Although he won two Golden Globes for best actor, Paul Giamatti was never nominated for an Oscar. Going full circle, he was the son of Baseball Commmissioner Bart Giamatti.
Paul Giamatti (John Adams, Billions) is now appearing in Volkswagen ads with Kieran Culkin (Fargo, Succession). Giamatti plays a celebrity accountant, and Culkin his self-indulgent superstar client: Volkswagen: The Accountant (Part 1) - YouTube
One of the common complaints about the original Volkswagen Beetle was that it took extra effort to tightly slam the doors. This was because the Beetle was almost air-tight, and in fact would float for a few minutes if driven into water.
A VW is depicted as briefly floating in San Francisco harbor after a lengthy chase in the Barbra Streisand/Ryan O’Neal comedy What’s Up, Doc?, and National Lampoon spoofed the VW’s watertight construction in this fake ad (the second small image below): 1973 The National Lampoon Encyclopedia of Humor, First Edition With Dust Jacket | #461137235
The Warner Bros. cartoon short which is generally considered to be the first “official” appearance of Bugs Bunny is the 1940 Merrie Melodies short, A Wild Hare, directed by Tex Avery.
While several previous Warner Bros. shorts had featured rabbit characters (which were clearly predecesors to Bugs), in A Wild Hare, the character’s physical design had finally reached the classic Bugs appearance, Mel Blanc’s voice for the character was the classic New York accent for the first time, and he first used the catchphrase, “What’s up, Doc?”
The oldest examples of the Three Hares symbol are found in Buddhist cave temples in China, dating back to the 6th century. There’s debate as to whether the symbol traveled to the Middle East and Europe via the Silk Road, or if it arose independently in different locations. It has a variety of meanings including good luck, prosperity, fertility, eternity and the Trinity.
Although they look alike and are members of the same order of mammals, rabbits and hares are completely different species.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democrat of New York, was among those who practiced the old custom of saying “Rabbit” on the first day of the month for good luck.
FDR was one of 15 men who previously served as a governor of a state before being elected President. William Howard Taft was the civilian governor of The Philippines before he was President, and Andrew Jackson was a military governor in pre-statehood Florida before he was President.
When William Howard Taft was governor of the Philippines, the story goes, he sent a telegram to his friend Theodore Roosevelt saying in passing, “Took a long horseback ride this morning and feel wonderful.”
Roosevelt supposedly replied, “How is the horse?”
Fulwar Skipwith was the governor of the Republic of West Florida, which included what is now Baton Rouge. West Florida existed for two years, before Louisiana statehood in 1812, and was not part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The section of the state east of the Mississippi and north of Lake Ponchartrain is still called The Florida Parishes.
The Republic of West Florida was independent for just three months in 1810. Independence from Spain was declared on September 26, and Baton Rouge surrendered to the US Army on December 10. The Army occupied the territory until it became part of Louisiana when statehood was achieved in 1812.
Spain did not relinquish its title to the territory until 1819.
North Dakota was technically still a territory, not a state, until 2012 due to an error in its constitution.
First noticed in 1985 by 82-year-old care home resident and amateur historian John Rolczynski in 1995, the state constitution (adopted in 1889) neglected to mention the executive branch when explaining which new officers need to take the oath supporting the US Constitution. This, he said, made the state constitution invalid because it is in conflict with the federal constitution, which requires all officers of the three branches of state government – executive, judicial, and legislative – be bound by the oath.
Given that the Peace Garden State was admitted to the Union (along with its neighbor to the south) on November 2, 1889, no one ever seriously questioned its status as the 39th state. Even so, Senator Tim Mathern felt it was important enough to introduce a bill to amend the constitution and correct this oversight, although it wasn’t considered an urgent issue by most of his colleagues and it took six attempts before an amendment was passed in the statehouse and ratified by the state’s voters in 2012.
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North Dakota has more separate tracts of National Wildlife Refuges than any other state, in an effort to preserve a little of the Prairie Pothole Region. North Dakota has most of the thousands of pothole lakes, many smalleer than a baseball diamond, mini-wetlands which are home to natural plants and animals. Increasingly, landowners are draining them for agriculture. But for now, they are surprising treasures to tourists who take the trouble to notice and explore them.
Two warships named the USS North Dakota have served in the United States Navy. The first was a Delaware-class battleship during World War I, and the second is a Virginia-class nuclear fast attack submarine commissioned in 2014 and still in service.
Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato of New York picked up the nickname Senator Pothole for his focus on constituent services and local problems as a United States Senator. While some New Yorkers meant the nickname as an insult, others saw it as a positive affirmation of his attention to getting things done.
Alphonse and Gaston was a comic strip that atarten in 1901. Their “‘After you, Alphonse.’, ‘No, you first, my dear Gaston!’” routine ran for more than a decade. Alphonse is short and grotesque; Gaston is tall and grotesque. The premise is that both are extremely polite, constantly bowing and deferring to each other. Neither can ever do anything or go anywhere because each insists on letting the other precede him.
William McKinley, Republican of Ohio, was inaugurated for his second term as President of the United States in March 1901. He died in Buffalo, N.Y. after being shot by an assassin in September of that year, and was succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican of New York. Roosevelt remains the youngest person ever to become President; John F. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, is the youngest person ever elected President.
The oldest person to assume the US presidency was Donald Trump, at the age of 70 years, 220 days, on Inauguration Day in 2017. There’s a really good chance that the next person to take the oath of office will be older than that.
In certain card games (particularly trick-taking games), a trump is a card which is evelated above its usual rank. Some games feature a “trump suit,” an entire suit of cards which outrank all cards of the other suits.