Chaminade University is located in Honolulu, Hawaii. Its team is the Silverswords.
Leo’s Hawaiian Punch was created as an ice cream topping syrup in 1934 by A.W. Leo, Tom Yeats, and Ralph Harrison in a converted garage in Fullerton, California. It originally contained 5 fruit juices: orange, pineapple, passion fruit, guava and papaya—all imported from Hawaii. Although customers later discovered that it made a delicious drink when mixed with water, Hawaiian Punch (with “Leo’s” name omitted) was only available wholesale in gallon glass jugs to ice cream parlors and soda fountains.
Interstate highways in the continental United States are named under the convention of the letter I, followed by a dash, and then followed by 1, 2, or 3 numbers. In Alaska, the four interstate highways are named A-1, A-2, A-3, and A-4. In Hawaii, the three interstate highways are named H-1, H-2, and H-3.
Aloha Rodeo: Three Hawaiian Cowboys, The World’s Greatest Rodeo, and a Hidden History of the American West, by David Wolman and Julian Smith, is the true story of how three “paniolo”, as cowboys were called in Hawaii, competed in the 1908 Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo. I’ve read this book, and it’s very interesting.
The Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne attack helicopter was built in the late 1960s and had a flight envelope of 200 MPH forward, 29 MPH sideways, and 23 MPH rearwards. The program was cancelled in 1972 due to its large size and its inadequate night and all-weather capabilities. At least 3 aircraft survive and are either on display or in storage, at Fort Johnson, Louisiana; at the Army Aviation Museum, Fort Novosel, Alabama; and at Fort Campbell, Kentucky/Tennessee.
Joseph Campbell, known as THE expert on comparative mythology, taught at Sarah Lawrence College for 38 years. During his first 34 years it was a woman’s college and he married a former student.
Notable alumni of Sarah Lawrence College include Alice Walker, Carly Simon, and Vera Wang.
Carly Simon and Alanis Morissette share a common bond: both wrote and performed “revenge” songs (“You’re So Vain”; “You Oughta Know”) that have topped the pop charts and have continuously refused to name their estranged partners who may have inspired them.
Over the years Simon has dropped hints indicating it may have been more than one partner who inspired her. Morissette maintains it’s not a person, but her own expression of grief that inspired her.
Carly Simon won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Let the River Run” in 1989’s Working Girl.
Sen. Paul Simon, while serving in the Illinois state legislature, wrote a book about Abraham Lincoln’s time in that branch; none had been written before then.
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, who were mega-stars as the folk-rock duo of Simon & Garfunkel, had their first taste of stardom as teenagers in 1957. Billing themselves as Tom and Jerry, they had minor success with a song entitled “Hey Schoolgirl”, a song which imitated their idols, the Everly Brothers
Al Franken, himself a future U.S. Senator from Minnesota, several times impersonated Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) on Saturday Night Live.
Famous people born in Minnesota include Prince, Judy Garland, Bob Dylan, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
A Prairie Home Companion was a radio variety show, created and hosted by Garrison Keillor, and produced by Minnesota Public Radio, which aired live on Saturday evenings from 1974 until 2016 (with a hiatus from 1987 to 1993).
The show, which featured Keillor’s humorous monologues about the fictional town of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, comedy sketches and musical guests (typically folk or roots music) was highly popular, and ran on many public radio stations in the US.
A Prairie Home Companion was Robert Altman’s final film. A highly-fictionalized account of the PHC’s final radio show, it starred Garrison Keillor alongside an all-star cast and was filmed in the same theater in which PHC was broadcast.
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy was a senior advisor to his brother, President John F. Kennedy, and not just on law-related issues. He wrote Thirteen Days about their shared experiences during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The Kevin Costner movie of the same name was loosely based on it.
Kevin Costner would appear in JFK (1991) as New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, who brought a case against businessman Clay Shaw for conspiracy in Kennedy’s murder.
While the film carries the same title as the 1969 book Thirteen Days by former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, it is in fact based on the 1997 book, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, by Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow.
In play:
Walt Garrison was a football running back, who played collegiately at Oklahoma State University, and then professionally for the Dallas Cowboys.
Ironically, as both his college and pro teams were nicknamed “the Cowboys,” Garrison (a Texas native) was a real-life cowboy, competing on the professional rodeo circuit during the football off-season; it was a knee injury suffered during a 1975 rodeo exhibition which ended Garrison’s football career.
Garrison was also known for being the longtime spokesperson for Skoal smokeless tobacco.
Walt Garrison, Calvin Hill, and Diane Thomas were running backs for the Dallas Cowboys team that won Super Bowl VI over the Miami Dolphins, 24-3. For many years, those 3 points were the fewest points
scored by any Super Bowl team until 47 years later when the New England Patriots held the Los Angeles Rams to 3 points in Super Bowl LIII, in their 13-3 victory. No other teams in Super Bowl history to date have scored less than 3 points.
(Super Bowl VI, BTW, is the earliest Super Bowl that I ever watched.)
Calvin Hill is the father of retired NBA player Grant Hill, who played college basketball for Duke University. Grant Hill played a key role in what Sports Illustrated called the greatest college basketball game of all time. In the 1992 NCAA Tournament’s East regional final pitting #1 seeded Duke against #2 seeded Kentucky, with 2.1 seconds remaining in overtime and Kentucky leading 103-102, Hill threw the inbound pass 79 feet to Christian Laettner at the opposite foul line. Laettner dribbled once to his right, then turned back to his left and shot a turnaround jumper over the Kentucky defender just as time expired. The ball swished through the net as the buzzer sounded, giving Duke a 104–103 victory.
(I watched that game too, on TV. It was an incredible game!)