Ian Paisley was a Northern Ireland radical clergyman who spent his life opposing homosexualty and Roman Catholicism. He first came to prominence in 1956 when he smuggled 15-year old Maura Lyons out to Scotland, saying he’s rather go to prison than return her to her Catholic family. For the rest of his life, he remained a figurehead for anti-catholic causes in Northern Ireland.
Grover Cleveland narrowly won the 1884 US Presidential election over James G. Blaine, “The continental liar from the state of Maine”, when, per Wiki:
Grover Cleveland Alexander, a farm boy from Nebraska, was one of baseball’s best pitchers from the early 20th century. He is best known for striking out Yankee Tony Lazzeri with the bases loaded, to save the 1926 World Series for the Cardinals, pitching seriously hung over from an all night bender near the end of his long career. Lazzeri went on to have a great career, but in that year, he was a rookie batting only a modest .276. That was the series that ended later that afternoon, with Babe Ruth being thrown out trying to steal second base - the first series appearance by the Cardinals, who would go on to become a dynasty, right up to (but not i including) this year.
On August 18, 1967, the Boston Red Sox were playing the California Angels at Fenway Park. Tony Conigliaro, batting against Jack Hamilton, was hit by a pitch on his left cheekbone and was carried off the field on a stretcher. He sustained a linear fracture of the left cheekbone and a dislocated jaw with severe damage to his left retina. The batting helmet he was wearing did not have the protective ear-flap that has since become standard.
Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman was killed on August 16, 1920 by a pitch to his head thrown by the New York Yankees’ Carl Mays at the Polo Grounds. He is thought to have been unable to see the tobacco-juice-stained spitball in the twilight because he did not move.
Lin-Manuel Miranda was inspired to write the smash hit musical Hamilton after picking up historian Ron Chernow’s biography of the first U.S. Treasury secretary at an airport bookshop before a long flight.
Ninja’d: Alexander Hamilton did not chew tobacco.
Tom Kitt and Lin-Manuel Miranda won an Emmy Award for their opening number to the 2013 Tony Awards Bigger, performed by Neil Patrick Harris.
There’s a kid in the middle of nowhere sitting there,
Living for Tony performances
Singin’ and flippin’ along
With the Pippins and Wickeds and Kinkys, Matildas and Mormonses.
So we might reassure that kid
And do something to spur that kid.
Cause I promise you all of us up here tonight we were that kid.
San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg “Pop” Popovich, who has led the team since 1996, is the current longest-tenured head coach in any major North American pro sports league. He is currently tied with Phil Jackson with a record 20 consecutive winning seasons. He has won five NBA championships as a head coach (all with the Spurs), a feat achieved only by four others in NBA history (Phil Jackson, Red Auerbach, Pat Riley, and John Kundla). He is also one of nine coaches to have won 1,000 NBA games.
The first game that the NBA recognizes as an official NBA game was between the New York Knickerbockers and the Toronto Huskies, at Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto, on November 1, 1946.
Before Boston Celtics guard, now general manager, Danny Ainge joined the team, he was an infielder for the Toronto Blue Jays.
There have been three British Royal Navy warships named Toronto, and two in the Royal Canadian Navy. The most recent, in the Canadian fleet, is a Halifax-class frigate commissioned in 1993.
In the 1960s, the Liberal government merged the three Canadian services into one military body, the Canadian Armes Forces.
In 2013, the Conservative government re-created the three separate services, with the traditional names, including the Royal Canadian Navy.
The Prime Minister’s traditional residence, 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa, is currently not in use as the Canadian government decides just how money it wants to spend to restore and/or upgrade it, with estimates now at $10 million and up - way up.
The name “Sussex”, as in the county in southern England, is derived from the Old English Suth-Seaxe which means (land or people) of the South Saxons, a Germanic tribe that settled in the region from the North German Plain during the 5th and 6th centuries.
According to the “Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs”, “Sussex won’t be druv (driven like livestock)” is a local proverbial saying dating from the early 20th century. In 1875 the Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect stated that “I wunt be druv” as a “favourite maxim with Sussex people”. Although used all over Sussex, the phrase probably originates from the Weald, and there is evidence that in Wealden areas common people were freer from manorial control than in the rest of Sussex. Twice in the late Middle Ages Wealden peasants rose in revolt: once in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, under the leadership of Wat Tyler and the radical priest John Ball, and again in 1450 under Jack Cade, who was pursued and fatally wounded at Old Heathfield, where he had connections. The phrase “I wunt be druv” is mentioned in EV Lucas’s 1904 book Highways and Byways in Sussex.
There has only ever been one Duke of Sussex in the peerage of the United Kingdom. It was conferred on November 24, 1801 upon Prince Augustus Frederick, the sixth son of King George III. He was made Baron Arklow and Earl of Inverness at the same time. It has been rumored that Prince Harry of Wales may be made Duke of Sussex upon his marriage.
Edwin “Duke” Snider was the center fielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers, in the golden days of baseball, the 1950s. He is immortalized in Terry Cashman’s song “Talkin’ Baseball”, as part of “Willie, Mickey and the Duke”, referring to Mickey Mantle if the Yankees, Willie Mays of the Giants, and Snider.
“Mortimer Mouse” was the original name for Walt Disney’s most popular animated character until his wife Lillian persuaded him to change the name to Mickey Mouse.
Mickey Mouse first appeared in the black and white musical cartoon, Steamboat Willie.
George R.R. Martin’s 1982 novel Fevre Dream, about vampires along the Mississippi River before the Civil War, takes its name from the fictional luxurious steamboat that is the setting for much of the book. A graphic novel of it was published in 2011.