According to the World Population Review site, in the US most women have black (85%) or brown (11%) hair, while blondes (2%) and redheads (1%) are much less frequent.
But as it is said, blondes have more fun, which was a song originally released as the title track of Rod Stewart’s 1978 album Blondes Have More Fun.
1978 was the first full year of the Carter Administration. Jimmy Carter turned 100 on Oct. 1, 2024, becoming the first centenarian former President of the United States, and remaining the longest-lived former POTUS.
It is not uncommon for young white children to have light blonde hair (“towheads”), but for their hair to darken to brown as they grow older, leaving them as brunettes by the time they reach adulthood. While the exact mechanism is unknown, it is believed that, in these children, one or more genes which are responsible for turning on production of “eumelanin” (the pigment responsible for brown and black hair) are activated as the child ages.
Edit to account for simulpost Before he turned gray, Jimmy Carter’s hair color was somewhere between a dark ash blonde and a brunette.
Those same children who have light blonde hair are more likely to have pale blue eye color, which also darkens as they grow older.
The motto of Yale University is: “Lux et veritas” (“Light and truth”).
Yale University (1701) is the third oldest institution of higher education in the US behind Harvard (1636) and William & Mary (1693). Yale is home to the oldest collegiate daily newspaper still in existence. Printed five days a week since January 28, 1878, the Yale Daily News lives up to its moniker. Yale also claims the oldest and most well known a cappella group: the Wiffenpoofs have been singing on Monday nights since 1909.
Former presidents who attended Yale for undergrad studies include William Howard Taft, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush while former presidents Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton attended Yale Law School.
While Yale can lay claim to having ‘produced’ five US Presidents, Harvard leads in that category with eight. Eight U.S. Presidents have graduated from Harvard, either from the undergraduate college or from one of its graduate or professional schools. These Presidents are John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Rutherford Hayes (law school), Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, George W. Bush (business school), and Barack Obama (law school).
Eleanor Roosevelt’s maiden name was, in fact, Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt was her uncle (through her father’s side of the family), and Franklin Roosevelt was her father’s fifth cousin. When Eleanor and Franklin were wed, her uncle Theodore gave away the bride at the ceremony.
Eleanor Roosevelt’s first name was Anna.
A light, almost iceberg, blue is called ‘Roosevelt Blue’ after the color of Alice Roosevelt’s wedding dress.
Alice Walton is the only daughter of Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart. Born in 1949, she has been a lover and collector of art since childhood. In 2011, her efforts led the Walton Family Foundation to fund the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. Her extensive art collection is housed in the museum.
(We visited this museum yesterday. I’m not a particular lover of art, but this visit was well worth the effort!)
Alice Roosevelt was extremely self-confident and determined to go her own way. As a young woman in the White House, she was continually getting into trouble and into the papers.
When her antics were brought to Teddy’s attention, he replied: “I can do one of two things. I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice Roosevelt. I cannot possibly do both.”
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is a 1974 romantic comedy-drama film, directed by Martin Scorsese, about a young widow traveling across the southwestern U.S., seeking a better life for herself and her young son. Alice initially intends to go to her hometown of Monterey, California, to resume her career as a singer, but winds up stuck in Phoenix, where she works as a lounge singer for a time, before moving to Tuscon, where she takes a job as a waitress in a diner.
The film starred Ellen Burstyn as Alice, and co-starred Kris Kristofferson, Harvey Keitel, Diane Lane, and Jodie Foster. Burstyn won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Alice.
In 1976, a sitcom TV adaption of the film, titled Alice, premiered on CBS, starring Linda Lavin as Alice, and focusing on her job as a waitress at Mel’s Diner (though it was relocated to Phoenix in the TV series). Vic Tayback was the only actor from the film who returned to play his role (Mel, the diner’s owner and cook) in the series, though Lane, who had played the waitress Flo in the movie, joined the series late in its run as a different waitress.
Phoenix is the only US capital that has a population over 1,000,000 within the city limits proper.
In Star Trek canon, the first Human-built spaceship to go faster than the speed of light, drawing the attention of a passing Vulcan starship and leading to first contact between the races, was the Phoenix. The ship was designed and built by the later-legendary Zefram Cochrane. The incident was shown in the 1996 movie Star Trek: First Contact.
The speed of light is exactly equal to 299,792,458 meters per second, or about 670,616,629 miles per hour or about 186,282 miles per second. One light-year is almost 6 trillion (6,000,000,000,000) miles. A fast jet plane traveling at 2,000 miles per hour would need to fly for 571,429 years to reach that distance. A light-year is about 63,000 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
The Voyager 1 space probe, launched in 1977, is the farthest human object. Today it is about 11,184,681,460 miles from Earth. A light-year is about 530 times that distance.
Now, Voyager is a movie starring Bette Davis who transforms from a shy, neurotic girl oppressed by her mother into a self-confident young woman. One famous scene is where her love interest, Jerry, lights two cigarettes at once in his mouth and then gives her one. They have one sexual encounter, but because of his family situation, at the end of the movie they are close friends and she is caring for his daughter. He asks her if she is happy and she replies “Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the Moon. We have the stars.”
In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the antagonist was V’Ger, an artificial life form, cloaked in a massive energy cloud, which was threatening to destroy life on Earth. Over the course of the movie, the crew of the Enterprise learned that V’Ger wasactually Voyager 6, a NASA space probe which had been upgraded by a race of intelligent machines, and had achieve sentience.
V’Ger was still trying to achieve its programmed mission: collect data, and report back to its “Creator,” but could not understand that the “Creator” was humans (rather than another machine), and was intent on destroying the organic life forms on Earth, which it interpreted as interfering with its Creator’s ability to communicate with it.
(There was no Voyager 6 in real life; NASA’s Voyager program concluded after sending out two probes.)
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is a 1973 fantasy/adventure film and is the second of three Sinbad films released by Columbia Pictures, following The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and preceding Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977). The movie includes stop-motion animation by the legendary Ray Harryhausen, and Tom Baker as the main protagonist Koura. Baker would later go on to star as the Fourth Doctor in the British series Doctor Who.
Tom Dempsey (1947-2020) is best known for the record-setting 63-yard field goal that he kicked in an NFL game on November 8, 1970. Born without fingers on his right hand and without toes on his right foot, Dempsey wore a custom-made shoe with a flattened and enlarged toe surface. Dempsey’s kick, which broke the record by six yards, won the game for the Saints over the Lions. It was one of only two victories for the Saints that season.
Dempsey’s record has since been broken twice; the second time was by Justin Tucker of the Ravens, who in 2021 kicked a 66-yard field goal as time expired…to beat the Lions.
However, Dempsey has another record that will never be broken (at least, under the current rules). On October 8, 1973, Dempsey was the kicker for the Eagles in a game against the Cowboys. Late in the first quarter, the Eagles faced a fourth-and-goal from inside the 1-yard line. The field goal unit was sent onto the field, and Dempsey converted a 7-yard field goal. (The spot was likely between the 7- and 8-yard lines, but the official measurement is recorded from the shorter distance.) The next season, the goalposts were moved to the back of the end zone, so a 7-yard field goal is no longer possible. The 7-yard field goal remains the shortest converted field goal in NFL history.