Sir Alex Fergusson CBE is generally regarded as the greatest association football coach of the modern era.
As manager of Aberdeen, he won three Scottish league championships, four Scottish Cups and the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup. He managed Scotland during the 1986 World Cup campaign.
He then served as manager of Manchester United for 26 years winning 38 trophies, including 13 Premier League titles, five FA Cups and two UEFA Champions League titles.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was knighted not for writing his world-famous Sherlock Holmes stories, but for service as a volunteer doctor in South Africa during the Boer War, and for writing in favor of the British war effort there.
In 1927, the Strand magazine asked Conan Doyle which of the Holmes stories were his favorites. While he didn’t specifically rank them in order, he did list “The Speckled Band” as the first that came to mind.
Here’s the complete list: http://www.sherlock-holmes.co.uk/library/doyle.html
Edgar Allan Poe was a major influence on Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle wrote “Where was the detective story before Poe breathed the breath of life into it?” Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is so closely based on Poe’s character C. Auguste Dupin that early filmmakers looking for more Holmes mysteries to adapt to the screen merely changed the names of Poe’s characters to turn “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” into “Sherlock Holmes and the Great Murder Mystery.”
The TV show Criminal Minds opens and ends with a quote from a famous person; i.e. Edgar Allan Poe’s “I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind”
The characters Bert and Ernie on television’s Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life.
Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, Cybill Shepherd, etc., was ranked as the 5th-greatest film of all time in a director’s poll.
After modeling as the Coppertone Girl and appearing in some kids’ movies for Disney, Jodie Foster broke into the broader movie business in Taxi Driver, playing a 12 year old prostitute. A social worker was required to accompany her on set and her older sister Connie acted as her stand-in in sexually suggestive scenes. The film, in which Robert DeNiro saw her talent and encouraged her, earned her a supporting actress Academy Award nomination, as well as two BAFTAs, a David di Donatello and a National Society of Film Critics award.
Salmon Portland Chase was a leader of the Free Soil Party, Governor of Ohio, U.S. Senator, Secretary of the Treasury and Chief Justice of the United States. Chase National Bank was named after him though he had no affiliation with it.
Chase was in charge of issuing greenbacks to finance the Civil War. Earlier Secretary Chase had the slogan, “In God We Trust” engraved on U. S. coins. During a cabinet meeting there was some discussion of adding it to the U. S. Notes as well. Lincoln, however, humorously remarked, “If you are going to put a legend on the greenbacks, I would suggest that of Peter and Paul, ‘Silver and gold I have none, but such as I have I give to thee.’”
Samuel P. Chase ran for President in 1860 but lost the Republican nomination to Abraham Lincoln.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is often called “America’s Most Corrupt Bank.” The company has paid no less than $35 Billion in fines and settlements in recent years. As just one example, it is alleged that the bank was well aware of the shenanigans of its customer, Bernard Madoff (now in federal prison, scheduled for release in Nov. 2139), but was happy to turn a blind eye to use his cash.
Yet despite the corruption evidenced by the $35 billion in fines and settlements, not a single executive of the bank has ever been prosecuted for fraud.
In prison at the Federal Complex in Butner, North Carolina, convicted Ponzi scheme swindler Bernie Madoff is reported to have said, loud enough for other inmates to hear, “Fuck my victims. I carried them for twenty years, and now I’m doing 150 years.”
Ana Carolina is one of Brazil’s most popular singers. She has sold over 2-million album since 1999, and five songs have reached the top of the Brazilian charts.
Lawrence Wlk used to have the personalized license plate: A1 ANA2
When the UK water utility companies were largely privatized, one of the Chairman of the newly floated companies attracted criticism for being photographed getting out of a top of the range Mercedes Benz bearing the number plate “H2 EAU”.
In 1928, Idaho license plates appeared with the words “Idaho Potatoes”. That is now regarded as the first license plate slogan in America.
South Carolina once used the word “Iodine” as its license plate slogan, since iodine production was the only thing in which South Carolina led the nation. Most people at the time thought of iodine only as an antiseptic tincture to dab onto their children’s skinned knees.
In 1811, iodine was discovered by French chemist Bernard Courtois. While destroying the remains of seaweed ash used to make saltpetre, Courtois added to much sulfuric acid and got a purple cloud that condensed into purple crystals. Other scientists then went on to define it’s properties and give it the name iodine.
Great link - thanks! I still clearly remember my fifth-grade teacher reading “The Speckled Band” to us in class. The edition she read from had very spooky B&W illustrations that made a big impression on me at the time, esp. the picture of the dying Julia Stoner in the hallway of the country house.
In play:
The French Navy has just a single aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle (R91), commissioned in 2001, although French naval doctrine calls for two carriers to be in service at all times.
Charles de Gaulle’s nickname in military school was “The Tall Asparagus”