Jerry Brown served as mayor of Oakland, Calif. after serving as state governor and before serving as state attorney general. He may yet serve again as governor of California, as he is the front-running Democratic candidate for the office this year.
The recently late Gary Coleman was one of 135 candidates for the governorship of California in 2003; he got the 8th highest number of votes, coming in between Larry Flynt who finished 7th and ahead of businessman George Schwartzman, the election of course going to Arnold Schwarzenegger (whose surname means “black farmer”).
Oops ignore me … missed Sampiro’s post.
[SPOILER]Linda Ronstadt is a very famous singer who has been linked romantically to both Jerry Brown and George Lucas. She is outspoken about her political opinions, once telling a reporter
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At age 18, future President George H.W. Bush was the youngest aviator in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He was shot down in 1944 but rescued by the submarine USS Finback. A Nimitz-class supercarrier now bears his name. Bush appointed Ahnuld to head the President’s Council on Physical Fitness.
The President’s Council on Youth Fitness was established by Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956 after a study showing European children to be more fit than American youth. But John F. Kennedy changed its name to the President’s Council on Physical Fitness in 1963, presumably for the purpose of getting adult Americans more fit too.
Both Kennedy and Eisenhower were accomplished football players. Kennedy tried out for the Harvard varsity, but failed and Eisenhower did make the varsity at Army, his career ending when he injured his knee (most sources say when he was playing against Jim Thorpe).
According to Wiki, Jim Thorpe won the inter-collegiate ballroom dancing championship in 1912.
Jim Thorpe was from the Sauk and Fox tribe whose other best known member was Black Hawk who caused the “Black Hawk War” when he returned to tribal lands in what’s now Illinois after being convinced to relocate across the Mississippi by treaty by promises that were never honored by the government. Jefferson Davis was the officer who formally arrested and escorted Black Hawk, while Abraham Lincoln was a captain of a militia unit raised during the war. Lincoln recalled later, “if any of them ever actually saw an Indian they did better than I did”, and that his one accomplishment as leader was getting the men to say “sir”, specifically when they told him “Go straight to hell, sir!”
Lincoln later joked that he and his men killed a lot more mosquitoes than Indians, but also that one of the most satisfying accomplishments of his young life was when his soldiers elected him their captain.
Even as President, William McKinley preferred to be addressed as “Major”, for the reason that “I earned that one.”
Bob Newhart played Major Major in the film version of Joseph Heller’s Catch 22.
The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart was a number one album on the Billboard Pop Album charts, beating out Elvis Presley and the sound track to The Sound of Music.
The band in the rockumentary This is Spinal Tap visit the grave of Elvis Presley at Graceland in Memphis, Tenn., and are unable to harmonize when they try to sing “Heartbreak Hotel” in his honor.
The 1988 film Heartbreak Hotel deals with a fictional kidnapping of Elvis Presley and “The King”'s eventual appearance at a talent show in which the song which inspired the movie’s title is performed by the kidnapper’s band, accompanied by Elvis himself. One of the flick’s stars, Tuesday Weld, actually was in the cast of the 1961 Presley-headlined drama Wild in the Country.
Tuesday Weld turned down the role of Bonnie in Bonnie and Clyde and was the director’s choice for Rosemary in Rosemary’s Baby, but the studio wanted Mia Farrow. When asked by a reporter what drove her into seclusion in the 1970s, she answered, “I think it was a Buick.”
China is Buick’s largest market, and considered a highly prestigious car for the upscale Chinese.
Ffrom 1949 on, Buicks had three or four decorative “portholes” on the side of the car; it became an emblem of the brand.
The emblem of Elendil’s heirs in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien is a white tree with a winged crown and seven stars, all on a field of black.
Edwin Bagley’s “National Emblem March” is one of the few popular American march tunes not written by John Philip Sousa.
The instrument used in marching bands that wraps around the musician to play the deep bass notes is a sousaphone, invented by John Philip Sousa.