Before becoming the father of (a discredited brand of) psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud was doing the rounds of the German high society, promoting the use of cocaine as a cure for any and everything. He even wrote a book, “On Coca”, which I am told boils down to “Angel dust : it’s AWESOME and you should really try it ! MAN I’m so PUMPED about coke !!!”.
Nicholas Meyer wrote the novel The Seven Percent Solution, in which Sherlock Holmes is cured of his addiction to cocaine by Sigmund Freud.
Jake Holmes, who sued Led Zeppelin for plagiarizing “Dazed and Confused,” wrote the commercial jingle “I’m a Pepper” for Dr. Pepper soda, and the Army recruiting song “Be All That You Can Be.”
Playing Fred O’Bannion in Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused” (1993) was Ben Affleck’s breakthrough role.
Killing Dean (or Dion) Charles O’Banion, an Irish Catholic florist and mob boss in Prohibition Chicago, was Al Capone’s break through crime. Capone was still Johnny Torrio’s underboss when (by some accounts without Torrio’s blessing) he gave the order to kill O’Banion at Schofield’s florist shop (his front as well as where he relaxed by arranging flowers) in 1924. As O’Banion paid tribute to Sicilian crime bosses and had police on his payroll his murder set off a five year gang war that ended with Capone the undisputed boss of bosses in Chicago. The biggest floral arrangement at O’Banion’s funeral was from Capone, who also sent flowers to O’Banion’s widow and mother regularly until he was incarcerated.
Al Capone is the only real person ever to appear in a Tintin story. Tintin helps capture him in Tintin in America, but he escapes.
Like many other Tintin stories, later editions of Tintin in America have been edited somewhat to remove racist portrayals of non-whites he encounters - a more famous example being the previous story, Tintin in the Congo.
The music group The Thompson Twins were named after the two detectives in Tintin, Thompson and Thomson, who did look alike despite having slightly different names. In the original French-language comics, their names were Dupont and Dupond.
Georges Remi, the creator of Tintin, originally submitted his work using his initials, “G.R.” Later, he reversed the letters, and submitted his work as “R.G.” Since “R.G.” is pronounced “Air-zhay” in French, he eventually starting calling himself “Hergé.”
The real German Shepherd named Rin Tin Tin was found by American doughboys in a WW1 shell crater, and was named for a puppet that French children had given them. He went on to appear in a number of fictionalized and outright fictional movies. “Rinty” has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The world-famous “Hollywood” sign originally read “Hollywoodland” and was an advertisement for a real-estate development. In the recent movie Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, a passageway to Hades is beneath the sign.
Kool & the Gang recorded Hollywood Swinging and took it to #1 on the Billboard R&B chart in 1974.
Richard M. Nixon, caught up in the Watergate scandal, resigned as President of the United States on Aug. 9, 1974. He was succeeded by Gerald R. Ford, who had been appointed the year before under the terms of the 25th Amendment to replace Spiro Agnew, who had resigned in disgrace. President Ford in turn appointed Nelson Rockefeller as the new Vice President. It was the only time in U.S. history that neither the President nor the Vice President had been voted upon by the Electoral College.
Spiro Agnew made famous the phrase “nattering nabobs of negativism”, though the phrase was written by his speechwriter William Safire (who in addition to writing political speeches and essays wrote spy novels and a historical novel, Freedom, based on the life of Lincoln, which he wrote largely to give a conservative spin on Gore Vidal’s Lincoln released in 1984).
Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley were hired as analysts for the Democratic and Republican political conventions in 1968.
Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley was filmed on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in 1968, angrily mouthing obscenities as Sen. Abraham Ribicoff, at the podium, criticized the conduct of Chicago police outside, who were using what many considered unnecessary force in arresting antiwar demonstrators.
Following the Convention, eight antiwar demonstrators faced various federal charges. One was severed from the trial, two were acquited, and five were convicted of crossing state lines to incite a riot, but acquitted of conspiracy charges. A federal appeals court later overturned the five convictions.
The line “So your brother’s bound and gagged & they chained him to a chair” in the Graham Nash song Chicago refers to Chicago 8 defendant Booby Seale who objected loudly and often [and rightly so] during his trial. Judge Julius Hoffman ordered Seale bound and gagged to try to move the trial along.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit covers Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky, but not Illinois (or Chicago). It is based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and currently has sixteen judges who hear cases in panels of three. In August 2009, President Obama made his first nomination to the court.
The Eighth Circuit is the most Republican US Court of Appeals in the nation, with 9 of its 11 active judges (82%) appointed by Republican presidents. The opposite end of the political spectrum is represented by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which has the highest percentage of Democratic appointees at 57%.
The Ninth Circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno is set aside for betrayers. Among the people shown there are Brutus, Cassius, and Judas Iscariot, who are being eternally devoured (or, at the very least, chewed upon) by Satan at the very centre.
All of the prisoners of the Ninth Circle, save those three, but including Satan, are entrapped in ice.