At the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France, Team USA won only 1 Gold Medal, and that was by figure skater Peggy Fleming. Hers was the first gold medal won by an American after the death of the entire US figure skating team in an air crash in 1961.
Fleming was born in San Jose CA and her father was a US Marine.
In 1961 she was a little too young to be on the United States figure skating team. The entire team perished in what was the first fatal accident involving a Boeing 707 in regular passenger service, only 28 months after the 707 was placed into commercial use, and in what remains the deadliest plane crash to have occurred on Belgian soil.
A strobogrammatic number is a number which appears the same when rotated 180 degrees. Examples of this are 1, 8, 69, and 1001. The last year that was such a number was 1961, and the next strobogrammatic year will be 6009.
On March 29, 1961, the Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, allowing residents of Washington, D.C. to vote in presidential elections.
The original Star Trek television series was set on board the U.S.S. Enterprise, a Constitution-class starship, with the registry number NCC-1701.
A new version of the Enterprise was created for the movies, beginning with Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979); the canonical reason given for the ship’s different appearance is that it had undergone an extensive refit, and was now a Constitution II-class ship.
The original Enterprise was destroyed, (via its self-destruct defense mechanism), in the film Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. In the following film, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, a new Enterprise, with the registry NCC-1701-A, was unveiled.
The 2025 DC Studios film Superman is now being filmed in and around Cleveland, Ohio. Scenes have already been filmed outside Cleveland City Hall and the Public Library. Today, filming at the corner of Ontario Street and St. Clair Avenue, just northwest of Public Square, included banners, hung on lightpoles, for the Metropolis Meteors baseball team (in a similar font to that of the Cleveland Guardians), and three flags flying on the former Cleveland Police Department HQ’s flagpoles: the U.S., Delaware and Metropolis flags.
The two main colors of the Delaware state flag, colonial blue and buff, are said to have been inspired by the colors of the Continental Army uniform, as worn by Gen. George Washington and his subordinates. However, most depictions and surviving examples of those uniforms show them to have been darker, more like a navy blue.
Delaware is named for an English nobleman, Lord De La Ware, who was a significant shareholder in the London Company, founded to encourage settlement in England’s colonies in North America. He was governor of Virginia from in 1619 and 1611 .
Brian May – guitarist for the English rock band Queen, and holder of a doctorate in astrophysics – is an aficionado of stereophotography, particularly the Victorian-era techniques for producing 3-D images through pairs of images and stereoscopic viewers.
in 2008, May founded the London Stereoscopic Company, Ltd., which sells stereoscopic viewers (of May’s own, patented design), reproductions of classic Victorian stereoscopic cards, and modern-day stereoscopic photos, including astronomical images, and photos of his band, Queen.
The all-time best-selling album in the United Kingdom is Greatest Hits, a compilation album by Queen. It has sold over 7 million copies. The band’s second greatest hits album, Greatest Hits II, has sold over 4 million copies and is the tenth biggest-selling album in the UK.
Not in play. What color is buff? I had to look it up.
Per wiki, “The flag of Delaware consists of a buff-colored diamond on a field of colonial blue, with the coat of arms of the state of Delaware inside the diamond.”
With a budget of $750,000 in 1982, Michael Jackson created the album Thriller which went on to be the best-selling album of all time. It sold an estimated 70 million copies worldwide. It is the best selling non-compilation album and second-best-selling album overall in the US [behind the Eagles’ Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975)].
Thriller was the best-selling album of 1983 worldwide, and in 1984 it became the first album to become the best-selling in the United States for two years.
Vincent Price performs the spoken-word (rap) on the title track of Thriller. He wasn’t the first choice to do the spoken-word portion at the end. Rod Temperton, who wrote the song for Michael Jackson, actually had none other than Elvira in mind to do it. But Thriller producer Quincy Jones knew Vincent Price personally, so the master of horror came on board. It’s quite a trick, having the erudite actor deliver words like “y’alls” with his serious demeanor.
Music producer Quincy Jones has seven children, four of whom have become figures in the entertainment and fashion industries: actress Rashida Jones, music producer Quincy Jones III, actress and fashion designer Kidada Jones, and model Kenya Kinski-Jones.
Capt. John Paul Jones, hero of the Continental Navy during the American Revolution, was born in Arbigland, Scotland, and later served as an admiral in the navy of Catherine the Great of Russia. Originally buried in Paris, his remains are now interred in an elaborate marble sarcophagus, supported by carved dolphins, in the chapel of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.
Quincy Jones and actress/model Nastassja Kinski were in a relationship for three years. Kenya Kinski-Jones is their daughter. Nastassja Kinski was nominated for a Cesar award and won a Golden Globe for her performance in Roman Polanski’s film Tess, based on the Thomas Hardy classic Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
(A beautiful film and great performance by Kinski; I still remember it vividly 34 years after seeing it. Unfortunately none of her later film roles lived up to her promise.)
Liam Neeson and Helen Mirren met while filming Excalibur in 1980 – Mirren played Morgana Le Fay, while Neeson played Sir Gawain. They became a couple, and lived together for several years. At that time, Mirren was more established as an actor, and assisted Neeson in getting an agent.
