Actress Linda Blair is best known for her role as the possessed child in The Exorcist (1973).
The then-14 year old child actor was nominated for an Academy Award, and shen won a Golden Globe.
Mercedes McCambridge is the source of many the horrific sounds that came out of the character of Regan in The Exorcist. She was uncredited in the film, and when she spoke up about her contribution, support for an Oscar for Linda Blair decreased, and she didn’t win.
Daimler-Benz AG was a German automobile manufacturer founded in 1926. An Agreement of Mutual Interest - which was valid until 2000 - was signed on 1 May 1924 between Karl Benz’s Benz & Cie., and Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft, which had been founded by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach. Daimler had died in 1900, and Maybach had left in 1907.
On 28 June 1926, Benz & Cie. and Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft formally merged - becoming Daimler-Benz AG (Aktiengesellschaft) - and agreed that thereafter, all of the factories would use the brand name of “Mercedes-Benz” on their automobiles.
When Margaret Thatcher was British Prime Minister, she used armoured Daimler limousines. The current vehicle of choice for the British head of government is a Jaguar sedan.
Lord Peter Wimsey drove a sleek black quiet Daimler nicknamed Mrs Merdle, “because she didn’t like no row.”
Daimler AG is headquartered in Stuttgart and holds shares in MV Agusta Italian motorcycles in Milano.
Agusta was an Italian helicopter manufacturer. It was based in Samarate, Northern Italy. The company was founded by Count Giovanni Agusta in 1923, who flew his first airplane in 1907.
Developed in the 1970s, the Agusta A109 has undoubtedly been the company’s biggest success. The A109 is a commercial and military twin turbine helicopter, of which the latest variants are still in production, hundreds having already been sold.
The first successfully controllable helicopter was the VS.300, designed and flown by Igor Sikorsky in 1940. By tradition, Sikorsky test pilots wear the same bowler hat he did in their first test flight in a new model.
An Airbus Helicopters AS355 Squirrel of the Nepalese Army performed one of the highest altitude rescues ever when on 13 May 1996 a Squirrel courageously flown by Lt. Col. Madan K.C. (Khatri Chhetri) twice rescued Mt. Everest climbers from high on Everest’s Western Cwm, above the Khumbu Icefall. Prior to these two rescue flights, no helicopter had ever retrieved personnel from this high on Mt. Everest.
When squirrels feel threatened, they run away in a zigzag pattern. This is an incredibly useful strategy to escape hawks and other predators. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work so well on cars.
Some American cities have isolated populations of “Black Squirrels”. They are varieties of the common Gray Squirrel, and are not inter-related to each other, nor are they separate species,. Melanism occurs frequently among gray squirrels, and each city’s black squirrel population developed independently of the others following a successful instance of melanism.
Black squirrels are a color morph of the eastern gray squirrel. Eastern gray squirrels, regardless of coat color, are prevalent only in urban areas and parks in California, and not in more rural areas away from human habitation. Their association with humans appears to be the key to their survival and not any variation in color and/or other traits.
Black squirrels are not uncommon in Sunnyvale, California.
I love this! Great trivia.
In play:
Oberlin College’s official team names are the Yeomen and Yeowomen, but the locally-common albino squirrels have been getting some love, too.
Two pop-culture comparisons of rats and squirrels: Carrie Bradshaw referred to a squirrel as nothing but “a rat in a cute outfit” in an episode of Sex and the City, while Col. Hans Landa discussed the hatred of rats versus acceptance of squirrels in Inglorious Basterds when discussing antisemitism.
Actor Christoph Waltz, who played Hans Landa, in 1949 his grandfather authored a book titled, Sex Perfection and Marital Happiness.
The cases of women trying to induce an abortion in the novel Cider House Rules were taken from writings by author John Irving’s Dr. Frederick C. Irving, a renowned obstetrician and gynecologist.
Besides writing The Cider House Rules (1985), John Irving also wrote, among other books, The World According to Garp (1978). A prostitute figures into both novels. In The Cider House Rules, it is the author’s grandfather (the relationship probably intended to be mentioned by Annie-Xmas), Dr. Frederick C. Irving, who was a Harvard OB-GYN.
In his book Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Questions, Randy Alcorn criticizes the Oscar given to John Irving for the screenplay of Cider House Rules because it makes the abortionist look so “sympathetic.” Alcorn apparently missed the ideas that. wjo;ethe book is a work of fiction, all the results of the illegal abortions performed in the book are based on fact.
There are currently more than 700 Planned Parenthood centers across the USA.
Margaret Sanger opened the first birth-control clinic in the U.S. She founded the American Birth Control League in 1921, which changed its name to “Planned Parenthood” in 1942.