Film debuts in 1981 included:
Ben Affleck, in The Dark End of the Street
Kevin Costner, in Malibu Hot Summer
Tom Cruise, in Endless Love
Demi Moore, in Choices
Sean Penn, in Taps
Denzel Washington, in Carbon Copy
Film debuts in 1981 included:
Ben Affleck, in The Dark End of the Street
Kevin Costner, in Malibu Hot Summer
Tom Cruise, in Endless Love
Demi Moore, in Choices
Sean Penn, in Taps
Denzel Washington, in Carbon Copy
Taps had an all-star cast including: Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn, Tom Cruise, George C. Scott, Ronny Cox, and Giancarlo Esposito.
Timothy Hutton is the youngest winner of the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award, which he received for Ordinary People in 1981. Also nominated in that category for that film was Judd Hirsch.
Timothy Burch is the name of a grade-school boy in the US animated series South Park. He is confined to a wheelchair and has a limited vocabulary, often simply repeating his name (“Timmeh!”). Originally Comedy Central, the network which airs South Park, objected to the character over concerns of backlash from disabled persons, but the creators of the show persisted, and “Timmy” became a fan favorite.
The John Birch Society is an American far-right political advocacy group. Founded in 1958, the organization has historically been strongly anti-Communist and anti-United Nations, while supporting of social conservatism and small government.
The organization was named after John Birch, a Baptist missionary and U.S. military intelligence officer, who was killed in China by Communists in 1945; founders of the Society invoked Birch’s name as a symbol of America’s first casualty in the Cold War against Communism.
Though the John Birch Society’s peak of influence was in the 1970s, scholars see its influence and legacy in the far-right groups which have risen to prominence since then.
The white birch is the provincial tree of Saskatchewan.
The White Tree was a symbol of the kingdom of Gondor in the Middle-earth legendarium of JRR Tolkien. The tree was planted at the highest level of the capital city of Minas Tirith. It was an offshoot of an earlier tree which grew in Numenor, a lost island similar to Atlantis. The White Tree briefly appears in the Peter Jackson-directed Lord of the Rings movies.
Peter Jackson’s feature film debut, Bad Taste, was shot over the course of four years, primarily on weekends, with an initial budget of NZ$25,000. When funds ran out, the New Zealand Film Commission stepped in with a NZ$235,000 investment to complete the film. Jackson then added several scenes of absurdly gory special effects.
Three weeks into its initial Australian run, the government of Queensland issued a total ban on the film, despite being heavily edited by the producer, and resulted in the dissolution of the Queensland Film Board. It was released after further editting, and Jackson took advantage of the negative publicity with posters announcing “BANNED IN QUEENSLAND.”
Australia has the widest glory hole spillway in the world. It is located at DD coordinates ▲ -36.30585, 148.3159. It is in Geehi Reservoir; at Geehi Dam, in New South Wales, Australia. At 105’ it is the widest glory hole spillway in the world. A glory hole spillway is a bell-mouth spillway, named as such because when it is dry it resembles an upside down bell.
There is one in California, in Lake Berryessa at Monticello Dam on the border of Yolo County and Solano County. This dam is in such a narrow canyon that a traditional spillway would have been prohibitive to build. This glory hole spillway is 72’ in diameter and is at the east end of Lake Berryessa.
I just posted about it, with pictures and videos and drone footage, here ➜ Have you ever seen a bell-mouth spillway? (aka a “Glory Hole”) ■ .
Side note: you are aware that “glory hole” has another meaning, unrelated to dams and spillways?
The world’s second largest whirlpool, Old Sow, is near the mouth of the Bay of Fundy south of Deer Island, New Brunswick - a Canadian maritime province. It is also near Eastport, Maine, in Passamaquoddy Bay. It varies in size but can have a diameter exceeding 250 feet (76m).
Old Sow is the largest whirlpool in the Western hemisphere. The largest whirlpool, Mäelstrom, is in Norway. The name is thought to come from sough, meaning a drain or sucking sound.
Old Ultima fans may recall that the whirlpool provides convenient transportation to the land of Ambrosia, or a lake near the hidden town of Cove.
On May 31, 1989, a helicopter carrying three sight-seeing passengers struck the cable of the tram ride that extends across the Niagara Whirlpool. The copter’s landing rails were torn off, but the pilot managed to safely land the aircraft on the 10th hole of the nearby Whirlpool Golf Course. Before the dangerous landing, however, the pilot, fearful of what might happen, hovered several feet above the ground while the three passengers jumped to safety. He then landed without incident.
Movies filmed near Niagara Falls include Superman II, Bruce Almighty, A Man Called Otto, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and (of course), Niagara.
There have been nine warships named the USS Niagara to serve in the United States Navy, probably the best-known of which was the first, Commodore Matthew Hazard Perry’s flagship during the 1813 Battle of Lake Erie. Largely rebuilt (although some undetermined fraction of her is original), she is now a museum ship homeported in Erie, Pa.
Hazard is an English gambling game, played with two dice. It was mentioned as early as the Canterbury Tales, and reached its height of popularity in Georgian England in the late 18th century.
In DC Comics, Hazard is a super-villain with the power to manipulate probability. She’s been a member of Injustice Unlimited. Her real name is Becky Sharpe, and her grandfather was The Gambler.
Sharpe is a series of British television dramas, based on novels by Bernard Cornwell, about Richard Sharpe, a British soldier during the Napoleonic Wars. The character of Sharpe was played by Sean Bean; it was Bean’s breakthrough as a television/film actor, and it became one of his signature roles.
Sean Bean is the only other “Double-Oh” to appear in a James Bond film when he was OO6 in GoldenEye.
Andy Bradford appeared as 009 in the 1983 Bond film Octopussy, and there is a scene showing a lineup of the entire “Double-Oh” section, filmed from behind the agents so no one’s face (other than Bond’s) is seen, in the 1965 film Thunderball.
-“BB”-
I do indeed. And as I was searching for other dams that have those spillways, some of those image results were… interesting.