Under international trade agreements, only whiskey distilled in the United States may be called bourbon whiskey.
There have been three U.S. Navy warships that were to have been named the USS United States. One, a battlecruiser, was cancelled in 1923 and broken up before construction was complete. Another, an aircraft carrier, was cancelled in 1949 only five days after her keel was laid down. The last, another aircraft carrier, was renamed the USS Harry S. Truman before completion in 1995.
Singer-actor Howard Keel was a “coal-miner’s son”, growing up so poor in southern Illinois that his teacher had to bring him lunch every day.
Sissy Spacek, who starred in Coal Miner’s Daughter, expected her fellow Texan co-star Tommy Lee Jones to be a “good old boy”. She wrote in her autobiography that instead he was “the smartest person in the room”. He attended St. Mark’s School of Texas, a prestigious prep school, on a scholarship, and went to Harvard on another scholarship. He roomed with Al Gore, received a B.A. in English literature and graduated cum laude from Harvard in 1969
The symbol of St Mark the evangelist is a winged lion, sometimes holding a Bible and sometimes holding a sword. The origin of the symbol is Revelation, 4:7, where four creatures are described as continually praising the Lord. The description of the four creatures has been ascribed to the four evangelists.
In 1987, Mark Harmon and his wife Pam Dawber filed for custody of his nephew Sam on the grounds that his sister, Kristin Nelson (Rick Nelson’s widow), was incapable of good parenting. Sam’s psychiatrist testified that the thirteen-year-old boy depicted his mother as a dragon and complained about her mood swings and how she prevented him from being with his siblings. Harmon land Dawberater dropped the custody bid.
Pam Dawber is best known for her lead television sitcom role as Mindy McConnell in Mork & Mindy alongside the late comedian Robin Williams.
The American Robin is a misnomer. The true robin is an old-world member of the chat family of songbirds. Early settlers to North America gave the familiar name to a similarly red-breasted songbird, which is actually a member of the thrush family.
The Reliant Robin is a small three-wheeled car formerly produced by the Reliant Motor Company in Tamworth, England. The lack of a fourth wheel let it be taxed as a motorcycle, not a car, and driven with a motorcycle license. However, perhaps two of the best known Reliants in British comedy are actually Reliant Regal Supervans — the dirty yellow van owned by the Trotter brothers in "Only Fools and Horse"s, and the light blue van that always ends up getting tipped over, crashed into, bumped out of its parking space etc. by a British Leyland Mini in “Mr. Bean”.
Rowan Atkinson, well known for his role as Mr. Bean, once crashed his McLaren F1, a supercar valued at more than $1,000,000, into the back of a stationary Mini Metro, valued at around $600. The damage was not severe.
Before the Mini-Minor with its caster-sized wheels, there was the Morris Minor, a small four-door sedan shaped like a real car. Racing driver Sterling Moss drove one as his everyday driver. The predecessor to Morris was Morris Garage, the creator of the MG.
Verne Troyer played Mini-Me, a 1/8 scale clone of Dr. Evil, in the 2nd and 3rd Austin Powers films. In the film within a film in Goldmember, viz. Austinpussy, the role is played in cameo by Danny DeVito.
The iconic Irish song, “Danny Boy”, was written by Frederic Weatherly, an English barrister.
The iconic performance of “Danny Boy” was by Swedish Chef, Animal, and Beaker, as The Three Leprechauns.
In a 2004 Internet poll sponsored by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Beaker and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew were voted Britain’s favorite cinematic scientists. They beat Mr. Spock, their closest rival, by a margin of two to one, winning a third of the total votes.
Dr. Benjamin Spock not only wrote a best selling childcare book, he was an anti-war activist, and won a gold medal in rowing at the 1924 Olympic Games.
“Fields of Gold” is a song written and recorded by Sting. Despite not reaching the Top 10 in the UK or the Top 20 in the United States when it was released as a single from the album, it has become one of his most famous songs, with many cover versions by other artists. About the song lyrics, he said “In England, our house is surrounded by barley fields, and in the summer it’s fascinating to watch the wind moving over the shimmering surface, like waves on an ocean of gold.”
The barleycorn is an old English unit that equates to 1⁄3 inch. This is the basis for current UK and US shoe sizes, with the largest shoe size taken as twelve inches (a size 12) and then counting backwards in barleycorn units, so a size 11 is 11.67 inches, size 10 is 11.33 inches, etc…
John Barleycorn Must Die is the fourth studio album by English rock band Traffic, released in 1970 on Island Records in the United Kingdom, and United Artists in the United States. Steve Winwood re-established the group with Jim Capaldi and Chris Wood after the dissolution of Blind Faith. The title track is an old English folk song about the evils of ale.
Ale is a type of beer brewed using a warm fermentation method, resulting in a sweet, full-bodied and fruity taste. Historically, the term referred to a drink brewed without hops. In medieval times, ale may have been safer to drink than most water, mostly due to the hours of boiling required in production, not the alcoholic content of the finished beverage.