In the movie Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is represented as having ruby slippers. They were silver in the book from which the movie was adapted. Which is an unsurprising departure in one of the fist movies to showcase Technicolor. Earlier movie adaptations of the story were made in 1910, 1925 and 1933.
Ruby’s Diner is a small chain of 35 eateries fashioned as 1940s diners located mostly in southern California, and also in NJ, PA, NV, and TX, and open for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The most popular diner in Victoria Texas is the Pinto Bean, but it is often closed by the department of health inspectors. They have no phone, so before going over there, you phone the store across the street and ask if it looks like it’s open.
Texas has no natural lakes lying wholly within its state boundaries.
In Norwegian slang, “texas” has become a synonym for "crazy".
The Klondike bar was created by the Isaly Dairy Company of Mansfield, Ohio in the early 1920s and named after the Klondike River of Yukon, Canada. Rights to the name were eventually sold to Good Humor-Breyers, part of Unilever. It is known for its jingle slogan, “What would you do for a Klondike Bar?”.
The former Ohio State Reformatory, aka Mansfield Prison, has been a location for a number of films and TV shows, including The Shawshank Redemption, Tango and Cash, and Fallen Angels. The East Cell Block remains the largest free standing steel cell block in the world at six tiers high.
Mansfield, Ohio’s official nickname is “The Fun Center of Ohio”.
In 1997 TV Guide ranked the turkey episode of WKRP in Cincinnati as number 40 on its ‘100 Greatest Episodes of All Time’ list. It is based on a real event that happened at WQXI, the station many of the WKRP characters were based on.
WLW, AM 700, is a 50,000 watt clear channel radio station that was once the flagship of Crosley Broadcasting, owned by Powel Crosley Jr, who owned the Cincinnati Reds, and the Crosley automobile and radio and appliance manufacturers.
General Omar Bradley owned a Crosley auto.
Marg Schott, a later owner of the Cincinnati Reds, was so stingy that if a player’s cap got dirty, he had to turn in his old one to get a replacement.
In the movie adaption of the Russian novel Dr. Zhivago, the title role was played by Egyptian Omar Sharif, his wife Tania and his lover Lara were played by British actors Geraldine Chaplin and Julie Christie, Lara’s husband Pasha was played by Scottish actor Tom Courtney, and Yuri’s half-brother Yevgrav was played by British actor Alec Guinness. All those Russian Reds, and not a true Russian in the bunch.
Hollywood did have trouble getting fluent anglophone Russian actors during the Cold War, or fluent anglophone actors of any ethnicity at other times, leading to the practice of using British actors to play virtually all non-Americans without their even trying to use accents. Sean Connery as the submarine commander in The Hunt for Red October showed the world that Lithuanians speak English with the accents of Scots wearing loose dentures, for instance.
Also Air Force One (the abortive release of the bad-guy Russian general).
In play:
Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October was the first novel published by the U.S. Naval Institute Press. Sales soared and went mainstream after then-President Ronald Reagan praised the book.
Samhain, one of the four major pagan yearly festivals, is traditionally celebrated from sunset on October 31st to sunset on November 1st, about halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice.
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The technical aspects in Tom Clancy’s novel The Hunt for Red October, about ASW (anti-submarine warfare) and the US Navy were so accurate that it is rumored that Clancy was debriefed by US military intelligence to check if Clancy received Confidential or Secret material from his spurces during his research for the novel. Ronald Reagan, describing his enjoyment of the technical thriller, said the book was “unPutDownable.”
When Isaac Asimov, asked to write the novel from the script of Fantastic Voyage, about a medical team and a submarine being miniaturized and injected into a human body, he declared that the script was full of plot holes, and received permission to write the book the way he wanted. The novel came out first because he wrote quickly and because of delays in filming. The movie’s director Richard Fleischer originally studied medicine and human anatomy in college before choosing to be a movie director.
Isaac Asimov loved limericks and he published a children’s book of limericks in 1984. But he especially liked dirty limericks. One that is SFW and openly share-able here is:
*A pious young minister’s pappy
Had a sex life, diverse, hot, and snappy.
It shocked his dear son
When he had all that fun,
But it made girl parishioners happy.
*