‘Til There Was You’ from The Music Man was covered by The Beatles. The writer Meredith Willson and later his estate got more money from that cover than both the play and movie combined.
The Last Starfighter was a 1984 science-fiction film, which was one of the first major theatrical films to make extensive use of CGI to depict the spaceships and space combat scenes.
The film starred Lance Guest, Catherine Mary Stewart, Dan O’Herlihy, and Robert Preston, in his final film role. Preston played Centauri, a con-artist character, in a role which was written with him in mind, and which was inspired by his signature role as Professor Harold Hill in the musical The Music Man.
Per Wiki, Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Sun and is 4.2465 light-years (ly) away, which is 1.3020 parsecs (pc). Due to its distance, it has not been visited either by human explorers or automated probes.
The Sun is about 8.3 light-minutes away from Earth. That is, at any given time, we’re seeing the Sun as it appeared 8 minutes and 20 seconds ago.
The “Bonnie” series of YA novels by Barbara Van Tuyl and Pat Johnson is about a racehorse named Sunbonnet and her owner, Julie.
Charles Edward Stuart, known as “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” was the grandson of the deposed King James II and VII of England, Scotland, and Ireland; Charles was in the line of succession to the House of Stuart’s claim to that throne during the 18th century.
Charles led the Jacobite Uprising of 1745, in which he attempted, unsuccessfully, to reclaim the throne for his father, James Francis Edward Stuart; though he failed, Charles became a romantic figure in English and Scottish history.
Charles M. Schulz, creator of the comic strip Peanuts, was nicknamed “Sparky” by his uncle, after the horse “Spark Plug” in the Barney Google comic strips that the young Charles enjoyed reading.
A youngish, reform-minded British king very similar to Charles, Prince of Wales at the time, appeared in the second season of the British political satirical series House of Cards, titled To Play the King (1993). He was played by Michael Kitchen.
The term ‘kitchen cabinet’ is sometimes used to refer to a US president’s group of trusted friends and advisors who hold no official role in government. The term was originally used by opponents of President Andrew Jackson, who relied on a group of unofficial advisors to determine policy, rather than the official members of his Cabinet.
Beck’s Loser was recorded in a kitchen. He was intentionally trying to make a stupid rap song.
On the March 15, 2011 episode of Glee, the cast sang an original song, “Loser Like Me”, by Adam Anders, Max Martin, Peer Astrom, Shellback, and Savan Kotecha.
“Don’t Bug the Mosquitoes” was an episode of the sitcom Gilligan’s Island, originally airing in 1965. In the episode, a popular rock band, the Mosquitoes (the name being a play on the Beatles), comes to the island to escape their fans, and find peace and quiet, only to be hounded by the castaways, who want the band to take them with them off of the island.
The Mosquitoes were portrayed by real-life musicians Les Brown Jr. and the Wellingtons (who had also performed the series’ theme song). During the episode, they performed two songs: “Don’t Bug Me” and “He’s a Loser.”
Show creator Sherwood Schwartz has said that he intended to reveal Gilligan’s first name as “Willy,” but Bob Denver always insisted it was just “Gilligan.” In fact, in the first episode, he is referred to as “a first mate known only as Gilligan.”
In Garfield’s Halloween Adventure, Garfield and Odie dressed as pirates to go trick or treating. Garfield’s persona was Orangebeard the Pirate Captain, and the dog was his first mate, Odie the Stupid.
In the novel The Martian by Andy Weir, the main character, Mark Watney, refers to himself as “Captain Blondbeard” at one point.
Marvin the Martian made his first appearance in Warner Brothers’ Hardevil Hare in 1948, although he remained nameless until 1979, when he was merchandised in association with the release of The Bugs Bunny/ Road Runner Movie.
Marvin the Martian was created by Chuck Jones and first appeared in the 1948 cartoon “Haredevil Hare”. But he was initially unnamed, and sometimes referred to as Antwerp which was a pet name by Chuck Jones. He was also known as Little Buzz, and also as Martian Commander X-2.
In The Martian Chronicals by Ray Bradbury, the Martians are wiped out by chicken pox the Earth settlers brought with them.
Chickenpox and other European diseases caused a devastating population collapse among Native Americans upon contact because Indigenous populations lacked prior immunity to these viruses. While smallpox is more frequently cited, chickenpox, along with measles, influenza, and other illnesses, spread rapidly through trade and travel routes, leading to high mortality rates and significantly reducing Native populations across the Americas.
The flu pandemic of 1918-20 infected 500 million people (about a third of the world’s population at the time) and killed 100 million, making it the deadliest pandemic in history.