In folklore, there is a lake monster in Lake Champlain called Champ or Champy. A movie called Lucy and the Lake Monster, about this creature, came out in 2024. It’s based on the children’s book of the same name by Kelly Tabor and Richard Rossi.
The Champ was a 1979 film, directed by Franco Zeffirelli, remaking the 1931 film of the same name, which was directed by King Vidor.
The remake, which received mixed reviews for its sentimentality, was the film debut of actor Ricky Schroeder, who was eight years old during its filming.
Rick Schroeder starred in the TV movie Too Young the Hero playing Calvin Graham who during World War 2 signed up in the US Navy at age 12.
Sylvester Graham, nicknamed “Father of Vegetarianism”, promoted dietary reforms by maintaining strict vegetarian diets (excluding eggs, which were acceptable for breakfasts), and temperance against alcohol. His followers invented Graham flour, Graham bread, and Graham crackers (from which he received no money), and included Horace Greeley and John H. Kellogg, the latter going on to open the Kellogg Sanitarium where residents adhered to a regimen that emphasized dietetic and hygienic reform, including cold baths, sleeping on hard mattresses, maintaining ventilation with open windows, a vegetarian diet featuring Graham bread, and drinking cold water.
Noted newspaper editor Horace Greeley carried only six states in the election of 1872 as the Democratic and Liberal Republican candidate against popular incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant, the establishment Republican nominee. Greeley died of still-undetermined causes between Election Day and the meeting of the Electoral College. As Wikipedia notes, “His 66 electoral votes were divided among four others, principally Indiana governor-elect Thomas A. Hendricks and Greeley’s vice presidential running mate, Benjamin Gratz Brown.” President Grant attended his funeral.
Greeley, Colorado, incorporated as a city on April 6, 1886, is the tenth most populous city in the state. Horace Greeley visited Colorado in the 1859 Pike’s Peak Gold Rush and popularized the phrase “Go West, young man”. The city is named in his honor.
The probable first person to say “Go west young man.” as the meme we are familiar with was John Soule in 1851.
Go West was a 1940 movie starring the Marx Brothers.
Louis Marx and Company was an American toy manufacturing company. Marx was known for a wide variety of toys, including toy trains, playsets and toy soldier sets based on television series and historical events, dollhouses, Rock’em Sock’em Robots, and Big Wheels tricycles.
The company was sold to Quaker Oats when Louis Marx retired in 1972, and was subsequently liquidated in 1980.
I was going to play off of Go West, but I’ll revise it slightly to play off of company.
GoWesty is a vehicle restoration and modification company in San Luis Obispo, California that specializes in the VW Vanagon camper, a version that Volkswagen calls the VW Westfalia, or, “Westy”.
The Volkswagen Westfalia camper van was first created by Westfalia Campers in the 1950s for the first generation of the Microbus. Westfalia Campers was the official Volkswagen builder of camper conversions. From 1979 until 1992, the Westfalia Vanagon was built, also called the Volkswagen Campmobile.
All three of the major-party candidates for President of the United States in 1992 - incumbent George H.W. Bush, Republican of Texas; Gov. Bill Clinton, Democrat of Arkansas; and businessman H. Ross Perot, the Reform Party nominee, also from Texas - were left-handed.
In Major League Baseball, the “LOOGY” (Lefty One-Out GuY), or “left-handed specialist,” was a relief pitcher role: a left-handed pitcher who would be brought into a game in relief, specifically to face a specific left-handed batter (many of whom do not hit as well against left-handed pitchers as they do against righties); such pitchers were often removed from the game after facing that one batter.
The role became common in the 1990s through the 2010s: notable LOOGYs included Mike Myers and Will Olman; late in his career, Jesse Orosco was also a LOOGY. Changes to MLB’s rules on relief pitchers in 2020, which mandated that relievers must face at least three batters (or finish an inning) have largely eliminated the use of LOOGYs.
There have been a few left-handed throwing catchers in MLB history, although it’s not common. The last known left-handed catcher to play in a major league game was Benny Distefano in 1989 for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Some other notable left-handed catchers include Dale Long (1958) and Mike Squires (1980). The rarity of left-handed catchers is due to the natural throwing and hitting tendencies of most baseball players, which makes right-handed catchers generally more efficient at throwing to bases. Additionally, tagging out a runner trying to score would be more difficult for a left-handed catcher because, with his catchers mitt in his right hand, the catcher would have to reach across his body to make the tag.
The restaurant chain Long John Silver’s started in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1969. It was founded by Jim Patterson.
Pete Harman, the operator of a successful restaurant in South Salt Lake, Utah, was the first franchisee of the chicken recipe developed by Harlin Sanders of North Corbin, Kentucky. Harman began selling the chicken in 1952 and more than tripled his sales in the first year. Harman trademarked the phrase “It’s finger lickin’ good”, which was eventually adopted as a slogan across the entire chain.
Minor nitpick: Harland Sanders
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In play: Since 1956 when KFC first used the Finger Lickin’ Good slogan, it has also been a 1967 album by Lonnie Smith, a 1975 album by Dennis Coffey, a 1977 song by Brecker Brothers, and a 1992 Beastie Boys song. And there have been other uses of Finger Lickin’ Good. Some of those uses are probably not appropriate to share in mixed company.
Harland Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, was commonly referred to as “Colonel Sanders.” Sanders never served in the military; his title was indicative of having received the honorary title of “Kentucky Colonel” in 1935 – the titles are bestowed by the governor of Kentucky, and people who receive the title are considered to be goodwill ambassadors for the state.
Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis Presley’s manager, was not a veteran of the US military; born Andreas Cornelis van Kuyk in The Netherlands, he illegally entered the US at age 20 (under mysterious circumstances). He was bestowed the title of Honorary Colonel in the Louisiana State Militia by Governor Jimmie Davis in 1948.
The naming of rival lawyers Matthew Harrison Brady and then Henry Drummond (loosely based on William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow) as honorary colonels of the state militia is a minor plot point in the 1955 play Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, inspired by the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial.