John Lennon’s middle name was Winston; it came from Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister at the time of Lennon’s birth in Oct. 1940.
Winston is only the third most popular name for English Bulldogsin the US, behind Tank and Max but ahead of Rocky and Dozer. Bella is #1 for females.
Oddly, I’ve never met a male English Bulldog who wasn’t a Winston.
David Lloyd George, a friend and sometime political ally in whose Cabinet Churchill served during World War I, once said, “Winston would skin his own mother to make a drum on which to beat his own praises.”
When Winston Churchill’s son Randolph had a lung tumor removed, it was found to be non-malignant. Author Evelyn Waugh, a longtime friend, commented that “It was a typical triumph of modern science to find the one part of Randolph which was not malignant and to remove it.”
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was officially incorporated in 1913, when the the neighboring towns of Winston and Salem merged to become one city. It is the fifth most-populous city in the state. Although the punctuation mark separating the two names is technically a hyphen, the local minor league baseball team is known as the Winston-Salem Dash.
Dash Riprock was a character on the Beverley Hillbillies, a take-off on the leading man movie star.
A 1900 New York Journal newspaper article contained the following definition of Hillbillies: “a Hill-Billie is a free and untrammeled white citizen of Tennessee, who lives in the hills, has no means to speak of, dresses as he can, talks as he pleases, drinks whiskey when he gets it, and fires off his revolver as the fancy takes him”
George VI appeared on Canadian bank notes twice: on the 1935 $50 note as Duke of York, and on the 1937 - 1952 issue (all denominations up to $50) as George VI.
His brother Edward appeared on the 1935 $5 note as Prince of Wales, but never as King Edward.
HRH the Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, third son and youngest child of Queen Elizabeth II, is expected to become Duke of Edinburgh when his father, Prince Philip, who currently holds the title, slips this mortal coil.
Prince Edward Island (previously called St John’s Island by the British, Ile St Jean by the French and Epekwitk by the Mi’kmaq) was named in 1799 in honor of Queen Victoria’s father, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, the fourth son and fifth child of Britain’s king, George III.
Prince Edward died of pneumonia in 1820 at age 52, six days before George III.
At the time of her birth in 1819, Victoria was fifth in line for the throne, behind (1) her uncle George, Prince of Wales and Prince Regent; (2) her uncle Frederick, Duke of York; (3) her uncle William, Duke of Clarence; (4) her father, Edward Duke of Kent.
Her father died when she was only a year old. As her uncles gradually died off without lawful issue, she steadily moved up the line, finally succeeding William in 1837, a month after her 18th birthday.
Clarence Clemons, the E Street Band’s “Big Man,” showed potential as a football player and attended Maryland State College on both music and football scholarships. He played as a lineman on the same team as Art Shell and Emerson Boozer and attracted the attention of the Cleveland Browns, who offered him a trial. Clemons also tried out for the Dallas Cowboys. However, he was involved in a serious car accident which effectively ended any plans of a football career.
According to Forbes, the world’s most valuable sports franchise is the Dallas Cowboys, valued at 4.2 billion dollars. Second on the list is the New York Yankees, followed by three European soccer franchises: Manchester United, Barcelona, and Real Madrid.
As Kinky Freidman said it: All good Jewboys and Cowboys always wear their hats indoors.
A fedora is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown. The word fedora comes from the title of an 1882 play by dramatist Victorien Sardou, Fédora, which was written for Sarah Bernhardt. Bernhardt played Princess Fédora Romazov, the heroine of the play. During the play, Bernhardt – a noted cross-dresser – wore a center-creased, soft brimmed hat. The hat became fashionable for women, and the women’s rights movement adopted it as a symbol.
Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jimmy Stewart in It’s A Wonderful Life and Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, among others, wore fedoras.
Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, was the youngest of Henry IV’s four sons. A strong supporter of his eldest brother, King Henry V, Gloucester tried to act as Protector of Henry’s young son, Henry VI, after Henry V’s sudden death. However, he was forced out of court by allegations of witchcraft against his wife.
Jimmy Stewart was not the original choice to play George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life. When RKO purchased the rights, to the story, they did so with the plan of having Cary Grant in the lead. But in 1945, after a number of rewrites, RKO sold the movie rights to Frank Capra, who then recruited Jimmy Stewart.
To restore order to the Universe, from #38651 and #38652:
Jimmy Stewart, who had a reputation as a bit of a playboy in his early years in Hollywood, at age 41, marrying former model Gloria Hatrick McLean on August 9, 1949. Stewart adopted her two sons, Michael and Ronald, and with Gloria he had twin daughters, Judy and Kelly. The two were together until his wife’s death in 1994 (Stewart died in 1997)
“Gloria” is a song written by Van Morrison and originally recorded by Morrison’s band *Them *in 1964 and released as the B-side of “Baby, Please Don’t Go”. The song became a garage rock staple and a part of many rock bands’ repertoires. It is particularly memorable for its “Gloria!” chorus. It is easy to play, as a simple three-chord song, and thus is popular with those learning to play guitar.