The coat of arms of noted American explorer Meriwether Lewis shows a dragon eating a man’s hand: Meriwether Lewis - Wikipedia
Lewis and Clark County, Montana, is the only USA county named jointly after two famous people. In Missouri, Lewis and Clark are two separate adjacent counties.
In the 2002 TV movie Martin and Lewis, Sean Hayes, best known for playing Jack on Will & Grace, played Jerry Lewis to perfection. He simply WAS Jerry Lewis.
Jerry Lewis was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977, for his five decades spent raising funds to combat muscular dystrophy.
Nitpick: Jerry Lewis did spend 5 decades of his life fundraising for muscular dystrophy, but in 1977, when he was nominated, he was only 51. He had started hosting telethons in 1952, so in 1977 he was nominated for 15 years of that work.
Back in play:
Jerry Lewis wrote, produced, and acted in the film The Day the Clown Cried (1972) which, because of legal issues. will not be released until 2025. The film is a tale of a clown in Auschwitz during World War II, and according to IMDB reviews, bootleg prints are available.
Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi death camp, was actually several camps and satellite facilities, including Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau (concentration/extermination camp), Auschwitz III-Monowitz (a labor camp to staff IG Farben) and 45 satellite camps.
American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell was murdered on August 25, 1967 by a disgruntled follower, John Patler, who was part of a splinter group. It is estimated that Rockwell had only about 500 followers at the time.
One of the most famous scene in the movie The Blues Brothers was when the Brothers (played by John Belushi and Dan Ackoyd) were held up by a Nazi Demonstration. After their often-quoted response (“Illinois Nazis.” “I hate Illinois Nazis.”), they took appropriate action.
See film clip(NSFW-Language): - YouTube
Dan Aykroyd, during filming one of the night scenes of The Blues Brothers, went searching for John Belushi, who had disappeared in a residential area and could not be located. Aykroyd saw a single house with its lights on, went there and was prepared to identify himself, the movie, and that he was looking for Belushi. Before he could, the homeowner looked at him, smiled and said, “You’re here for John Belushi, aren’t you?” The homeowner then told them Belushi had entered their house, asked if he could have a glass of milk and a sandwich, and then crashed on their couch. Situations like this prompted Aykroyd to affectionately dub Belushi “America’s Guest”.
John Diefenbaker, Canada’s 13th Prime Minister, a Progressive Conservative, began his political career at the age of 23 when he was elected to the village council of Wakaw, Saskatchewan.
He would not win another election for 20 years. In that 20 year period, he would lose 5 elections: one municipal (mayor’s office) , two provincial (one riding and one general election as party leader), and two federal riding contests.
In one of those federal contests, in 1926, his Liberal opponent was former Prime Minister Mackenzie King, who won the riding. This is the only case in Canadian history where two future prime ministers ran head-to-head in the same riding.
Finally, in 1940, twenty years after election to the village council, Diefenbaker won a seat in the House of Commons. He was never again defeated, winning his seat 13 times between 1940 and 1979. He died in office shortly after his 13th victory.
The word riding is descended from late Old English. It came into Old English as a loanword from Old Norse, meaning a third part (especially of a county). A common misconception holds that the term arose from some association between the size of the district and the distance that can be covered or encircled on horseback in a certain amount of time.
After the Celtic celebrated Samhain on November 1st, they did not have another celebration until Imbolc on February 1st. No winter Solstice celebration whatsoever, though they did celebratr the spring and autumn equinoxes and summer solstice.
They later borrowed Yule from the Old Norse pagans.
Ninnian Joseph Ewell, known professionally as Joe Yule, was a Scottish-American burlesque and vaudeville comedian who later appeared in many films as a character actor. He was noted for his starring role in the Jiggs and Maggie film series, opposite Renie Riano, and as the father of Mickey Rooney. Rooney arranged to have his father buried near Rooney’s friend and longtime acting colleague, Wallace Beery, who had died the year before.
When Fran Drescher and her husband Peter Marc Jacobson submitted the original script for The Nanny, Mr. Sheffield only had two children: Brighton and Gracie. The CBS executives added a third child, the shy teenager Maggie, to be a counterpart to the outspoken Fran Fine.
In his 18 NFL seasons, quarterback Fran Tarkenton completed 3,686 of 6,467 passes for 47,003 yards and 342 touchdowns, with 266 interceptions. All were NFL records at the time of his retirement.
After his pro football career, Fran Tarkenton founded Tarkenton Software, a computer-program generator company, and he toured the U.S. promoting CASE (computer-aided software engineering) with Albert F. Case Jr. of Nastec Corporation. Tarkenton Software later merged with KnowledgeWare (with Tarkenton as president), until selling the company to Sterling Software in 1994. (per Wiki)
Gordy Soltau was one of the Big Ten’s all-time great kickers, playing for U-Minn before turning pro. The data below is compiled from Wikipedia and the official NFL stats:
Gordon Leroy Soltau (January 25, 1925 – October 26, 2014) was an American football player who played wide receiver [and place-kicked] for nine seasons in the National Football League (NFL) for the San Francisco 49ers.
On October 26, 2014, Soltau died at the age of 89.
Position: Wide receiver / placekicker
Date of birth: January 25, 1925
Place of birth: Duluth, Minnesota
Date of death: October 26, 2014 (aged 89)
Place of death: Santa Clara, California
3x Pro Bowl (1951–1953)
3x All-Pro (1951–1953)
Scoring stats for the 9 seasons:
TD receptions: 25, 175 pts scored
FGs: 70 made out of 139 attempts, 50.4% success pct, 210 pts scored
Extra points kicked: 284 made out of 303 attempts, 93.7% success pct, 284 pts scored
Total points scored: 669
Soltau had a second career as a TV sports announcer and commentator. The second syllable of his last name was pronounced like a digit on a foot (“TOE”). Gordy played long before they started choosing the Lou Groza Award winners, but he had almost as much claim to being called “The Toe” as did Lou, especially in view of that second syllable.
Otto Graham was the greatest quarterback ever.
jtur88: I think you could get an argument on that, but this is not the time or place.
In Play:
The Otto Group is a mail order company and currently one of the biggest e-commerce companies, mainly based in Germany and France but operating in more than 20 countries. The best known subsidary of the group operating in the United States is Crate and Barrel, which was bought in 1998.
In 1944, Navy pilot trainee Otto Graham played for the North Carolina Pre-Flight Cloudbusters, at the UNC campus in Chapel Hill, with Bear Bryant as an assistant coach. The team was ranked as high as No. 2 in the nation in the AP football poll, and went on to defeat defending champ Navy in Annapolis.