Rough Riders tried to contact him for the contract.
The only bright point about the Posse was that it brought rookie Anthony Calvillo into the CFL, who went on to be one of the greatest CFL QBs of all time, playing for the Montréal Alouettes.
Based on (and featuring) the songs of Jimmy Buffet, the musical Escape to Margaritaville opened on Broadway in 2018.
In the John Carpenter-directed dystopic sf thriller Escape from New York, starring Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken, Manhattan Island is sealed off as a maximum security prison, and the US Police Force has converted the Statue of Liberty into a command post and observation point.
Harry Dean Stanton, the consummate supporting character actor, appeared 207 roles that spanned over 66 years, including Escape From New York (as “Brain”). Stanton averaged more than two roles per year and appeared on TV or in movies in every year, from 1954 to 2017.
10 Marine Corps veterans who made It big in the movies include actors Gene Hackman, Adam Driver, Steve McQueen (who, BTW, is the reason why I chose Bullitt for my SDMB handle), Lee Marvin, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Glenn Ford, Robert Ryan, Warren Oates, and Tim Matheson.
However, off the more than 28 POTUSes that served in the military, none were Marines.
As a teenager, future actor Adam Driver applied to the Juilliard School, hoping to study drama, but was not accepted. Shortly after Driver graduated from high school, the 9/11 attacks occurred, which led him to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps. He served with the Marines for over 2 years, before receiving a medical discharge after suffering a broken sternum during a biking accident.
After his discharge, Driver again applied to Juilliard, and was accepted to the school the second time around.
The 2017 crime/action movie Baby Driver is set in and around Atlanta. It costars, among others, Ansel Elgort, Lily James, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx and Kevin Spacey.
Atlanta has 71 streets called “Peachtree” or some variation of that name.
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was the first recorded professional women’s baseball league. It was started in 1943 by Phillip K. Wrigley (owner of the Chicago Cubs), in order to keep baseball in the public eye while many of MLB’s players were away from the game, fighting in World War II.
The league, which consisted of teams in the Midwest, operated for twelve seasons, finally folding after its 1954 season. The 1992 comedy-drama film A League of their Own presented a fictionalized account of the league’s founding and play, focusing on the Rockford Peaches team (which was the most successful franchise in the league, winning four championships).
Geena Davis’ role of Dottie Hinson in A League of their Own was based partly on Dorothy “Dottie” Kamenshek, who played for the Rockford Peaches (1943 - 1951). Kamenshek was acknowledged as its greatest all-around player. She twice won the league’s batting title, was named to seven all-star teams and was once recruited to play for a men’s professional team.
One of the few times the 2005-2009 NBC comedy series My Name is Earl departed from having Earl Hickey (Jason Lee) narrate the story was a brief sequence in which the quiet, often-overlooked local librarian told her story, titled My Name is Dottie.
The theme song to the 80’s TV show “The Fall Guy” is titled Unknown Stuntman and is sung by the show’s star Lee Majors.
The song “Midnight Train to Georgia” was a #1 U.S. hit in 1973 for Gladys Knight and the Pips. The song was written by Jim Weatherly, who was living in Los Angeles at the time, and playing in a recreational football league with actor Lee Majors.
Weatherly called Majors’ home one night, and Majors’ then-girlfriend, actress Farrah Fawcett, answered the phone. Fawcett remarked to Weatherly that she was about to get on a “midnight plane to Houston” – the phrase stuck in Weatherly’s head, and he built a song around it, loosely basing the lyrics on Fawcett and Majors.