Brandeis was also opposed because of his track record as a successful lawyer who took on big business, opposed trusts, and so on. His appointment by President Wilson triggered the first Senate confirmation hearings for a Supreme Court justice. The Senate approved him by a vote of 47-22. He served on the Court from 1916 to 1939. His positions on free speech and the right to privacy have been heavily influential.
Woodrow Wilson’s Vice-President Thomas Marshall is the one who said, “What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar.”
Marshall also said:
“Once there were two brothers: one ran away to sea, the other was elected Vice-President – and nothing was ever heard from either of them again.”
Vice President Thomas Marshall, not wishing to overstep his bounds or seem unduly ambitious, took no overt steps to assume power when President Woodrow Wilson was undergoing a long convalescence after his Oct. 2, 1919 stroke. Wilson’s political foes accused First Lady Edith Wilson, who shielded Wilson from unwanted visitors and selected papers for his review and signature, of secretly running the country.
The older couple in All in the Family were Archie and Edith Bunker. All in the Family was based on a British sitcom called Till Death Do Us Part, where the older couple was Alf and Else Garnett.
ALF is an American television sitcom that aired on NBC from September 22, 1986, to March 24, 1990. A writer on the series, Jerry Stahl, later became the basis for the movie Permanent Midnight, starring Ben Stiller in the lead role. The movie dealt with Stahl’s drug addiction while working on TV scripts for several shows, including ALF, although the puppet was called “Mr. Chompers” in the film.
Alf aka Freddie Lennon, John Lennon’s father, released a single in 1965 called “That’s My Life (My Love and My Home)”. It was a success to start but then disappeared. Alf suspected that John was responsible for that. Alf never released another song.
John Lennon had two sons: Julian (b. 1963), whom he had with his first wife, Cynthia Powell, and Sean (b. 1975), whom he had with his second wife, Yoko Ono.
Both Julian and Sean have pursued careers as musicians; Julian has also worked extensively as a photographer and author, while Sean has worked as a music producer and actor.
In 1973 John Lennon and Yoko Ono broke up, and event described by John as “his lost weekend”, even though it lasted over a year. Yoko has revealed in various interviews that this was her idea, that May Pang should become John’s companion. Up til then, May had been a personal assistant to both John and Yoko.
The etymology of the month of May is not clear. May may have been named after Maia, the Greek goddess who was the mother of Hermes.
May may also have been named after “maiores”, Latin for “elders”, followed by June, named after “iuniores”, or young people.
Actress and comedian Maya Rudolph is the daughter of the late soul singer Minnie Riperton and composer/producer Richard Rudolph.
Riperton’s biggest hit was the 1975 song “Lovin’ You,” which she co-wrote with the elder Rudolph; when Riperton recorded the song, the then-two-year-old Maya was in the studio with her parents, and Riperton can be heard singing “Maya” near the end of the album version of the song.
When Louis Armstrong sings the studio version of Mack the Knife, he mentions Lotte Lenya who was in the studio that day as an ab lib. Lenya was in The Threepenny Opera for which the song was originally written by her husband Kurt Weill.
After unexpectedly finding on final descent that the planned landing site for Apollo 11 was too rocky, astronaut Neil Armstrong manually piloted the Lunar Module to a safe landing. Later NASA analysis found that he had less than 50 second of fuel left by the time “the Eagle [had] landed.”
On September 9, 2002, 72-yr old astronaut Buzz Aldrin—the second human to set foot on the moon—was walking outside a Beverly Hills hotel when a conspiracy theorist started harassing him and accusing Aldrin of lying about the Apollo 11 moon landing. Aldrin punched the heckler in the face.
The Temple of Apollo on Delphi contained the Omphalos, the “naval of the world”. It was considered by Greeks to be the center of the Earth.
The Apollo program was conceived during the Eisenhower administration in early 1960, as a follow-up to Project Mercury. While the Mercury capsule could support only one astronaut on a limited Earth orbital mission, Apollo would carry three. Possible missions included ferrying crews to a space station, circumlunar flights, and eventual crewed lunar landings. The program culminated with the launch of Apollo 17, the eleventh and final mission, in 1972.
Canadian Prime Minister Diefenbaker got along well with President Eisenhower. That young pup who followed Eisenhower, not so much.
In 1919, the United States Army sent a convoy of military vehicles on a coast-to-coast expedition to determine the difficulties that might be found on such a trip. The convoy took an astonishing 62 days to complete the 3200 mile trip. A 28-year-old lieutenant colonel named Dwight Eisenhower was part of this journey, and, while later serving as US President, he was one of the champions of the proposed interstate highway system. Indeed, the official name of this system is the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.
Interstate 290 is an auxiliary interstate highway in Illinois, running through Cook and DuPage counties in the Chicago area. The eastern portion of I-290, which has its eastern terminus in downtown Chicago, is named the Dwight D. Eisenhower Expressway, and is commonly known as “The Ike” by local drivers.
Although exteriors for the acclaimed 1981-87 cop show Hill Street Blues were filmed in both L.A. and Chicago, it was supposed to be set in an unnamed Midwestern city.