Charles Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge, based on Britain’s anti-Catholic riots in 1780, featured a wise-cracking raven named Grip. James Russell Lowell, in “A Fable for Critics”, referred to it in the lines “Here comes Poe with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge / Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge.”
Diplomatic representatives of the Roman Catholic Church-run Vatican State or Holy See are referred to as nuncios, not ambassadors.
The vehicle most commonly used as a taxicab in India is the Ambassador, or “Amby”, made by Hindustan Motors in Kolkata. It is based on the British 1956 Morris Oxford with only superficial updates since.
John Erwin is a voice actor who did the voice of Morris the Cat in a long series of commercials for Nine Lives (there have been many tabbies as Morris) and the voices of He-Man and several other characters in the Masters of the Universe cartoon.
The live-action Masters of the Universe movie, which featured Dolph Lundgren as He-Man and Frank Langella as Skeletor, also featured the young Courtney Cox and Robert Duncan McNeill as a pair of Earth teenagers.
Courtney Cox was the dark-haired teenager pulled out of the audience to dance with Bruce Springsteen in his video of Dancing in the Dark.
If you believe Monty Python (and who dares to doubt), everyone in the philosophy department at the University of Walamaloo is named “Bruce” (except for pommy bastards).
No one is sure where the phrase “the full Monty” came from, but one popular theory holds that it refers to General Bernard Law Montgomery’s habit of eating large, multi-course breakfasts, even when in a tent in the Sahara. Hence, a big breakfast with ALL the trimmings was “the full Monty.”
Sahara was a book by Clive Cussler featuring his popular Dirk Pitt character, about a missing Confederate ironclad and a contemporary African environmental disaster. The 2005 movie based on it starred Matthew McConaughey, Penelope Cruz and Steve Zahn. Although the film did pretty well at the box office, due to high costs and “Hollywood accounting” it is considered a bomb.
Lambert Wilson appeared in two films called Sahara – the 2005 flick mentioned above and a 1983 picture which starred Brooke Shields as a young woman participating in a 1927 auto race across the vast African desert.
I mentioned that about Ho Chi Minh somewhere, possibly in this thread. Not about to hunt for it! But he worked there as a pastry chef, immediately prior to World War I.
At the Sahara’s highest point in Chad, the Tibesti Mountains rise to 3415 metres.
The Chad Mitchell Trio sort of straddled the line between the more “clean-cut” variety of folk music of the early 60s and the sort with a few controversial edges.
In 1965, Chad Mitchell left the group that was named after him. John Denver took his place, and they carried on as simply The Mitchell Trio.
The Catholic Cathedral in Birmingham in England is dedicated to St Chad.
Condoleezza Rice grew up in Birmingham, Ala., and knew the four little girls killed in a notorious church bombing there in September 1963.
In the Simpsons episode “Bart Mangled Banner”, when Springfield changed its name to Libertyville, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the Kwik-E-Mart proprietor, changed his octuplets’ names from Anoop, Uma, Nabendu, Poonam, Priya, Sandeep, Sashi, and Gheet to Lincoln, Freedom, Condoleezza, Coke, Pepsi, Manifest Destiny, Apple Pie, and Superman…
The first three Super Bowls were won by quarterbacks from the University of Alabama: Bart Starr and Joe Namath.
S. Frederick Starr, former president of Oberlin College, is a much-recorded Dixieland Jazz clarinet player and also a recognized expert on Russia who briefed President Reagan before the Gorbachev summits.
Queen enclosed a poster showing nude women competing in a bicycle race, in the first release of their Jazz album (which featured the songs “Bicycle Race” and “Fat Bottomed Girls”).
Queen guitarist Brian May received his doctorate in Astrophysics from Imperial College London in 2008. In addition to still working as Queen’s guitarist, May is now the chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University.
East Liverpool, Ohio was established by potters from the Staffordshire area, and there are still many people of English descent in the area.