Charles Hall was denied a patent on a design for a waterbed by the U.S. Patent Office, which noted that prior descriptions of waterbeds in two Robert Heinlein novels, including Stranger in a Strange Land, constituted “prior art”.
[del]In his film “She’s Gotta Have It”, Spike Lee played a character named Mars Blackmon, who was later used as the pitchman in Nike Air Jordan shoe ads. Mars Blackmon popularized the phrases “Is it the Shoes? Is it the Shoes? Is it the Shoes? … Money, it’s gotta be the shoes.” and “Do you know?, Do you know?, Do you know?”[/del]
SF writer Arthur C. Clarke is credited with popularizing the concept of geostationary communications satellites, in a 1945 paper in Wireless World.
Clarke claimed that he was also the first to send the text of a draft novel via modem, when he sent 2010: Odyssey Two from his home in Sri Lanka to his editor in New York City.
An old Persian name for Sri Lanka is Serendip. The fairy tale “The Three Princes of Serendip”, who identified a lost camel they had never seen based on small clues, gave us the word serendipity.
The muse Serendipity in the movie Dogma was played by Salma Hayek. Her character has writer’s block; this is why she became corporeal.
In 2008, Loudon Wainwright III recorded the album Recovery where he “covered” songs he had first recorded thirty or more years earlier. Some titles included “Black Uncle Remus,” “Motel Blues,” “Be Careful There’s a Baby in the House” (inspired in part by his son, Rufus), “Say that You Love Me,” and “Muse Blues.”
As an infant, Rufus Wainwright was the topic of his father’s songs “A Father and a Son” and “Rufus is a Titman”, a paean to breastfeeding. His mother was the late folksinger Kate McGarrigle.
Kate Mulgrew has played Kate Columbo (wife of the detective), Starfleet Capt. Kathryn Janeway and actress Katharine Hepburn. She is married to Tim Hagan, a county commissioner of Cuyahoga County (greater Cleveland), Ohio.
The 1948 Cole Porter musical Kiss Me, Kate, later a 1953 film with Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel, includes a play-within-a-play, Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. In the musical, the Broadway producer’s girlfriend, who sings “Always True to You in My Fashion”, is named Lois Lane.
Howard Keel played Wild Bill Hickok in the film Calamity Jane, which featured Doris Day in the title role.
Beat by minutes again!
In a race that might almost have ended up in Ripley’s, Harry Truman survived a three-way split of his Democratic Party in 1948 to win reelection as President, defeating Thomas Dewey, the GOP candidate; Strom Thurmond, the Dixiecrats’ choice; and Henry Wallace, the Progressive nominee. Wallace was Truman’s predecessor as Vice President.
With many posting all at once, this is what happens!
Elendil’s Hair is playing off of this post, which I deleted after being “beaten” by the previous one:
Consider an alternate spelling one sometimes sees, Shakspeare.
Divide the letters by syllables, resulting in 4 and 6.
Turn to the 46th Psalm in the King James version of the Bible.
Count 46 words from the beginning. The word is “shake.”
Count 46 words from the end. The word is “spear.”
(Thanks to the battered copy of a Ripley’s Believe It or Not book I pored over as a child!)
Born in Edinburgh, King James was a dual Monarch – James the First of England and Irleand and James VI of Scotland. During his reign, the first English settlement of Virginia, at Jamestown, was established in 1607.
King James II, the last Catholic king of England, was known as “Seamus a chaca” (loosely translated “James the turd”) in Ireland.
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‘Sewage sluge’ is now called ‘biosolids’ per a decision by the Water Environment Federation. The change was due to the words ‘sewage sludge’ having negative connotations.
This happened long after ‘Sewage’ had effectively become ‘Wastewater’ for mostly the same reason.
The United Federation of Planets is the interstellar democratic government, established in 2161, that employs Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway et al. in the various incarnations of Star Trek.
Avery Brooks who played Sisko on Deep Space Nine had previously portrayed Hawk on Spenser for Hire and its shortlived spinoff. The Spenser novels were written by Robert B. Parker who described Brooks’s portrayal of Hawk as the only thing he liked about the television series. He particularly disliked the casting of Robert Urich as the title character, though he said it was not due to Urich’s acting but because he felt he was completely miscast and the character too different from the novels.
To meekly go where all of us have gone before … 
The Hawk and Lark model series, and the Lark-based, Hawk-engined Avanti, were the last produced by Studebaker before it closed its South Bend, Indiana factory in 1963.