The role of Ben, of course, eventually went to Dustin Hoffman, who did a TV ad for VW early in his career.
The Volkswagen was originally named the KDF-Wagen, KDF standing for “Kraft durch Freude” (Strength through Joy), which was a major Nazi worker’s recreation organization. During Occupation, the factory town of Stadt des KdF-Wagens was renamed Wolfsburg, after a nearby castle.
During its post-World War II occupation, Germany was split into four zones, each supervised by one of the victorious major Allied powers: American, British, French (France also ran the Saar Protectorate) and Soviet. The first three zones and the Protectorate became West Germany; the Soviet, East Germany.
The Volkswagen Type 181 Kurierwagen was a small Jeep-like military vehicle, produced from 1969 through 1983. From 1972 through 1975, it was sold in the United States of America as the “Volkswagen Thing”.
The Kurierwagen’s precursor, the Kubelwagen, was used extensively during World War II by both the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS, serving all of the functions of the American Jeep.
Due to Hermann Göring’s suicide minutes before he was to be executed, Wehrmacht Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel was the senior Nazi official to be hanged at Nuremberg. His last words translated as “I now go to join my sons. All is for Germany.”
[del]Jeeps have been produced by American Bantam, Willys, Ford, Kaiser, AMC, Chrysler, DaimlerChrysler, and now Cerberus Capital Management. Only Ford, whose production was under wartime license, has avoided losing a crippling amount of money on it.[/del]
Harvey Keitel, best known as “The Wolf” in Pulp Fiction, had a scene dressed only in Maori tattoos in The Piano, the film which won 10-year-old Anna Paquin an Oscar. She was the second-youngest winner ever, after Tatum O’Neal. Holly Hunter became only the third Oscar winner of the talkie era for a non-speaking role, after Jane Wyman and Marlee Matlin.
Jesse White, best known as the Maytag repairman, had his film debut in the movie Harvey.
Harvey Kuenn of the Tigers won the American League batting crown in 1959. After the season, he was traded from Detroit to Cleveland for Rocky Colavito, who had just won the league’s home run crown. The trade was, to say the least, not very popular among Indians fans.
Although Colavito would eventually return to the Indians, the 40-year gap between the team’s penants has been blamed on “the curse of Colavito.”
After the death of his first wife, Charity, P.T. Barnum married Nancy Fish with whom he had a 40 year gap in age (he was 64 and she was 24).
The PT boats used in the South Pacific were made of mahogany, not plywood as is often stated.
Theme to Mahogany plays during a fantasy segment of an episode of Everybody Hates Chris as he sees his life flash before his eyes when he suspects his mother is going to kill him for lying about a math grade.
There is a myth that Albert Einstein flunked math. There is some truth to the story.
Einstein did very poorly in Greek and Latin, perhaps not even finishing the Swiss equivalent of high school, because of that. He went to college in Switzerland, and did very well (As, Bs, a few C+'s) in most subjects, especially math. But there was one interesting exception. He got an F, in “Physical Experiments for Beginners.” On the report card is written the following: “March 1899: director’s reprimand for nondiligence in physics practicum. Graduated.”
When Einstein went to work for Princeton he was asked to name his own salary. He asked for $3,000 per year; they counter-offered with $16,000. They eventually settled on $10,000- he thought $16,000 was far too much. He later had his retirement pension reduced from $7500 to $6000 as well. He was completely unmotivated by money and his most prized possession was his violin which he bequeathed to his grandson, Bernhard Caesar Einstein, who was also a physicist.
There have been six U.S. Navy warships named the USS Princeton, after George Washington’s 1777 victory near the New Jersey town. The current ship of that name, a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser, was commissioned in 1989.
Ethan Allen gained fame as a military commander for capturing Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York. Allen supposedly demanded surrender “in the name of the Great Almighty and the Continental Congress,” though he had no commission from the latter. His co-commander, Benedict Arnold was rarely mentioned as taking part.
Benedict Arnold’s name appears nowhere on the monuments scattered about the Saratoga battlefield, despite his having played a key role in the American victory there. Such are the wages of treachery.
(There is a monument dedicated to him, however. It just doesn’t mention his name.)
The mineral water in Saratoga Springs, NY, (not the site of the battle, which was near Stillwater, NY) is slightly radioactive, containing dissolved radium. There are signs at the springs warning people not to drink too much of it.