Bela Lugosi Jr. is a lawyer in Southern California. Among the clients he’s represented are the families of the Three Stooges.
Bela Lugosi’s last film was Ed Wood’s infamous “Plan 9 from Outer Space”. Lugosi died early in filming, and Wood got his dentist to wear a black cape and be photographed from behind to finish his shots.
“Bamboo Harvester” was the name of the palomino gelding better known as TV’s Mr. Ed.
Ed FitzGerald, mayor of Lakewood, Ohio and a former FBI agent and former assistant county prosecutor, is a Democratic candidate for Cuyahoga County Administrator this year. After several scandals, voters in the greater Cleveland area recently adopted a new charter form of county government that abolishes the old system of three county commissioners.
John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald was the first Catholic mayor of Boston. His political rivalry with P.J. Kennedy was resolved when Fitzgerald’s daughter Rose married Kennedy’s son Joseph.
Taylor Caldwell’s The Captains and the Kings (the title comes from a poem by Kipling) was a fictionalized story about an Irish immigrant and his family; their story is obviously inspired by the Fitzgerald/Kennedy clan but predates them by about 50 years (i.e. the patriarch makes a fortune by smuggling and is determined to have his son the first Catholic president in 1912). In the miniseries adaptation Charles Durning played the role of a man based in part on Honey Fitz,
; Durning later played Honey Fitz in a miniseries based on the Kennedy family.
Charles Durning was awarded the Silver Star and three Purple Hearts for his service in WW2 in the US Army infantry. He was in the first wave of troops to come ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day, and, following recuperation from major injuries, also fought at the Battle of the Bulge.
Perhaps the greatest of many great songs by the outstanding but star-crossed San Francisco band Moby Grape is “Omaha.”
The song’s lyrics have nothing whatsoever to do with the American city of the same name. Its title was tossed off randomly by composer Skip Spence when he was asked what his song was called.
Omaha is an important city to historians of the Mormon church as it- along with Council Bluffs, Iowa across the river- was the site of the Winter Quarters where thousands of refugees who evacuated Nauvoo, IL made camp from 1845-1848 while preparing for the trek west. Many died of disease and were buried there.
The United Nations Security Council is composed of five permanent members, the U.S., Russia, the United Kingdom, China and France, each of which has a veto, and ten elected non-permanent members with two-year terms. The Council typically meets at UN Headquarters in New York City, but has met elsewhere over the years.
While the Soviet Union was in existence, the constituent republics of Byelorussia (Belarus) and Ukraine each had a seat in the U.N. General Assembly, as did the USSR itself.
The legislative body of the State of Ohio is also called the General Assembly; it is divided into a House of Representatives and a Senate, just as the U.S. Congress is. The House is currently in Democratic hands; the Senate in Republican.
Ohio’s is the only state flag that is not rectangular in shape. Its top and bottom edges are angled inward rather than straight, and each ends in a point defined by a large triangular space taken out of the flag’s right edge.
The Pike County Republican, a small newspaper in Waverly, Ohio, caused an international sensation in 1873 when they published the recollections of a 68 year old local farmer named Madison Hemings. In his first interview on the subject he stated he was the son of Thomas Jefferson by Sally Hemings. The claim previously appeared in the 1870 Census in which Madison and his wife were listed as mulattoes, though their sons had served in the U.S. Army as white men during the Civil War; one died at Andersonville.
The Swiss-born Henry Wirz, the commandant of the Andersonville prison camp, was the only former Confederate officer executed for war crimes after the Civil War. Some 12,913 of the approximately 45,000 Union prisoners in what was technically called Ft. Sumter died of starvation, malnutrition, diarrhea, and disease. Andersonville (which is near Americus, Ga., just down the road from Plains, home of Jimmy Carter) is now the site of the National POW Museum.
Americus Liberator, a former Pennsylvanian coal miner, ran for president four times – 1968, 1972, 1976, and 1980. His best showing was when he won 1300 votes in the 1968 Nebraska Primary, running on a platform of “Patriotism.”
The B-24 “Liberator” bomber was the most-produced American military aircraft in history.
Former Notre Dame quarterback Daryle Lamonica, a star with the Oakland Raiders, was known as “the Mad Bomber.”
Confederate commerce raiders such as the CSS Alabama preyed on Union shipping during the Civil War, capturing or sinking many, and driving up insurance rates such that many owners reflagged their vessels. The American-flagged merchant fleet has never since regained its antebellum prominence in world shipping.
The settlement of US claims against Great Britain for building and selling the Alabama, and several other ships, that the Confederacy used for commerce raiding established the principle of international arbitration, and can be seen as a precursor event to the founding of the League of Nations. US negotiator Senator Charles Sumner initially wanted to demand either $2 billion or Canada as reparations. Secretary of State William Seward was willing to settle for British Columbia.