Kansas City’s Union Station was the site for the “Kansas City Massacre” on 17 June 1933 when four unarmed FBI agents were gunned down by gang members attempting to free captured fugitive Frank Nash. Nash was also killed in the gun battle. The “Kansas City Massacre” resulted in the arming of all FBI agents from then on.
(Explanation: What became West Virginia already had statehood. Wisconsin was the last cis-Mississippian territory without statehood to acqauire it.)
In Play:
Kansas City’s Union Station was the site for the “Kansas City Massacre” on 17 June 1933 when four unarmed FBI agents were gunned down by gang members attempting to free captured fugitive Frank Nash. Nash was also killed in the gun battle. The “Kansas City Massacre” resulted in the arming of all FBI agents from then on.
Kansas City was one of the cradles of jazz, a genre usually associated more with New Orleans, St. Louis, Chicago and NYC. Some big names in Kansas City jazz were Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Ben Webster, Lester Young and Big Joe Turner.
Okay. In play: Kansas City has more freeway miles per capita than any other US metro area of over 1 million residents.
USS Kansas City (LCS-22) is a planned Independence-class littoral combat ship. It will be the second warship of that name to serve in the U.S. Navy.
Every word in the English language can be, with just one or two degrees of separation, used to describe a ship in the US Navy. And probably will be.
An actor’s Kevin Bacon Number is his/her degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon, via a “shortest path” algorithm, applied to the co-stardom network:
Kevin Bacon himself has a Bacon number of 0.
Those actors who have worked directly with Kevin Bacon have a Bacon number of 1.
If the lowest Bacon number of any actor with whom X has appeared in any movie is N, X’s Bacon number is N+1.
Although Bacon is widely connected, one study using the IMDB data base found that the actor with the lowest average degrees of separation of all the actors in it is actually Burgess Meredith, who starred in a wide range of genres.
The actor Kevin Costner was a friend of director Lawrence Kasdan, who promised the actor a role in a future project. That became the western movie Silverado (1985) and a breakout role for Costner.
Only two of the actors in Game of Thrones are American born: Peter Dinklage (who plays Tyrion Lannister) and Jason Momoa (who played Khal Drogo).
Dr. Lawrence Peter articulated the Peter Principle: in any hierarchy, a person will rise until reaching a level of incompetence, a point where they will be unable to handle the job, and thus no longer promoted.
Peter O’Toole holds the record for the most Academy Award acting nominations without a win. His 8 nominations span 44 years, from Lawrence of Arabia in 1962 to Venus in 2006.
Peter O’Toole played King Henry II of England twice, in Becket (1964) and in The Lion in Winter (1968).
Peter O’Toole has lost the Best Actor Oscar to:
Gregory Peck, Rex Harrison, Cliff Robertson, John Wayne, Marlon Brando, Robert DeNiro, Ben Kingsley, and Forest Whitaker.
(Cliff Robertson? Forest Whitaker? Really?
Really.)
Man of La Mancha, starring Peter O’Toole and Sophia Loren got off to a confused start. Neither of the two main stars were singers — they were cast when one of a series of directors intended to make the film a non-musical.
Although now viewed more favorably, Man of La Mancha initially got bad reviews. For example,
[QUOTE=Roger Ebert]
Now it’s almost obligatory to cast a musical with people who can’t sing or dance – and make no pretensions to. At least when we were getting Natalie Wood, we were getting Marnie [sic] Nixon’s voice. If there’s anything worse than dubbing in the voice of a non-singer, its not dubbing the voice of a non-singer. What favor were they doing us when they let us hear Peter O’Toole sing? Richard Harris is better, and he’s no good. He can’t sing, that is, but at least he can read lyrics. O’Toole masticates them.
[/QUOTE]
The joke was on Mr. Ebert. O’Toole’s songs were dubbed by a professional singer!
Sophia Loren is related by marriage to Benito Mussolini. Her sister Anna Maria married Romano Mussolini, a musician and the youngest son of the Italian dictator, in 1962. This was 17 years after the dictator’s death, when the musician was 35 years old.
Pecorino Romano is a hard, salty Italian cheese, often used for grating, made out of sheep’s milk (the Italian word pecora, from which the name derives, means sheep). Pecorino Romano was a staple in the diet for the legionaries of ancient Rome.
Romano cheese is an American and Canadian term for a class of cheeses similar to Pecorino Romano from which the name is derived, but are not the genuine Percorino Romano.
In the short animated film A Grand Day Out, Wallace and Gromit spend a holiday building a homemade rocket to the Moon to sample cheese. They find that the cheese on the Moon tastes similar to Wensleydale, a Yorkshire cheese that was originally made from sheep’s milk.
Mr. Wensleydale was the cheese shop owner in the beloved 1972 Monty Python skit of a man who names dozens of different cheeses in order to learn of just one that is actually available: The Cheese Shop sketch, Monty Python - YouTube
Pythons eat wild animals such as monkeys, antelopes, caimans. They swallow their prey whole, after killing it by suffocation. Everything except fur and feathers will be digested. Undigested material can be found in the python’s poop.
Poopdeck Pappy is a fictional character featured in the Thimble Theater comic strip and animated cartoon spinoffs, including Popeye. Created by E.C. Segar in 1936, the character is Popeye’s father, who is between the ages of 85 and 99.