The McLaughlin Group was a syndicated U.S. public-affairs talk show, hosted by political commentator John McLaughlin. The show featured McLaughlin and a panel of four other commentators, discussing political issues in a roundtable format; the rotating roster of panelists included Pat Buchanan, Eleanor Clift, Clarence Page, Morton Kondrake, Fred Barnes, Jack Germond, and Mort Zuckerman.
The weekly show, which primarily ran on PBS stations, ran from 1982, until McLaughlin’s death in 2016; it was briefly revived from 2018 until 2020.
One of the earliest novelty records was The Ravings of John McCullough. It was supposedly a real recording of a very famous early actor, John McCullough, while in an asylum insane from syphilis, but it was actually done by the comedian Harry Spencer.
Henry Charles Albert David, commonly referred to as Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, was the first member of the British royal family to serve in a war zone since his uncle Andrew flew a military helicopter during the Falklands War.
The United Artists film production company was founded in 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, David Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks to give actors more independent control over their work and careers as opposed to being overly reliant on film studios.
Mary Pickford, Pola Negri, Mae West, and Greta Garbo were considered for the lead female role in Sunset Boulevard, but either turned it down or were decided against before it went to Gloria Swanson.
77 Sunset Strip was a television crime drama that featured two private detectives. The show ran from 1958 until 1964. The stars were Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and Roger Smith, who took turns solving cases in the weekly series. The title refers to the address of the firm’s office, which was located at 77 Sunset Boulevard, next door to Dino’s Lodge, a club that was actually owned by Dean Martin.
Roger Smith was the chief executive officer of General Motors from 1981 to 1990. Smith inherited a GM which was losing money and market share to foreign (especially Japanese) competitors; he instituted a massive reorganization of GM’s corporate structure, made each division less autonomous (and instituted a program for developing and manufacturing “shared” car models across GM’s divisions), and attempted to diversify GM’s business by purchasing Electronic Data Systems and Hughes Aircraft.
Many of Smith’s initiatives failed to deliver their stated goals, and instead caused internal strife within GM. His legacy is as one of the worst CEOs in American history, and he may now be best known as the unwilling subject of filmmaker Michael Moore’s first documentary, Roger & Me.
Eric Idle appeared as Roger the Shrubber, among at least four other roles, in the 1975 Arthurian parody Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It was named, in an ABC poll in 2011, the second-best movie comedy of all time, behind Airplane!
“Little Bunny Foo Foo” is a children’s poem/song, which is sung to the tune of either “Alouette” or “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” and typically is accompanied by hand gestures. It tells the story of Little Bunny Foo Foo, who habitually scoops up field mice and “bops” them on the head. Despite repeated warnings from the Good Fairy to stop doing so, Little Bunny Foo Foo continues the abuse of the mice, and in the final verse, the Good Fairy turns Foo Foo into a “goon.”
That song was popular at Camp McKinley, a Boy Scout summer camp in Lisbon, Ohio, in the late 1970s. The moral of the story, a terrible pun declaimed with great seriousness at the end, was: “Hare today, goon tomorrow.”
The brown hare is Britain’s fastest animal. It can run up to 40 miles per hour. Some brown hares can reach speeds of 45 miles per hour. But the fastest land animal today is the cheetah which can reach speeds of 70-75 miles per hour.
The black marlin, which generally inhabits tropical areas of the Indian and Pacific oceans, is a prized gamefish. A hooked black marlin was once recorded stripping the line off a fishing reel at 120 feet per second, which is a speed of 82 mph. Accordingly, this fish is believed to be the world’s fastest marine animal.
Marlin Perkins was an American zoologist and television host.
While serving as the director of the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, Perkins began hosting the television program Zoo Parade in 1949; the show was initially only broadcast on the local NBC affiliate, but was soon carried nationwide by the NBC network.
Zoo Parade was cancelled in 1957, and in 1961, Perkins became the director of the St. Louis Zoo (where he had begun his career). In 1963, he was tapped as host of the television nature program Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom; he hosted the show until 1985.
Jan. 20, 1961 and Jan. 21, 1985 marked the presidential inauguration ceremonies of John F. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Ronald Reagan, Republican of California, respectively. Both took place at the U.S. Capitol: JFK’s on the East Portico, and Reagan’s inside the Capitol Rotunda due to the cold. Reagan’s was also a day later than usual, as Jan. 20 fell on a Sunday that year; he had had a private swearing-in ceremony at the White House that day.
The last name of the family in Malcolm in the Middle was never overtly revealed, but a viewer with an eye for detail might catch a quick glimpse of the name Wilkerson on Francis’s name tag in a scene where he’s at military school.