John Michael Fuchs migrated from Strasbourg, Alsace to Cincinnati in the early 1800s. The family changed its name to its English equivalent, Fox, in the 1870s. A grandson, Joseph Fox, moved to Guanajuato, Mexico, in the 1890s and became a rancher. He was the grandfather of former Mexican president Vicente Fox.
Formula 1 star driver Michael Schumacher suffered a traumatic brain injury while skiing in the French Alps on December 29, 2013 when he fell and hit his head on a rock. As of September 2016 he still could not walk. To date, Schumacher has won seven Formula One world championships.
The only American to be Formula One World Champion was Phil Hill in 1961, driving for La Scuderia Ferrari. The only father and son to do it are Britons Graham Hill (1962 with BRM, 1968 with Lotus) and Damon Hill (1996, Williams). Although Canadian Jacques Villeneuve did it too (1997, Williams), his father Gilles only came as close as second.
You’ve spoken to all the bagpipers in the world, have you…? 
In play:
Former Mass. Governor Michael Dukakis visited Bill Clinton in the White House early in the American president’s first term. They walked around the grounds, talking, and when it was time for the former governor of Massachusetts to leave, Clinton glumly said he’d like to walk outside the grounds with Dukakis, too, but that the Secret Service wouldn’t allow him to go without advance notice.
George Clinton was an American soldier and statesman, considered one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Clinton served as the fourth Vice President of the United States from 1805 until his death in 1812. Along with John C. Calhoun, he is one of two vice presidents to hold that office under two different presidents.
Pro wrestler William “Haystack” Calhoun was one of the pioneers in turning his sport into entertainment in the 1950’s. He portrayed himself as a gentle country boy, while sporting a bushy beard, white t-shirt, blue overalls, and a genuine horseshoe around his neck on a chain, to make his huge size less frightening. Being the only man to lift Calhoun off his feet contributed to the career and legend of Bruno Sammartino. As one of the sport’s premier all-time box office attractions, he laid the groundwork for future ring goliaths like Gorilla Monsoon, André the Giant, The One Man Gang and King Kong Bundy, as well as serving as the muse for various “country bumpkin” brawlers like Hillbilly Jim, Uncle Elmer, and the Godwinns.
According to his Princess Bride costar Cary Elwes, André the Giant was a heavy drinker due to severe back pain. After the first cast read-through of the film script, André got drunk and passed out in the lobby of his hotel. Unable to move him, hotel staff surrounded him with a velvet rope and just let him sleep it off.
According to Rethinking Drinking, heavy drinking for healthy adults is defined as follows:
Men: More than 4 drinks on any day or 14 per week
Women: More than 3 drinks on any day or 7 per week
About 1 in 4 people who exceed these limits already has an alcohol use disorder, and the rest are at greater risk for developing these and other problems.
Americans drank much more in the past than today. In 1830, it is estimated that 7.1 gallons of pure alcohol per person per year were consumed. By comparison, in 2013, Americans older than 14 each drank an average of 2.34 gallons of pure alcohol. In part, heavy alcohol consumption was a way to stay hydrated: Often, clean water wasn’t always accessible. Hard liquor, on the other hand, was readily available as farmers frequently distilled their grain into alcohol.
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Anybody want a peanut? 
Interesting, about staying hydrated. Because doesn’t alcohol dehydrate you?
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Early evidence of fermented drinks dates to about 7-8th century BC, from China. And while the early Protestant leaders from the 16th century AD viewed alcohol as a gift from God and to be enjoyed in moderation, they also viewed drunkenness as a sin.
In the sixteenth century, alcohol was used largely for medicinal purposes. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the British parliament passed a law encouraging the use of grain for distilling spirits. Cheap spirits flooded the market and reached a peak in the mid-eighteenth century. In Britain, gin consumption reached 18 million gallons and alcoholism became widespread.
During Prohibition, the U.S. Treasury Department authorized physicians to write prescriptions for medicinal alcohol. Licensed doctors, with pads of government-issued prescription forms, advised their patients to take regular doses of hooch to stave off a number of ailments—cancer, indigestion and depression among them. Whiskey bottles labeled “For Medicinal Purposes” are readily had on the antiques market.
First marketed in 1849, “Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup” was used for teething and colicky babies. However, its “soothing” properties were due to its high content of morphine and alcohol, and it caused coma, addiction and death in infants. By 1911 it was condemned by the AMA as a “baby killer”, but it was not withdrawn from the market until 1930.
Ninja’ed
Winslow, Arizona, which is mentioned in the Eagle’s song “Take it Easy”, has an airport that was designed by Charles Lindbergh, who stayed in Winslow during its construction. When it was built in 1929, it was the only all-weather airport between Albuquerque, New Mexico and Los Angeles, California.
In 1864, John A. Winslow, commanding officer of the U.S. steam sloop Kearsarge, was in the middle of a Scripture reading during divine services aboard his ship when a lookout called out that the Confederate commerce raider CSS Alabama was at last emerging from the harbor of Cherbourg, France. Winslow said “Amen!” in mid-sentence, snapped the Bible shut and immediately sent his crew to general quarters. After a lengthy gunnery duel, the Kearsarge sank the Alabama.
”Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” was uttered by Admiral David Farragut at the Battle of Mobile Bay in Mobile, Alabama. The date was 05 August 1864.
Before the German garrison of Paris was surrendered by General von Choltitz in 1944, he had torpedo warheads wired onto virtually all of the landmarks of the city, ready for his order. The warheads came from a factory hidden in a road tunnel in nearby Saint-Cloud, still in production for use by the U-boat fleet based on the Atlantic despite the abandonment of those bases by the Kriegsmarine. The full story, including the pleading to Choltitz by city leaders to consider his role in history, is found in the gripping Is Paris Burning? by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. The title refers to Hitler’s telegram asking the status of his order for the destruction rather than surrender of his most precious prize.
In Star Trek: The Original Series’s first-season episode, Arena, Captain Kirk battles the captain of an alien ship in an unarmed, hand-to-hand battle on a rocky, barren planet. The alien captain was a Gorn, an alien species, and some of the planet surface scenes were filmed at Vasquez Rocks, California, some 375 miles SE of San Francisco (gMap). Photon torpedoes first appeared on a Starfleet ship in this episode.
One of the most popular quotes by President Theodore Roosevelt is “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”