Abraham Lincoln often appeared before the rotund Judge David Davis while practicing law in rural Illinois. Davis became a close friend and served as his campaign manager in the 1860 presidential campaign; Lincoln eventually appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Davis automobile was one of the post-WWII adventures to convert aircraft back into automobiles. The most bizarre of them might have been made in a former aircraft plant in Van Nuys, who produced 13 prototypes of the 1947 Davis, a three-wheeled bullet-shaped car wide enough to accommodate four passengers across the front (and only) seat. Glenn Davis spent 1949 in jail for fraud. Efforts to get the model produced by Reliant, a British producer of 3-wheel cars, failed to get funded.
In 1974, the exploits of football halfback Glenn Davis, and those of the 1944 Army team, were mentioned by Lou Grant while discussing football with another man in a public bar in season five, episode 16 of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Legend has it that Mary Tyler Moore auditioned to play Danny Thomas’s oldest daughter on The Danny Thomas Show, but was told “With a nose like yours, nobody would believe I was your father.” When Thomas was looking to cast Dick Van Dyke’s show and no actress seemed right, someone asked “Is there anyone more we can audition” which brought Moore to hid mind.
Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court has twice been removed from his post due to disobedience of Federal court decisions with which he disagreed - first on the separation of church and state, and more recently on same-sex marriage.
One of the often heard arguments against same sex marriage is that “marriage in this country has always been between a man and a woman.” Which, of course, is easy to respond to: “No, marriage in this country had originally been between a man and a woman * of the same color*.”
Upper Paleolithic art dating back 30,000 years depicts people using dildos to pleasure themselves and others. That means mankind invented sex toys long before the wheel.
The first hand-held tool used by primates when they discovered that they had prehensile hands and opposable thumbs, was the back-scratcher.
Preem Palver was First Speaker of the Second Foundation in Isaac Asimov’s centuries-and-galaxy-spanning Foundation series, which has never been adapted for film.
On November 26, 1977, a speaker claiming to represent the “Intergalactic Association” interrupted the Southern Television broadcast in southeast England, warning viewers that “All your weapons of evil must be destroyed.” Like the Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion a decade later, the identity of the intruder was never confirmed.
There is no requirement in the Constitution for the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives to actually be a member of the House, although all of them have been.
HP Sauce, named for the British Houses of Parliament and featuring a lithograph of the houses on its label, dates back to the 1870s; the name was registered in 1895.
The British Houses of Parliament may both be found in the Palace of Westminster.
For centuries, the three common law courts sat in Westminster Hall which is attached to the Palace of Westminster. The Hall is a medieval building, centuries old, which survived the fire which burnt the original Palace of Westminster in the Victorian period.
Victoria, the second oldest city in Texas, is not named for Queen Victoria, but rather for Guadalupe Victoria, the first president of Mexico. Victoria was at the time in Mexico, and was founded during the term of Presidente Victoria.
Two provincial capitals in Canada where named for Queen Victoria: Regina, Saskatchewan and Victoria, British Columbia.
The Athabasca sand dunes, located in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada, is the largest active sand surface in Canada and one of the most northern sets of major dune fields in the world. There are no communities, permanent residents, services, facilities or roads of any kind within or near the park.
Jockey’s Ridge State Park is a state park in Nags Head, Dare County, North Carolina. It covers 426 acres and includes the tallest active sand dune system in the eastern United States. Kitty Hawk, where the Wright Brothers first flew in 1903, is just up the beach.
There are also some serious dunes on Cape Cod; see
Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel Dune was rejected by 23 publishers before being accepted by Chilton, a Philadelphia operation known for trade and hobby magazines such as Motor Age, Jewelers’ Circular and the Dry Goods Economist. It is one of the best-selling science fiction novels of all time, having sold over 20 million copies.