In addition to the titile role, Laurie intended also to audition for the role of James Wilson, until he read that Wilson had an “honest, open face”
In the 1980s, William “Willie” Wilson was center fielder for the Kansas City Royals. In the same time frame, William “Mookie” Wilson was the center fielder for the New York Mets. They were similar type players – speedsters who didn’t hit a lot of home runs.
Oddly, Edgar Allen Poe wrote the story “William Wilson” with a theme of a man and his double. The similarity between the story and the two baseball William Wilsons has been pointed out.
Woodrow Wilson’s actual first name was Thomas. Although born in Virginia, he rose to political prominence in New Jersey, as president of Princeton University and then as a reformist governor of the state.
The Thomas Wilson was a Great Lakes freighter launched in 1892 that sank in a storm in 1902, much like the later Edmund Fitzgerald.
John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald was the first Irish-American mayor of Boston. His grandson, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was an even more successful politician.
Lt. (J.G.) John F. Kennedy’s wartime command, the patrol torpedo boat PT-109, was hit by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri at nighttime on August 2, 1943, cut in two and sunk. Kennedy was decorated for his heroism in saving the survivors of his crew.
John F. Kennedy Jr., the son of President John F. Kennedy, failed the New York state bar exam twice, before finally passing it in 1990.
John F. Kennedy was the first and so far the only president whose grandmother, Josephine Hannan Fitzgerald, lived to see him inaugurated; sadly, she also lived to see him assassinated.
The prefix Fitz- in a person’s surname means “son of”, and comes from the Norman language.
The last name “Fitzroy” was first given to Henry VIII’s illegitimate son Henry Fitzroy. The name was coined from “fitz” (son of) and roi (French for “king”).
Rodney Dangerfield’s birth name was Jacob Cohen. His father, Philip Cohen, performed in vaudeville under the name Phil Roy. Young Jacob borrowed the name when he was trying to break into comedy, under the stage name Jack Roy. He also failed as a singing waiter and an acrobatic diver before quitting show biz to sell aluminum siding, then later returned with the “no respect” schtick under the name, borrowed from a Jack Benny sketch, that would make him famous.
A pair of U.S. Senators, Republican William Cohen of Maine and Democrat Gary Hart of Colorado, co-wrote a not-very-successful spy novel entitled*** Double Man.***
Sen. Gary Hart was the front-runner for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination, until reports of marital infidelity surfaced – particularly a photograph of Hart with a young blonde woman, Donna Rice, sitting on his lap, while the two of them were on a yacht with the ironic name of Monkey Business.
The British royal yacht Britannia served from 1953 until her decommissioning in 1997. Although there were detailed plans to build a successor, they were shelved by the Blair Government and are unlikely to now be reconsidered, given the British budget deficit. Britannia is now permanently moored as an exhibition ship in Edinburgh, Scotland.
[del]1931’s Monkey Business was the first Marx Brothers movie not to include Margaret Dumont, although she returned to the act for 1933’s Duck Soup.[/del]
The Treasure Island Casino in Las Vegas stages outdoor performances of a pirate battle in Buccaneer Bay with the crew of the sailing vessel HMS Britannia defending it from the pirate ship Hispaniola.
Hispaniola is a major island in the Caribbean, and is among those “discovered” by Christopher Columbus during his voyage of 1492. The island now contains the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
For his discoveries, Columbus was given the title “Admiral of the Ocean Sea” by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain; it was also the title of a famous 1942 biography of the explorer by naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison.
Reginald Bretnor, using the pseudonym Grendel Briarton, wrote a series of short science fiction stories under the umbrella title of “Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot.” This sort of story – with a long, involved pun at the end (e.g., “The Furry with the Syringe on Top”) – is often referred to as a feghoot.
Lt. Reginald Barclay, a somewhat maladjusted, painfully shy but nevertheless talented engineer, appeared in several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
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