Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In originally aired as a one-time special on September 9, 1967 and was such a success that it was brought back as a series, replacing The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on Mondays at 8 pm.
(How could I pass up a chance to use Rowan and Mayne to reference Rowan and Martin?)
Dan Rowan was born on a carnival train in Oklahoma to a couple who performed a song and dance act, and left him orphaned at age 11. After growing up with a foster family in Pueblo, CO, he hitchhiked to Hollywood and in only a year became Paramount’s youngest staff writer. Later, as a USAAF P-40 Warhawk fighter pilot in the Pacific, he scored two kills and was awarded the DFC with oak leaf cluster, the Air Medal, and the Purple Heart.
Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) was one of the guests at Prince Charles’s and Camilla Parker-Bowles’ wedding.
The Duchess of Cornwall (formerly Camilla Parker-Bowles) is the great-granddaughter of Alice Keppel, long-time mistress of King Edward VII.
The tiny Canadian province of Prince Edward Island (5660 sq. km) is further sub-divided into three counties: Kings, Prince, and Queens.
Off-game
Eleven ministries in the first 14 years?
What was up with that?
The minor league baseball team currently known as the Brooklyn Cyclones (Class A New York-Penn League) was previously known (for one year) as the Queens Kings.
Cyclone Tracy, which struck Darwin early on Christmas Day in 1974, killed 71 people and destroyed more than 70 per cent of Darwin’s buildings, including 80 per cent of its houses.
Just trying to remember my history from school…and my constitutional law…I think it was a combination of several factors. It took a few years after federation for a stable two-party system to evolve, and so the first ministries were often coalitions. The various partners didn’t always agree on the extent to which the new Commonwealth government should build a firm legislative structure for Australia as a whole, or just let the states get on with it. There was also a lot of fuss about interstate trade and tariffs too.
One investigator of the Diane “Small Sacrifices” Downs murder case was a sharp, keen-witted veteran of the county’s homicide squad, aptly named Richard “Dick” Tracy.
Al Capp periodically used a strip-within-a-strip structure in his long-running “Li’l Abner” to satirize Dick Tracy with his Fearless Fosdick serials. Abner idealized the intrepid detective Fosdick, just like “every other 100% red-blooded American boy!” He married Daisy Mae because of Fosdick’s loyalty (but not marriage) to his own girlfriend, Prudence (ugh!) Pimpleton.
Li’l Abner inspired a theme park called Dogpatch USA in Arkansas. It opened in 1968 and was very successful for its first few years, but a combination of a bad economy, Li’l Abner ending its run, and changing taste made it fail in the late 1970s. There were several plots to save it, one being to change its name to God Patch and reopen as a Christian theme park (though those interested never got the funding for this).
Ham Fisher, creator of Joe Palooka, developed an insane hatred of L’il Abner creator Al Capp. Capp worked as a ghost for Fisher and, after he was a success on his own, wrote an article documenting how Fisher exploited young artists, who wrote and drew the strip for much of its run. Fisher ended up doctoring some Abner strips and having Capp charged with public indecency for publishing them. The case was quickly dismissed (they just showed the judge the undoctored strips as they ran in the newspapers) and Fisher fell into obscurity.
In 1826 an early colonial farmer, Frederick Fisher, was murdered in the area of Campbelltown, NSW. His ghost was said to have appeared and led searchers to the site of his remains.
The Festival of Fisher’s Ghost is celebrated in Campbelltown to this day.
The Menai Suspension Bridge (picture), considered the world’s first modern suspension bridge, first opened in 1826 (another pic here). The bridge, in Wales, connects the mainland with the island of Anglesey.
Henry Paget, 2nd Earl of Uxbridge, was created 1st Marquess of Angelsey on 4 July 1815. He fought at the Battle of Waterloo, where he led the charge of the British heavy cavalry which checked and in part routed the French Army.
He was hit in the right leg by one of the last cannon shots fired on the day. As a result his leg had to be amputated. According to anecdote:
The second leg of the USA Triple Crown of horse racing is the Preakness Stakes. The Preakness Stakes is raced at Pimlico Racetrack in Baltimore MD and is named after a race horse who won at that racetrack. That horse, Preakness, upset the heavily favored colt Foster to win the inaugural Dixie Stakes (then known as the Dinner Party Stakes) on October 25, 1870, the opening day of Pimlico.
Secretariat set the track record in 1973 at 1:53.00.
One of the best known of Ealing Studios’ comedies is the 1949 film Passport to Pimlico, in which an ancient document is unearthed that proves that the district of Pimlico was ceded in the Middle Ages to the duchy of Burgundy and is thus not part of England.
Jean-Pierre Alaux’s Winemaker Detective mysteries, written in French and translated into English, include Treachery in Bordeaux, Grand Cru Heist, Nightmare in Burgundy, Deadly Tasting, and Cognac Conspiracies.
In the 2004 movie Sideways, Paul Giamatti’s character Miles Raymond retorts,
“No, if anyone orders Merlot, I’m leaving. I am NOT drinking any fucking Merlot!”
After the movie, sales of merlot went down, while sales of pinot noir went up. According to Wines & Vines, who compared sales figures before and after the movie they concluded:
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Paul Giametti is the son of former Commissioner of Baseball A.Bartlett Giametti.
