Bedazzled was a retelling of the Faust legend with Peter Cook getting one of his best roles as George Spiggot – the Devil. In it, Dudley Moore was tempted by the sin of Lust, as portrayed by Raquel Welch.
In 1974, Raquel Welch won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Musical or Comedy for The Three Musketeers. She was also nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in the TV drama Right to Die.
In Rex Stout’s 1964 murder mystery A Right to Die, Nero Wolfe’s client is a middle aged African-American professor who had been a teenaged kitchen boy in Stout’s ***Too Many Cooks ***decades earlier. For some reason, Nero Wolfe had not aged a day in all this time.
The famous Ford Trimotor airliner of the late 1920’s was designed and originally built by William Stout and his Stout Metal Airplane Company, prior to the company’s purchase by Henry Ford in what proved to be a rare losing investment for him. The Trimotor was used in the first transcontinental air service, with the nighttime legs on the NYC-LA route operated by railroads. The interchange points were Columbus, OH; Waynoka, OK: and Clovis, NM.
Ford Trimotors were, as recently as the mid-1970s, still used for air transport between the Ohio mainland and South Bass Island in Lake Erie.
South Bass Island is the location of the resort town of Put-In-Bay and of the Perry’s Victory Memorial and International Peace Memorial, commemorating the key naval battle of the War of 1812. It is also the location of Crystal Cave, the world’s largest geode.
Charles Faust was a wannabe pitcher who showed up at the New York Giants training camp in 1911, saying that he would lead them to a pennant. Manager John McGraw liked him as a good luck charm and kept him with the team as a non-roster player for three years, during which the team won three pennants. Faust actually pitching two games, but generally just warmed up on the sidelines. He gained the nickname of “Victory,” but was eventually committed to a mental institution.
Nelson’s flagship at the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, HMS Victory, is still in use as a regional naval headquarters in Portsmouth, England (although drydocked), and is open for tours.
Ships commanded by Horatio Hornblower, a fictional naval officer who would have been a contemporary of Nelson in the Napoleonic wars, included HMS Hotspur, HMS Sutherland and Witch of Endor.
The Sutherland was later honored by the same name being given to a Nebula-class starship briefly commanded by Lt. Cmdr. Data during the Klingon Civil War on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The ship was also mentioned on DS9.
Actor Kiefer Sutherland is the grandson of Canadian politician Tommy Douglas, who led the drive to establish universal public health care in his country. He was the first leader of the New Democratic Party, formed in 1961. A 2004 CBC contest named Douglas “The Greatest Canadian of All Time”.
William O. Douglas was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by FDR, and served until the administration of President Gerald Ford (who had, as a congressman, tried have him impeached). Ford appointed John Paul Stevens, who just announced his retirement, to succeed Douglas. President Obama will appoint Stevens’s successor.
Gerald J. Ford, not to be confused with President Gerald R. Ford, sold Golden State Bancorp to Citigroup in 2002 for $6 billion.
“Gerald McBoing-Boing,” based on a story by Dr. Seuss, won the 1950 Oscar for Best Animated Short.
Gerald O’Hara, father of Scarlett and her sisters in Gone With the Wind, was born in County Meath, Ireland and came to the U.S. to evade English authorities; he won a plantation in a card game and married his heiress aristocratic wife when she was 15 and he was 43.
Stafford Repp played the stereotypical Irish police Chief O’Hara, on Adam West’s campy ***Batman ***series, while Neil Hamilton played the prim, proper Commissioner Gordon. West claimed that Hamilton played his role seriously at all times, and didn’t fully grasp that the show was a comedy.
Hall of Fame pitcher Chief Bender was a member of the Ojibwa tribe.
Between his stints with the Philadelphia Athletics and Phillies, Chief Bender spent the 1915 season with the Baltimore Terrapins of the upstart Federal League. He had only a 4-16 record, but the team’s mark wasn’t much better – 47 wins vs. 107 defeats.
In July 2008, flights at JFK in New York City were delayed for up to 1.5 hours as 78 diamondback terrapins were invading one of the runways. It is believed that they were females looking for places to deposit their eggs. All terrapins were captured & released back into the wild.
Into the Wild is a book by Jon Krakauer, written about a young man from the DC area (in VA), who died in Alaska while on a quest to renounce the modern world and lead a life cut off from money and society in general. His body was found by a groop of moose hunters, although none of them was Sarah Palin.