“The Continental”, from the 1934 Astaire-Rogers vehicle The Gay Divorcee, won the first-ever Best Song Oscar, though the film also featured Cole Porter’s “Night and Day”.
The term “coleslaw” arose in the 20th century as a partial translation from the Dutch term “koolsla”, a shortening of “koolsalade”, which means “cabbage salad”.
Cabbage, onions, feta cheese, chick peas, garlic and beer were staples of a laborer’s diet in ancient Rome. Most working class people had largely vegetarian diets due to the expense of meat, eating it perhaps as most people today eat lobster or filet mignon.
Commodus succeeded his father Marcus Aurelius as Emperor of Rome, but there is no reliable evidence that he was a patricide, notwithstanding the crime shown in the 2000 Russell Crowe movie Gladiator, in which Commodus was played by Joaquin Phoenix.
Under the original comics code, the use of the word “crime” was severely restricted. It could not dominate on the cover, and could never be used as the only word in a comic title.
Standup comic and actor Richard Lewis has long claimed to be the originator of the phrase “The ______ from hell,” as in “the date from hell” or “the roommate from hell.” He asked the editors of Bartlett’s to credit him for the phrase, but they declined, saying it was a common idiom before he used it. However, the Yale Book of Quotations does attribute the phrase to Lewis.
U.S. President Jed Bartlett, on TV’s The West Wing, was supposed to be a descendant of Dr. Josiah Bartlett, a New Hampshire physician who signed the Declaration of Independence right after John Hancock.
Martin Sheen played the President’s Chief of Staff to Michael Douglas’s President in The American President (also written by Aaron Sorkin) before playing the President in The West Wing.
The Bartlett pear is known as the Williams pear in England, where it was originally developed. The pear was imported to the United States and grown on the state of Thomas Brewer in Roxbury, Mass. Enoch Bartlett bought the estate, and named the variety after himself.
Scott Brown was elected U.S. senator from Massachusetts in a special election after Ted Kennedy’s death, sending shockwaves through the American political scene by capturing what was long thought to be a safe Democratic seat.
In the first issue of Action Comics, the first crime that Superman solves is finding the real murderer of Jack Kennedy.
Uh… what?
(The word “Kennedy” was the thing in common between those two bits of trivia. The name of the victim was a coincidence, given later history).
John F. Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize for his book about six courageous U.S. senators, Profiles in Courage. The book is still in print.
Frank Gifford co-wrote a book, “Gifford on Courage”, which was inspired by “Profiles in Courage”, but featured various athletes and sports figures who had overcome challenges.
Gifford Nielsen was a star quarterback at Brigham Young University. He has recently been called as an Area Seventy, a Mormon office which gives him authority within a particular geographical area of the church’s reach.
Tom Flores won two Super Bowl rings as head coach of the Los Angeles Raiders, and another as the backup quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs.
Kansas City was a hit song (on different charts) for Little Richard, the Beatles, Herman’s Hermits and Fats Domino among others; it was a composition by Leiber and Stoller, whose other hits included Poison Ivy, Love Potion Number 9, Saved, On Broadway and Stand By Me.
Homo floresiensis, sometimes called The Hobbit, was named after the island where the discovery was made: Flores. Although Indonesian, the name of the Island comes from the Portuguese “flores”, or “flowers”.
Edited to make it apply to the last post: This hominid was quite little, compared to any other human group, past or present.
Florida received its name from Juan Ponce de Leon, the conquistador most famous for his futile quest for the Fountain of Youth; the name originally applied to all of North America, which as late as de Soto was still believed to be an island.
The DeSoto was introduced by Chrysler in 1928 specifically to compete with mid-priced brands. In 1929, however, Chrysler bought Dodge, which already had a strong presence in the mid-priced market. If the DeSoto brand is remembered at all anymore, it’s for sponsoring the Groucho Marx quiz show, You Bet Your Life.