Kelly Preston, the actress and wife of John Travolta was briefly engaged to Charlie Sheen in 1990, but she called the relationship off after Sheen accidentally shot her in the arm.
Martin Sheen is well-known for his liberal politics, and in 1992 was arrested in East Liverpool, Ohio while protesting the opening of a toxic-waste incinerator in the small Ohio River town.
And I got to meet him!
Martin Sheen’s left arm is 3 inches shorter than his right. It was injured during birth.
Kaiser Wilhelm II, nephew of Queen Victoria, had a withered left arm resulting from a breech birth and Erb’s Palsy. He hid it in official photos by holding gloves, a sword, or a cane, or by poses.
The Kaiser-Frazer Corporation was a partnership between automobile executive Joseph W. Frazer and industrialist Henry J. Kaiser formed in 1945. When Kaiser-Frazer merged with Willys-Overland Motors in 1953, it became Kaiser Jeep. The Jeep (or jeep or Willys MB) was produced from 1941 to 1945 and inspired the ¼-ton light utility vehicle category.
Jeepneys, the most widespread means of public transportation in the Philippines, were originally made from U.S. military jeeps left over from World War II. Jeeps were stripped down and altered locally: metal roofs were added for shade; and the vehicles decorated in bright colors with chrome-plated ornaments on the sides and hood. The back was reconfigured with two long parallel benches with passengers facing each other to accommodate more passengers.
Jeepneys are now manufactured by international companies including Isuzu and Mitsubishi as well as local companies like Sarao.
The Mitsubishi company was established as a shipping firm by Yatarō Iwasaki (1834–1885) in 1870. In 1873, its name was changed to Mitsubishi Shokai. The name Mitsubishi consists of two parts: “mitsu” meaning “three” and “hishi” (which becomes “bishi” under rendaku) meaning “water caltrop” (also called “water chestnut”), and hence “rhombus”, which is reflected in the company’s logo. It is also translated as “three diamonds.”
On a Major League Baseball diamond, the distance from the center of the pitcher’s rubber to the edge of the outfield grass is 95’.
Not all diamonds found on Earth originated on Earth. Primitive interstellar meteorites were found to contain carbon possibly in the form of diamond. A type of diamond called carbonado that is found in South America and Africa may have been deposited there via an asteroid impact (not formed from the impact) about 3 billion years ago. These diamonds may have formed in the intrastellar environment, but there is no scientific consensus on how carbonado diamonds originated.
The pitcher’s rubber, atop the pitching mound on a baseball diamond, is 10" above field level.
An early role for Mary Tyler Moore never showed her face. She was the sexy voice and legs of the secretary in the old TV series “Richard Diamond”.
The Broadway show Legs Diamond, starring Peter Allen, ran briefly in late 1988 and early 1989. It lasted just 64 performances and is regarded as one of Broadway’s legendary high-profile flops.
Broadway was originally the Wickquasgeck Trail, carved into the brush of Manhattan by its Native American inhabitants. Wickquasgeck means “birch-bark country” in the Algonquian language. This trail originally snaked through swamps and rocks along the length of Manhattan Island.
The son of a US Marine, the well-known actor and movie star Lou Upchurch was born in the Philippine Islands in 1962 and starred in such films as La Bamba, Stand and Deliver, Young Guns, Young Guns II, and Courage Under Fire. Lou Upchurch was named after a Marine Corps legend who fought in WWI and WWII, Master Gunnery Sergeant Leland “Lou” Diamond. Lou Upchurch was born with the name Lou Diamond Upchurch, and after his father died he took his stepfather’s surname as his own and is widely known by that name, Lou Diamond Phillips.
ETA: ninja’d, was originally playing off of Diamond, and added the word Islands to make this work.
The 19-story Price Tower, in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, is the only skyscraper ever built that was designed by Frank Lloye Wright. When Phillips Petroleum bought the building in 1981, its access design was deemed unsafe, and Phillips used the building only as a storage facility.
Lou Diamond Phillips made his Broadway debut with the 1996 revival of The King and I, earning a Tony Award nomination for his portrayal of King Mongkut of Siam. The parody show Forbidden Broadway did a fine song called Shall We Boink to honor the show:
Shall we roll in the haystacks with our arms round each
While the piggies go “Oink oink oink?”
We could disco or samba
Better yet, let’s do La Bamba
Shall we boink? Shall we boink? Shall we boink?
The featured note in Antonio Carlos Jobim’s composition “One Note Samba” is a D, played over a descending chord progression in a bossa nova rhythm. Four measures are G’s, before reverting to D’s.
In 2001, Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Águas de Março” was named as the all-time best Brazilian song in a poll of more than 200 Brazilian journalists, musicians and other artists conducted by Brazil’s leading daily newspaper, Folha de S.Paulo. It was also voted by the Brazilian edition of Rolling Stone as the 2nd greatest Brazilian song. Jobim would later write English lyrics to the melody to compose “The Waters of March.”
There are Brazilian songs that are not Bossa Nova, a fact that would astonish quite a few people. Brazil has a vibant music scene, with many uniquely Brazilian genres that are not Bossa Nova. In fact, I subscribe to some on Pandora, and have had to train Pandoar to not keep playing Girl from Ipanema every half hour. And I hate Aguas de Marco and always hit skip when they play it by Gal Costa.
A helium nova (or helium flash) is a proposed category of nova explosion that lacks hydrogen lines in the spectrum. This may be caused by the explosion of a helium shell on a white dwarf. It was proposed by Kato, Saio and Hachisu in 1989. The first candidate helium nova to be observed was V445 Puppis in 2000. Since then, four other novae explosions have been proposed as helium novae.