Metallica’s “Trapped Under Ice” was covered by parody metal band Austrian Death Machine on their album Double Brutal, released 2009.
The flag of Austria shows three horizontal stripes, red-white-red. The legend behind it is that an Austrian ruler once went into battle wearing a white tunic under his swordbelt. Afterwards, he took the belt off, and a white stripe showed where the belt had been over the otherwise now blood-soaked tunic. Hence the flag.
The Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria Hungary rules for almost 68 years. His successor, Charles I, was deposed after less than two years, along with the entire monarchy.
The Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi took up farming late in life. He named two of his donkeys Pius the Ninth and Franz Josef, after the two people he hated most the world.
The shortest life of any monarch in European history was Jean I of France, better known in English as John the Posthumous because his father Louix X died several months before he was born. King Jean was crowned by proxy in in a bizarre ceremony involving his pregnant mother and an uncle even though his gender was not known. He was born November 15 1316 and died 5 days later, causing many to say he was murdered or abducted/substituted (and in fact there were a couple of pretenders much later claiming to be him ‘all grown up’, but to no significant effect).
Actor Patrick Stewart played Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, who commanded the USS Enterprise, NCC-1701-D, on the TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation, which premiered in 1987. Although French, Picard speaks in Stewart’s English accent.
Irish playwright Samuel Beckett spent most of his adult life in France, and wrote most of his plays, including En Attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot), in French, before translating them into English.
The Allies successfully deceived Hitler into thinking that the D-Day landing would be near Calais, when it was actually planned for Normandy, France. The deception involved fake tanks, buildings, airplanes, radio broadcasts, and much more. Gen. George Patton was even named commander of the nonexistent “First U.S. Army Group”: Operation Fortitude - Wikipedia
The Oldsmobile Calais was the official pace car for the 1985 Indianapolis 500.
Mayor Carmine De Pasto’s Oldsmobile dealership was destroyed by a careening parade float, at the end of National Lampoon’s Animal House.
Although Faber College in Animal House was supposedly located in Pennsylvania, the movie was filmed in and around the University of Oregon in Eugene, Ore. Oddly enough, the Tennessee state flag is on the stage during the fraternity disciplinary proceeding.
Doug Kenney, who wrote Animal House and played “Stork” in it, also worked on “Caddyshake” and died after falling off a cliff in Hawaii, possibly a suicide.
Under directives from emperor Hirohito himself, the Japanese civilians of Saipan island committed mass suicide rather than be subjected to American occupation. Thousands of them jumped off cliffs at the north end of the island.
At the battle of Nu’uanu in 1795, the Big Island troops of Kamehameha I defeated the defending native Oahuans by forcing them back off a cliff. The victory established Kamehameha’s rule over the entire Hawaiian Island chain.
The Hawaiian island of Niihau is known as “The Forbidden Isle” because its approximately 160 residents (descendants of Elizabeth Sinclair, who purchased the island in 1864 and passed ownership along to succeeeding generations) guard their privacy and generally allow access only to their relatives, U.S. Navy personnel, government officials, and a select few outsiders who are permitted to join supervised expeditions.
The Imperial Palace complex in Beijing was known as The Forbidden City; most of its residents other than the imperial family were eunuchs, who had probably been robbing the warehouses and art collections for generations before they were expelled by “The Last Emperor” Pu Yi.
The crash of a Japanese Zero on Niihau on 12/7/41, and the subsequent capture of the pilot, led to the only known instance of American citizens collaborating with the enemy on that day. The incident may have emboldened FDR to order the internment of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast.
ETA: And that is why Pu Yi was installed by the Japanese as the puppet ruler of Manchukuo (Manchuria) during the Occupation. 
The Japanese Supreme War Council debated the conduct of the war in early August 1945 even after news came of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. It was only after the Council received word of the destruction of Nagasaki that Emperor Hirohito said that surrender was probably necessary.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi was a pop-culture figure in Japan when he was officially recognized as being a survivor of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He received medical care due to the burns he received until his death at 93 earlier this year. There were many others who survived both bombs, just as there were a few people who survived both the Titanic and her twin sister ship the Britannic.
The Titanic and Britannic had a third sibling, the Olympic, which sunk a U-boat during her service in WWI.