Rick Neilson of Cheap Trick has a large collection of over 2000 flamboyant guitars, including a five-necked model and one with a caricature of him on it. In concert, he plays a different guitar for each song.
After Rick Nielsen formed Cheap Trick in 1972, the band had an inauspicious debut album and briefly changed its name to Sick Man of Europe, a reference to the epithet attributed to Tsar Nicholas I of Russia to refer to the Ottoman Empire during the Victorian Era.
Queen Victoria’s realm covered so much of the world’s surface, across virtually every time zone, it was said that “the sun never sets on the British Empire.”
Victoria Adams, better known as “Posh Spice” in the mid-90s girl group the Spice Girls, married British football (soccer) star David Beckham in 1999.
Camp David (official name: Naval Support Facility Thurmont), a Naval facility used as a country retreat by the President of the US and their guests, was originally built in 1935, opening in 1938 by the WPA as a camp for federal government agents and their families.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower named Camp David after his grandson, Dwight D. Eisenhower II.
Eisenhower served two terms as President, defeating Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate, in both 1952 and 1956. The eight years he and his wife Mamie spent in the White House were, up to that time, the longest they’d ever lived in one place, given the vagaries of his military career.
Adlai Stevenson was vice president of the US under Grover Cleveland; his grandson run against Eisenhower.
In Orson Welles’ radio production of “The War of the Worlds”, the Martians landed in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey. In “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension”, the show was a cover-up for the real landing on Earth of the Red Lectroids (named John Yahyah, John Smallberries, and John Bigbootay) who form Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems.
Thornton Wilder’s often produced play Our Town was set in the town and in the cemetery of Grover’s Corners, which Albert (Nathan Lane) claimed was the name of his/her hometown when masquerading as Mrs. Goldman (or Mrs. Coleman) in Birdcage, which was an Americanization of La Cage Aux Folles which is currently having a revival on Broadway starring Kelsey Grammer.
Frank Oz was one of Jim Henson’s primary collaborators with the Muppets. Oz’s Muppet characters included Bert, Grover, Cookie Monster, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Sam the Eagle, and Animal.
Frank Oz, who is British by birth, appears briefly as the crooked police officer who books Dan Akroyd’s character in Trading Places.
In the Robert A. Heinlein story " . . . And He Built a Crooked House," Heinlein sets the location of the house across the street from his own house at the time, and refers to himself as “the original hermit of Hollywood.”
In her posthumously published memoirs, written in the mid-1960’s, Agatha Christie wrote “of my detective books, I think that the two that satisfy me best are Crooked House and Ordeal by Innocence”.
Lyndon B. Johnson was President of the U.S. in the mid-1960s. Taking office after the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, he was elected in his own right in a landslide a year later, defeating Sen. Barry Goldwater, Republican of Arizona. His political standing was badly eroded by the Vietnam War, the failures of the Great Society and race riots, however, and in early 1968, he chose not to run for reelection.
Andrew Johnson, who assumed the presidency in 1865 after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, was the first president to be impeached by the House of Representatives. He was acquited in the Senate by a single vote.
John Goldwater (one of Barry’s distant relatives) created the comic book character Archie Andrews, who debuted in Pep Comics #22 in December of 1941. Goldwater was one of the founders of MLJ Comics, whose initials represented the partners Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit, and John Goldwater.
ETA: Posted in response to #3315, but I’ll say the “Andrew (Johnson)-(Archie) Andrews” connection is sufficient not to have to play a new domino.
In Monkey Business, the four Marx Brothers try to sneak into the US using Maurice Chevalier’s passport and trying to imitate the French singer. Harpo’s imitation is perfect until they discover a gramophone strapped to his back.
Girl with a Pearl Earring was a 1999 historical novel written by Tracy Chevalier, inspired by Vermeer’s painting of the same name. It fictionalizes the circumstances under which the painting was created. It was later adapted into both a film and a play.
The French word for knight is “chevalier,” which comes from “cheval,” the French world for horse, which comes from “caballus,” a Latin slang word for a broken down, flea-bitten old nag.