Seward was badly injured in a knife attack by Booth coconspirator Lewis Powell on the same night as President Lincoln’s assassination. Although he was not told of the President’s death, for fear it would further damage his fragile health, he sadly figured it out when he saw the flag outside at half-mast and the President didn’t come to call on him and enquire about his health. Although once political rivals, they had become close friends and colleagues during the war.
Despite vastly different political philosophies, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusettes and Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah became close personal friends, and managed to cooperate on passing several major pieces of legislation.
A young Bill Clinton shook President John F. Kennedy’s hand while visiting the White House as part of a Boys’ Nation delegation from Arkansas in 1963. A photo of the incident was later widely published.
Years after John Kennedy Toole committed suicide, his mother got his novel “A Confederacy of Dunces” published with the help of Walker Percy, who finally agreed to read it after she’d pestered him for months.
[del]Clinton Kelly and Stacy London host the US version of the style remake show “What Not to Wear” on the Learning Channel. The show is a copy of the UK version hosted by Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine, but with the bitchy gay guy that US fashion shows require.[/del]
The real name of The Phantom, Christopher Walker, led to one of his nicknames, “The Ghost who Walks”. Unlike most comic superheroes, he is an ordinary human.
Among other strange and curious keepsakes at the Phantom’s compound are a stegosaurus, a diamond drinking chalice that belonged to Alexander the Great, and the treasure of Jean Lafitte.
The F-4 Phantom jet was long a mainstay of U.S. military aviation during the Cold War, and was flown by the Air Force, Navy and Marines. The planes saw extensive service during the Vietnam War. More than 5000 were built, and seven nations still fly them.
The Navy’s Blue Angels demonstration team (which used to fly F-4 Phantoms) has three different shows: a “high” show, a “low” show, and a “flat” show; the version performed on any given day is dependent on flight ceiling and visibility.
Burt Reynolds appeared in two episodes of the 1960-61 syndicated TV series The Blue Angels, which was about a four-man squadron of the Navy flight team.
Marlene Dietrich catapulted to international stardom in the film Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel), who entices and ruins the respected professor Emmanual Rath (Emil Jannings). Oddly, though Dietrich is the bigger and better known star even now; she never won an Oscar, while Jannings had (the first Best Actor Oscar given).
Comedian Steve Landesberg played Detective Arthur Dietrich on the sitcom Barney Miller. Dietrich spoke fluent German ,and claimed to have a doctorate in Psychology.
Ron Glass, who played Harris on Barney Miller later played Felix Unger in the sitcom The New Odd Couple; Oscar Madison was played by Demond Wilson, best known as Lamont Sanford. It lasted for one season; many years later Glass played Shepherd Book on the series Firefly and in the movie Serenity.
Redd Foxx, best remembered for starring in “Sanford and Son”, was known as “Chicago Red” in 1940’s Harlem, to distinguish him from other neighborhood Reds including “Detroit Red”, a/k/a Malcolm Little, later Malcolm X. “Chicago Red” was described in The Autobiography of Malcolm X as the funniest dishwasher on Earth.
Malcolm X, Ho Chi Minh, and Emeril Lagasse all worked in the restaurant of the Parker House Hotel in Boston, famous for its trademark rolls.
Nero Wolfe had three full-time employees: chef Fritz Brenner, orchid tender Theodore Horstmann, and detective Archie Goodwin. Among the other people he hired regualry were lawyer Nathaniel Parker and operatives Fred Durkin, Saul Panzer and Orrie Cather.
Theodore Roosevelt is the only President to have been born in Manhattan, where George Washington was first inaugurated as President at Federal Hall on Wall Street on April 30, 1789.
(I’ll Take) Manhattan was written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart for the 1925 musical revue Garrick Gaieties. Among the performers in the opening night cast were Sterling Holloway, who many years later would be the voice of Winnie the Pooh, and Lee Strasburg, who would become artistic director of The Actors Studio.
Robert E. Lee was, according to West Point lore, the only cadet not to get a single demerit during his four years there. He later became a reform-minded commandant of the military academy before leading the Confederate armies during the Civil War.
Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney introduced the song “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee” in the minstrel show sequence in the 1941 musical film Babes on Broadway, directed by Busby Berkeley. It was the third in their “Backyard Musical” series about kids who put on their own show, following *Babes in Arms *(1939) and *Strike Up the Band *(1940).
Henry Kleinbach was only 22 when he played the evil old man Silas Barnaby, in Laurel and Hardy’s ***Babes in Toyland ***(aka March of the Wooden Soldiers). Decades later, under the name Henry Brandon, he played the evil Commanche chief Scar, in John Wayne’s The Searchers.