Nicolaus Copernicus never wrote down his theories for fear it would jeopardize his day job working for the Catholic Church. For promoting Copernican theory, Galileo was sentenced to life imprisonment, later reduced to house arrest.
Galileo was persecuted for his astronomical observations a century after Magellan sailed around what was obviously a round planet. By the way, Galileo was never sent to prison, it was commuted to house arrest.
Chaim Topol, star of the film and thousands of stage performances of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, is notoriously difficult to work with and actually came to blows with the director of a filmed version of Berthold Brecht’s GALILEO during the 1970s. (The fight was off camera and during rehearsal.)
NM - ninja’d.
Chaim Topol also starred in the 007 movie, For Your Eyes Only, with Roger Moore.
An eye cannot be transplanted. More than 1 million nerve fibers connect each eye to the brain and currently we’re not able to reconstruct those connections.
The term “Seven Seas” can be traced back to Sumerian writings, 4500 years ago, and has become a part of the lore of practically every civilization since, with the known waters of the world being conveniently differentiated into seven discrete bodies. Even modern geographers follow the tradition, dividing the oceans of the world somewhat arbitrarily, where nobody would ever recognize “seven seas” without really stretching definitions.
The Romans, who whimsically imagined that there were seven hills in Rome, used “Seven Seas” to describe a group of lagoons around the mouth of the Po. Numerological mindsets love to back-define the real world according to their target number.
(Ninjaed on 7.)
NM - ninja’d
OK, “fibers”
The last state to use a non-metallic license plate was Illinois, during World War II, when metals were prioritized for war use. The plates were made from pressed sheets of hardened vegetable fibers, which curled up when expolsed to a year of weathering.
Curses - foiled (ninja’d) again!!
Although New York was the first state to require automobiles have license plates (1901), these plates were made by individual owners (with the owner’s initials) rather than state-issued plates.
The first state-issued license plates were issued in Massachusetts, beginning in 1903.
The first Model A was bought by Ernst Pfinnig on July 23, 1903.
A surprising large number of presidents have had first names that ended with the initial letter of their last name, a configuration that occurs rarely in the real world. William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, Jack Kennedy. Even Jim Madison and Jim Monroe, if you want to stretch it.
And the link to the Model A fact?
To bring the two together, Although American Airlines has the initials AA, that stock symbol is held by Alcoa.
Airlines that have been merged into what is now American Airlines include US Airways (formerly Allegheny), TWA, Pacific Southwest (PSA), Piedmont, Mohawk, Lake Central, America West, Air California, Reno Air, Trans Caribbean, and Trump Shuttle (formerly Eastern Shuttle).
ETA: There was a Model A, an early Ford product before the Model T, then Ford started the alphabet over with the iconic Model A.
American Airlines’ stock symbol is AAL.
Shirley Temple’s first film performance of “On the Good Ship Lollipop” was in Bright Eyes, where she sang it aboard an American Airways (American Airlines’ predecessor) DC-2, while taxiing around the old Grand Central Airport in Glendale, CA (the original main airport for Los Angeles, now an industrial park). Yes, the Lollipop was an airplane, not a maritime ship.
Kim Carnes’ 1981 hit song Bette Davis Eyes spent nine weeks at number 1. It went on to win 1982 Grammies for Song of the Year and Record of the Year. But it was first recorded in 1974 by its writer, Jackie DeShannon, who wrote 1969’s hit Put A Little Love In Your Heart.
Del Shannon’s best-known song was “Runaway”, but he also charted with “Hats Off to Larry”, both songs having been recorded in a single-day studio session. His real name was Charles Weedon Westover, but for professional use he adopted the last name of a pro wrestler he knew, and a shortened form of Cadillac Coupe de Ville, his favorite car.
Del Shannon was being courted to appear in the supergroup The Traveling Wilburys at the time of his death. The group consisted of Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, and George Harrison, and Del would have taken the place of the recently deceased member Roy Orbison. It never came to pass and the Wilburys disbanded.