The Battle of Cowpens loosely inspired the climactic battle of the Mel Gibson movie The Patriot. Some British critics blasted the film for unrealistically demonizing His Majesty’s forces during the American Revolution.
The British commander in The Patriot is modeled after Sir Banastre Tarleton, whose men slaughtered surrendering and wounded colonial soldiers at the Battle of Waxhaws. Tarleton criticized the mildness of Lord Cornwallis’s methods, because moderation “did not reconcile enemies, but . . . discourages friends”. Francis “The Swamp Fox” Marion, after whom Mel Gibson’s character was modeled, became popular for keeping Tarleton on the run with guerrilla tactics.
The Disney series “Swamp Fox” had Leslie Nielsen as Francis Marion and John Sutton as Banastre Tarlton. The show ran eight episodes between 1959 and 1961. It was based on the book of the same name by Robert Duncan Bass.
Tarleton State University is a public university located in Stephenville, Texas. It is not named after the British General, but for local settler settler John Tarleton.
There are two ways to make sure that you’re flying the state flag of Texas rightside up. One is to make sure that the star has a single point poiinting upwards, just as the 50 stars on the American flag properly appear. The other is to think of a bandage over a wound; that is, the white stripe of the flag should be over the red stripe.
Fred Crane was one of the few Southerners with a speaking role in Gone With the Wind; he played Brent Tarleton. A New Orleans native who was 20 at the time, Crane actually delivered the opening line in the movie. Sitting with his twin brother Stuart, played by Iowa-born George Reeves, and talking to Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh, born to a British family in Darjeeling, India) on the porch of her plantation, Tara, Brent Tarleton says: “What do we care if we were expelled from college, Scarlett? The war is going to start any day now, so we’d have left college anyhow.”
Crane lived to be 90 years old and with his wife ran a bed and breakfast called Tarleton Oaks, in Barnesville, south of Atlanta.
On March 5, 1975, computer enthusiasts in Menlo Park, California, held the first meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club. It was started by Gordon French and Fred Moore, who were interested in maintaining a regular, open forum for people to get together to work on making computers more accessible to everyone. The first meeting was held in French’s garage in Menlo Park on the occasion of the arrival in the area of the first MITS Altair microcomputer, a unit sent for review by People’s Computer Company. Steve Wozniak credits that first meeting with inspiring him to design the Apple I. Several very high-profile computer entrepreneurs emerged from its ranks, including the founders of Apple Inc. The Homebrew Computer Club has been called “the crucible for an entire industry.”
Sir Fred Hoyle is said to have coined the term “Big Bang” to describe the idea of an expanding universe. He himself supported the idea of a steady-state universe, and some suggested he used the term “Big Bang” to critique the expansionist theory. Hoyle denied that point himself, saying that he just used “Big Bang” as a colourful way to capture the idea of an expanding universe.
Altair is one of many stars and celestial objects in the universe with a name that originates in Arabic, due to the influential work and discoveries of Islamic astronomers in the Middle Ages. Among other names with Arabic origins are the star names Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Deneb, Rigel and Vega, and astronomical terms such as alidade, azimuth, and nadir.
The four white chariot horses in Ben Hur are named Aldebaran, Altair, Antares and Rigel.
The fictional planet of Altair IV was the location of the disappeared colony in the movie Forbidden Planet. As of now, we know of no planets around the star known as Altair.
(Elendil’s #35040 referenced, think it was missed)
The United Planets starship that arrives to look in on the human colony on Altair IV in Forbidden Planet is the C-57D. Perhaps coincidentally, that was also the designation of a U.S. Air Force cargo plane of the era:
The colonists had reached Altair IV in the Bellerophon, which was then destroyed while attempting to leave the planet.
Brothers Allan and Malcolm Lockheed, founders of Lockheed aircraft in 1912 and the manufacturer of the Lodestar cargo plane, were born in Fremont CA’s Niles District. Their last name originally Loughead but they changed it in 1934 for easier pronunciation. In 1917 they patented the first hydraulic brakes, which were used on the 1921 Duesenberg Model A – the first four-wheled hydraulic brakes car offered anywhere in the world.
Niles, California was the home of one of the first West Coast motion picture companies, Essanay Studios. Charlie Chaplin and Broncho Billy Anderson filmed some of their most famous silent movies in Niles. Scenic Niles Canyon stretches between Niles and Sunol. The nonprofit Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum offers both artifacts of Niles’s early years, and each Saturday evening, screenings of early-twentieth-century silent films, many of which were filmed locally.
Essanay Studios got it’s name from it’s founders, George K. Spoor and Gilbert M. Anderson (“S and A”). Essanay merged with several other companies in 1918 and was finally absorbed by Warner Brothers in 1925.
American football coach Glenn Scobey Warner coached at various institutions and was responsible for several key aspects of the modern game, including the single and double wing formations (precursors of the modern spread and shotgun formations), the three point stance, and the body blocking technique. Fellow pioneer coach Amos Alonzo Stagg called Warner “one of the excellent creators”.
Glenn Scobey Warner is most commonly known as Pop Warner.
In 1968, at age 19, Glenn Frey played the acoustic guitar and performed background vocals on Bob Seger’s single, “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man”. Seger strongly encouraged and influenced Frey to focus on writing original songs. They remained good friends and occasional songwriting partners in later years, and Frey would also sing on Seger’s songs such as “Fire Lake” and “Against the Wind”.[
Freyr or Frey is one of the most important gods of Norse religion. He is one of the Vanir, a group of gods associated with fertility, wisdom, nature, magic, and the ability to see the future. Freyr is the son of the sea god Njörðr, as well as the twin brother of the goddess Freyja. He rides the magical boar Gullinbursti and uses the ship Skíðblaðnir which always has a favorable breeze and can be folded together and carried in a pouch when it is not being used.
Earendil the Mariner, at the helm of his ship Vingilot and with a dazzling Silmaril jewel on his brow, become in the Middle-earth legendarium of J.R.R. Tolkien what we now know as the planet Venus.
Entertainer Danny Kaye was part-owner of baseball’s expansion Seattle Mariners with Lester Smith from 1977–81. Prior to that, the lifelong fan of the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers recorded a song called “The D-O-D-G-E-R-S Song (Oh really? No, O’Malley!)”, describing a fictitious encounter with the San Francisco Giants, a hit during the real-life pennant chase of 1962. That song is included on Baseball’s Greatest Hits compact discs. A good friend of Leo Durocher, he often traveled with the team.