Astronaut Fred Haise flew in 1970 on Apollo 13 as the Lunar Module pilot, and in 1977 as a test pilot on approach and landing tests for the space shuttle. He is one of only 24 people to have flown to the moon, and one ofonly 12 prople to have flown to the moon and not walked on the moon. Prior to being an astronaut Haise was a U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot at MCAS Cherry Point, North Carolina, from March 1954 to September 1956.
Angelina Jolie has a pilot’s’ license.
Other Hollywood stars with pilot’s licenses include Harrison Ford, Morgan Freeman, John Travolta, Tom Cruise, Dennis Quaid, and Clint Eastwood. George W. Bush, John McCain, and John Kerry are all pilots as well.
Travolta holds 11 jet type ratings, for everything from small military aircraft to the Boeing 707. He bought and trained on a Bombardier Challenger 601, an aircraft based on a design by Learjet inventor Bill Lear.
More on Travolta and his flying:
Travolta earned his private pilot’s license at age 22 and he owns several aircraft, including a Boeing 707-138 that was previously part of Qantas Airways’ fleet. His home is in Jumbolair Aviation Estates, a fly-in community at north central Florida’s private Greystone Airport. He has a taxiway right to his door, where he parks the 707.
Boeing does not have to make 707s with right hand drive for Qantas. Australian pilots just learn to sit in the left hand seat.
Right-hand traffic predominates across the continental landmasses, while the majority of the world’s island nations and territories drive on the left. The Philippines kept to the left (if such rules were enforced at all) during the Spanish colonial period and changed to the right during the United States period.
[Johnny Carson] I did not know that. [/Johnny Carson]
The term “riding shotgun”, which means to travel in the passenger seat of a vehicle, comes from the Old West tradition of having a guard armed with a shotgun sitting next to a stagecoach driver.
Shotgun gauges are determined by the number of lead balls of a given diameter required to make one pound of that size ball. Thus 10 balls of 10 gauge diameter are required to make one pound of such balls, or 20 balls of 20 gauge diameter are required to make one pound, and so forth. This is the traditional, and very old, system.
The last American lead processing refinery in Herculaneum, Missouri, closed down last year. Now, all lead mined in the US, mostly in Missouri, has to be shipped overseas for refining. The US is still third in the world in lead production.
The Roman author, naturalist and philosopher Gaius Plinius Secundus (‘Pliny the Elder’) was killed in August 79 as a result of the eruption of Vesuvius that also wiped out Pompeii and Herculaneum.
1979: HALL RULES 79!
I graduated high school in 1979 from William H. Hall High School in West Hartford CT. At that time I worked at the McDonald’s at 214 Prospect Ave in Hartford (on the border between Hartford and West Hartford). That McDonald’s was closer to the rival high school, Frederick Underwood Conard High.
Directly behind that McDonald’s was a large blue tower — maybe a natural gas tower much like this on Wikipedia’s page for Gas Holder.
Across Prospect Avenue from that McDonald’s, on what today is the Prospect Shopping Plaza, West Hartford at 18-54 Kane Street, there used to be an old King’s Department Store. After King’s went defunct it was later a Bradlees Store. Today there is a ShopRight Supermarket at 46 Kane Street West Hartford.
Back in 1979, one night in late spring my younger brother Michael, my best friend Vince and I broke the padlock and snuck in with gallons of white paint and brushes. We climbed to the very top and painted in thick, tall white letters, for all of West Hartford (and Conard!) to see:
H A L L • R U L E S • 7 9
It was perfect, and also because our high school colors are blue and white. The best part is that we decided to keep quiet about doing it — a true stealth operation. We went to school the next day, and people were talking about it, wondering who did it. We kept quiet.
After a couple days we got wind that someone was claiming he did it. He was known as a ‘tough guy’ (and we certainly weren’t). His initials are RB, and he’s still around, I just searched — he owns a business in the area, he was younger than me and Vince, about my brother’s age so maybe the class of '81, and he has an older brother Bob who was class of '79. We quietly confronted RB and called bullshit, and RB stopped talking about it.
At our class reunions a picture of that tower (which has long since been torn down) is shown during the slide show:
H A L L • R U L E S • 7 9
It was a masterpiece, I must admit.
I’ve tried several image searches for that tower, but alas have not been able to find it.
westHartfordNews.com: 1979 paint tower mcdonalds
Courant.com: 1979 paint tower mcdonalds
1979 tower west hartford paint
Sources:
Hartford Courant article noting that Kings Department Store went out of business in the late 1970s:
► http://www.courant.com/community/manchester/hc-manchester-parkade-20120501-012-photo.html
King’s (defunct discount store) — Wikipedia:
► King's (defunct discount store) - Wikipedia
Bradlees (bankrupt in 2001) — Wikipedia:
► Bradlees - Wikipedia
OH WELL…
Hall Rules 79, posted 2013-01-14 in the thread Unusual given names from your high school days:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=15900441#post15900441
The King’s School, founded in 1831, is the oldest independent school in Australia.
It is located on a 150 hectare site at Parramatta, a western Sydney suburb.
Yes, but it still fits here; the 79 matches the previous entry. 
King’s Road is the oldest route between Schenectady and Albany NY.
In the film King’s Row Ronald Reagan plays a character who has both of his legs amputated (unnecessarily), giving rise to the scene where he awakens and utters the famous line “where’s the rest of me?”
44-year old Stephanie Courtney, who plays Flo in Progressive Insurance commercials, had a bit part in the 2007 Ben Stiller movie “The Heartbreakk Kid”.
Former US Vice President Henry Wallace ran for President in 1948 as the candidate of the Progressive Party, often derided for its anti-Cold-War, pro-rapprochement views as “Better Red than Dead”. Wallace was also nominated by the Communist Party USA.
Back to Stephanie Courtney, Progressive’s Flo, who is a member of The Groundlings, an improvisational and sketch comedy theater in Los Angeles: she went to Binghamton University, and her first TV commercial breakthrough was in a Super Bowl commercial for Bud Light.
(Hmm, will want to search for that. I like her “every day girl” normal appearance as opposed to the too beautiful for the rest of us false image.)
The Rose Bowl game, the first football “bowl game” was played in 1902 in Tournament Park, at the CalTech campus in Pasadena, won by Michigan over Stanford. The “Rose Bowl” stadium, where the game is now played was built in 1922.