Clouds of Witness, the second Lord Peter Wimsey novel by Dorothy Sayers, published in 1926, involves a trial in the House of Lords. The book’s title comes from Hebrews 12:1: “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.”
The character of Dorothy Gale (The Wizard of Oz) was likely named after L. Frank Baum’s own niece, Dorothy Louise Gage, who died in infancy. Baum’s wife was very attached to her and was deeply grieved by her death, so there is speculation that Baum inserted her name into his stories as a memorial.
Reginald Hargreaves the father figure of the comic and Netflix serial “The Umbrella Acadamy” was named after husband of Alice Liddel (the basis for Alice in Wonderland).
Sir Reginald “Rex” Harrison won two Tony Awards, for Best Lead Actor in a Play (Anne of the Thousand Days) and Best Lead Actor in a Musical (My Fair Lady).
In My Fair Lady, Rex Harrison played Professor Henry Higgins, a cultured English gentleman who falls in love with working-class girl Eliza Doolittle; three years later Harrison played a remarkable veterinarian named Dr. John Dolittle.
My Fair Lady is a musical based on Pygmalion for which George Bernard Shaw won an Oscar for adapting his own work. This made him the first person to win an Academy Award and a Nobel Prize. The only other person to accomplish this was
Bob Dylan
The first Nobel Prizes, awarded in 1901, were given for five disciplines: Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, and Peace. The winner of the Physics prize was Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, who had discovered X-Rays a few years earlier.
Röntgen did not want his discovery to be named after him; he preferred the term ‘X-Ray’, from the mathematical designation for something unknown. He also refused a patent, because he wanted the discovery to “belong to the world at large.”
“X-Ray Specs” (also known as “X-Ray Spex” and “X-Ray Glasses”) are a novelty toy item, which purport to allow the wearer to be able to see through (or into) solid objects. The glasses, which were often sold through mail-order ads in comic books, used a simple optical illusion by causing the wearer to see slightly different images through each eye.
Ray Milland starred as Dr. James Xavier in X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes (1963). Stephen King claimed in his book Danse Macabre that there was an alternative ending to the film, in which Xavier gouges out his eyes and claims he can still see; director Roger Corman remarked that while no such ending exists, he wished he would’ve included it in his final edit.
Saga of a Star World is the pilot for the original (1978) version of the science-fiction television series, Battlestar Galactica. Shown on television as a three-hour movie (and also released in the U.S. and Canada as a theatrical film), the pilot featured the main cast of the series, including Lorne Greene, Dirk Benedict, and Richard Hatch, as well as several guest stars who only appeared in the pilot, including Ray Milland, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Lew Ayres, and Rick Springfield.
Richard M. Nixon served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, as did John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush. Jimmy Carter was at the Naval Academy in the last months of World War II, but did not begin his active-duty service until he graduated in 1946.
According to Wiki, Lyndon Baines Johnson was not given a name until he was three months old, because his parents couldn’t decide on a name that they both liked. He was finally named after a lawyer who his father admired, W. C. Linden. His mother agreed, but only if the spelling of the name was ‘Lyndon’. LBJ’s middle name was his mother’s maiden name.
Johnson is the second-most common last name in the United States and two Presidents had this name. Both became President by being Vice-President when the President was assassinated. Both then won the Presidency outright and both only served one term.
George H. W. Bush was the last POTUS who served and saw active duty in the military.
As to LBJ, correct. However, Andrew Johnson served out the rest of Lincoln’s second term but did not win the Presidency outright.
In play:
Gen. George Washington wrote in a letter to a friend in January 1776, during the siege of Boston, “The reflection upon my situation, and that of this army, produces many an uneasy hour, when all around me are wrapped in sleep. Few people know the predicament we are in, on a thousand accounts; fewer still will believe, if any disaster happens to these lines, from what cause it flows. I have often thought how much happier I should have been, if instead of accepting of a command under such circumstances, I had taken my musket upon my shoulders and entered the rank, or if I could have justified the measure of posterity, and my own conscience, had retired to the back country, and lived in a wigwam.”
Other than the incoming POTUS, Eisenhower was the most recent elected President who had no prior political experience. Like the first President of the United States, Eisenhower was a military man who rose to lead his country in time of war. And like Washington, Eisenhower initially refused and had to be coaxed into running for office.
Creedence Clearwater Revival singer/songwriter John Fogerty has said that, in writing the anti-Vietnam War song “Fortunate Son,” he had David Eisenhower in mind.
Eisenhower was the grandson of former general and president Dwight Eisenhower, and was, at that time, dating Julie Nixon (daughter of Richard Nixon); Fogerty observed that young men whose families had political influence were able to avoid being sent to Vietnam: the younger Eisenhower served in the Naval Reserve, and spent most of his time in the military assigned to a ship in the Mediterranean.
Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) in the 1998 Coen Bros. comedy The Big Lebowski is a big fan of Creedence Clearwater Revival. He plays the band’s “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” in his car in one scene.
The TV show Branded is mentioned in The Big Lebowski as having run as many as 156 episodes, when in fact it only aired 48 over two seasons. The character of Arthur Digby Sellers, ostensibly the writer of those episodes in the Coen movie, is wholly fictitious. Branded was Chuck Connors’ followup series after The Rifleman.
Chuck Connors turned to acting in 1952, after ending his career as a professional athlete.
Connors primarily played baseball; he played for a number of minor-league teams from 1940 through 1952. He did make it to the major leagues, appearing in one game for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1949, and 66 games for the Chicago Cubs in 1951.
Connors also played professional basketball from 1945 until 1947, with the Rochester Royals and Boston Celtics.