The elusive crooner Johnny Favorite in the 1987 supernatural horror movie Angel Heart, starring Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro, was loosely based on Frank Sinatra.
The character Johnny Fontane in The Godfather, played by lounge singer Al Martino, was also based on Frank Sinatra, and his own well-known Mob connections.
Al Martino served with the United States Navy in World War II, during which he was part of, and injured in, the Iwo Jima invasion. After the war, he began his singing career in local nightclubs in his hometown of Philadelphia. He later moved to New York City, and won first place on the television show Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts.
As a result, he won a recording contract and recorded “Here in My Heart”. The song spent three weeks at No. 1 on the US pop charts in June 1952, and later in the year also reached the top of the UK charts. It was number one in the first UK Singles chart, published by the New Musical Express on November 14, 1952, putting him into the Guinness Book of World Records.
President Harry S. Truman’s last full year in office was 1952. He considered running for another term but decided not to, in part due to his very low poll ratings and what he knew would be a difficult campaign against war hero and likely GOP nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Will Truman of Will & Grace had romantic relationships with three women before coming out as gay: his high school girlfriend Claire, his college girlfriend Grace, and Diane, with whom he had a one-night stand (his only sexual encounter with a woman) after he and Grace broke up.
Diane Lane was 13 when she turned down a role in Runaways on Broadway to make her feature-film debut opposite Laurence Olivier in George Roy Hill’s A Little Romance (1979). Lane won high praise from Olivier, who declared her “The New Grace Kelly”
Lois Lane is a fictional character who is the love interest of Superman. Lane is a journalist who works at the Daily Planet newspaper in Metropolis.
Lane is one of many characters in the Superman comics with the initials of ‘L L’. Other characters with these initials include Superman’s nemesis Lex Luthor, Superman’s first girlfriend Lana Lang, and Linda Lee, the secret identity of Supergirl.
Lex Luthor is science advisor to President John F. Kennedy in the alternative-history superhero graphic novel Red Son, in which the infant Kal-El lands in the Soviet Union and not the United States, and when grown becomes a mainstay of the Stalinist state.
Jasper Fforde’s 2001 novel The Eyre Affair is an alternative history; set in 1985, England and Imperial Russia have continued to fight the Crimean War for more than a century.
Robert Harris’s Fatherland is an alternative-history novel set in 1964 Berlin. German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler is preparing for his first summit meeting with U.S. President Joseph Kennedy, as an SS officer investigates the suspicious deaths of several senior Nazi Party officials.
When Arnold Schwarzenegger was running for Governor of California, Austrian media sent reporters to cover the campaign.
One of them was heard to say after listening to Arnie’s stump speech: “There’s no way I can file a report on his speech back home. He was a typical U.S. politician, talking all the time about ‘leadership’. You know what that translates into …”
The ‘Arnold Palmer’ is a non-alcoholic drink made by combining lemonade and iced tea. Palmer himself preferred the mixture to be 3 parts unsweetened iced tea to 1 part lemonade; when mixed equal parts tea and lemonade, the drink is sometimes called a ‘Half & Half.’
An alcoholic version of the drink, generally made with vodka is called a ‘John Daly.’
“Fat Free Half-and-Half” has been called the “perfect oxymoron.” While regular Half-and-Half is a combination of regular milk and cream and contains about 12% fat, the fat-free concoction contains skim milk, corn syrup, cream and “less than 0.5 percent of the following: Carrageenan, Sodium Citrate, Dipotassium Phosphate, Mono and Diglycerides, Vitamin A Palmitate.
The half-and-half version of the Arnold Palmer features as the drink of preference of the Terrible Two, a duo of pre-teen pranksters in the Terrible Two series.
After Ahnuld was elected, one late-night comic said, “Finally, someone who can explain Republican civil-rights policies in the original German!”
In play:
David Palmer, Democrat of California, was the first of several fictional Presidents of the United States to appear on the Kiefer Sutherland real-time counterterrorism thriller TV series 24.
Kiefer Sutherland is the son of Donald Sutherland, and Shirley Douglas, Canadian actors. He is the grandson of Tommy Douglas, former Premier of Saskatchewan, who led the introduction of medicare.
Boxer James “Buster” Douglas was best know for taking the title from the heretofore-undefeated Mike Tyson on February 11, 1990 in Tokyo to win the undisputed heavyweight title. The only casino to offer odds on the bout had Douglas at 42-1. Douglas lost the title to Evander Holyfield in his next fight.
Traditionally in Japan, the home of the Emperor is considered the capital. Since 1869, Tokyo has been considered Japan’s capital, although the National Diet has never legislated Tokyo as the capital.
Prior to Tokyo, Kyoto was the home of the Emperor, from 1180-1868.
Akihito of Japan, crowned in 1989, is the only reigning emperor in the world. After announcing that his age and poor health were making it difficult for him to carry out his official duties, the National Diet or parliament passed a bill allowing him to abdicate. He did not already have that right under Japanese law; neither will his successors, unless another bill is passed.
On January 8, 1992, while attending a banquet hosted by the then Prime Minister of Japan, Kiichi Miyazawa, President George H. W. Bush ducked under the table, vomited into Miyazawa’s lap, and then fainted.