In 1971, Ringo Starr appeared in 200 Motels, a bizarre musical film written and directed by Frank Zappa and Tony Palmer, which featured music by Zappa. Starr played a character called Larry the Dwarf, who dressed like Zappa. Also appearing in the movie was Keith Moon, the drummer for The Who. Moon played a character known as the hot nun.
Lord Keith of Kinkel was a lord of appeal in ordinary, ie a member of the House Lords in its judicial capacity, at that time the highest court of appeal for much of the United Kingdom.
Irreverent law students naturally refer to him as Kinky Keith when discussing his decisions.
Richard “Kinky” Freidman was an American humorist and musician who, at the age of seven, was chosen as one of 50 local players to challenge U.S. grandmaster Samuel Reshevsky to simultaneous games. Reshevsky won all 50 games, but Friedman was, by far, the youngest competitor.
Kinky Boots is a 2005 English comedy-drama film, starring Joel Edgerton and Chiwetel Ojiofor. Based on a true story, the plot revolves around a struggling, family-owned English shoe factory, which attempts to turn around its fortunes by making women’s-style footwear for drag queens.
The film was adapted into a stage musical, with a book by Harvey Fierstein and music by Cyndi Lauper. It premiered on Broadway in 2013, and won six Tony Awards.
Actor Chiwetel Ejiofor’s middle name is Umeadi. His parents come from Nigeria and are from the Igbo peoples, one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa. His younger sister, Zain Ejiofor Asher, is a CNN correspondent. One of his earliest roles was in the 1997 Steven Spielberg film Amistad where he played Ensign James Covey who is remembered today chiefly for his role as interpreter during the legal proceedings in the United States federal courts that followed the 1839 revolt aboard the Spanish slave ship.
Carey Loftin worked as a professional stuntman and stunt coordinator in Hollywood. He claimed his most difficult stunt was the final scene in Steven Spielberg’s Duel, where he played the murderous truck driver. He is credited for an acting role by having his arm and boots visible on film. Loftin also performed the car chase scene in The French Connection, was one of the team of drivers in Bullitt, and the driver of the titular car in Christine.
Bullitt County, Kentucky, is located in the north central part of the state. The western part of the county is part of the Army’s Fort Knox, and Bullitt’s Lick is also in the county and its saltworks was the earliest saltworks in Kentucky.
The county is named after Alexander Scott Bullitt, the 1st Lieutenant Governor of young state in 1800-1804 and who helped draft the state’s Constitution. Kentucky became the 15th state in 1792. Kentucky’s official Latin state motto is Deo gratiam habeamus, or, Let us be grateful to God.
When a new Pope is elected, the protodeacon of the College of Cardinals gives the Habemus papem (We have a Pope) announcement.
Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum;
habemus Papam:
Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum,
Dominum [first name]
Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem [surname]
qui sibi nomen imposuit [papal name].
The first five commonly-recognized Popes are Peter (Christ’s former disciple), Linus, Anacletus, Clement I and Evaristus. No later Pope has used any of these names but Clement; there have been fourteen pontiffs of that name, the most recent of which died in Rome in 1774.
Prior to 1978, the Roman Catholic Church had not had a Pope who had been born outside of Italy in 450 years. The most recent three pontiffs, however, have all been born in other countries:
- John Paul II: Poland
- Benedict XVI: Germany
- Francis: Argentina
Pope Adrian VI was the last Pope prior to John Paul II who was born outside of Italy. He was born in Utrecht in the Holy Roman Empire in 1459.
Talia Rose Coppola Shire, better known as Talia Shire, is an American actress best known for her roles in The Godfather trilogy and the Rocky series. Shire played Connie Corleone in The Godfather movies and was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in The Godfather Part II. Shire played Adrian Pennino, the love interest of Rocky Balboa, in the Rocky movies, and she was nominated for Best Actress for her work in Rocky.
Shire is the sister of director and producer Francis Ford Coppola.
Vasco de Balboa was a Spanish explorer, conquistador, and governor, who is best remembered for crossing the Isthmus of Panama and becoming the first European to lead an expedition to have seen or reached the Pacific from the New World.
Keats inaccurately used Cortez as the first European to see the Pacific, in his sonnet « On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer ».
Ray Chapman was a major-league baseball player, who played shortstop for the Cleveland Indians from 1912 until 1920.
On August 16th, 1920, during an Indians game against the New York Yankees at the Polo Grounds, Chapman was at bat, when he was hit in the head by a pitch thrown by Carl Mays. Chapman suffered a fractured skull and a brain injury, and fell unconscious a few moments later; he died at a hospital that night.
Baseball rules at that time allowed for balls to stay in use despite becoming scuffed and dirty – a strategy which many pitchers used to make their pitches harder to hit (and more difficult to see). It’s believed that the combination of a dirty ball, the late afternoon light, and Mays’ “submarine” pitching delivery, combined to leave Chapman unable to see the ball, and react to it, before it hit him.
After Chapman’s death, major league baseball changed its rules, requiring umpires to replace balls which became dirty or scuffed, and largely outlawing pitchers from dirtying or doctoring the ball. To date, Chapman remains the only MLB player to die as a direct result of an injury suffered during a game.
One of the items specifically listed in the rules as not being allowed to be used to doctor a ball is liquorice.
Per Google, “Liquorice or licorice is the common name of Glycyrrhiza glabra, a flowering plant of the bean family Fabaceae, from the root of which a sweet, aromatic flavoring is extracted.”
Licorice all-sorts are a traditional Christmas treat.
Over-consumption of licorice can lead to severe reactions, up to and including death.
When Lord Peter Wimsey went undercover at an advertising business to solve a murder, he used his two middle names as his alter-ego: « Death Bredon ». He explained that most people with that name rhymed it with « teeth », but he personally preferred to rhyme it with « breath ».