Bent Fabric was the stage name for a Dutch musician who had a massive international hit with “The Alley Cat” in 1961, a song that was played at weddings and bar/bas mitzvahs for decades afterward.
Titanic, released in 1997, was the biggest international film hit of its decade, both at the box office and at the Academy Awards, with 11 awards including Best Director and Best Picture. It was the first film to reach the billion-dollar mark and remained the highest-grossing film of all time until Avatar surpassed it in 2010.
In the past 30 years, only four movies were named best picture while topping box office charts.
James Cameron directed both *Titanic *and Avatar. One or more sequels to *Avatar *have been expected for years since the film’s 2009 release; current plans are for four, to be released in 2020, 2021, 2024 and 2025. Cameron is directing, producing and co-writing all four.
The name ‘Cameron’ is believed to have been originated in the Gaelic language spoken in Scotland. The Gaelic phrase is ‘cam sròn’, which means ‘crooked nose’.
The three modern Gaelic (“Goidelic”) languages are Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx. Manx (spoken on the Isle of Man) nearly died out in the late 19th / early 20th centuries, but was revived thanks to the work of linguists and enthusiasts.
The Manx cat is a breed of domestic cat .originating on the Isle of Man, with a naturally occurring mutation that shortens the tail. Manx are prized as skilled hunters, and thus have often been sought by farmers with rodent problems, and been a preferred ship’s cat breed.
The Isle of Man, all 221 square miles of it, is a British prison camp in the 1992 P.D. James dystopic sf novel The Children of Men. There is no mention of the prison in the 2006 movie based on the book.
The 2006 WC Final between France and Italy was the first final in 20 years to see both teams score.
Like Great Britain and Japan, France and Italy were allies in World War I but foes in World War II.
Four countries (or empires) suffered over 1 million combat casualties during World War I. These were Russia, Germany, France, and Austria-Hungary.
By contrast, the United States suffered 53,000 combat casualties, while Japan suffered just 300 casualties.
Over 60,000 Canadians were killed in WWI, and approximately 172,000 wounded.
Newfoundland, at that time a separate colony, suffered 1,305 killed and several thousand wounded. Over half of the Newfoundlanders were killed in the battle of Beaumont-Hamel on July 1, 1916, the first day of the Somme.
The financial cost of Newfoundland’s war effort contributed to its bankruptcy, loss of sovereignty, and eventually joining Canada as a province.
The Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial is a memorial site in France dedicated to the commemoration of Dominion of Newfoundland forces members who were killed during World War I. Purchased in 1921 by the people of Newfoundland and officially opened by British Field Marshal Earl Haig in 1925, the memorial site is one of only two National Historic Sites of Canada located outside of Canada.
In 1921, on 13 September, White Castle hamburger restaurant opened in Wichita, Kansas, and formed the foundation of the world’s first fast food chain.
Wilkie Collins’s f859 novel The Woman in White is considered to be among the first mystery novels and is widely regarded as one of the first (and finest) in the genre of “sensation novels”. The story is sometimes considered an early example of detective fiction with protagonist Walter Hartright employing many of the sleuthing techniques of later private detectives. The use of multiple narrators (including nearly all the principal characters) draws on Collins’s legal training, and as he points out in his preamble: “the story here presented will be told by more than one pen, as the story of an offence against the laws is told in Court by more than one witness.”
Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film Rashomon repeatedly tells the story of a murder, each from the POV (point of view) of a different character, each of whom sees themselves as the hero.
A POV in government language is a Privately Owned Vehicle, a vehicle not owned by the government.
On The Simpsons once, Marge said, “You liked Rashomon!” and Homer replied, “That’s not how I remember it!”
In play:
POV is a U.S. Public Broadcasting Service documentary series that premiered on July 5, 1988. POV films have won 34 Emmys, 19 Peabody Awards and 3 Academy Awards over the years.
Robert Lopez is not only the youngest of the only fifteen people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award, he also did it the quickest, taking only 10 years time to win all four, and is currently the only person to have won all four awards more than once.
At Yale, Robert Lopez was a member of the Spizzwinks(?) a cappella group. Founded in late 1913, the Spizzwinks(?) are the oldest underclassman a cappella group in the US, dating back to a first performance in early 1914.
If I Had a Hammer, written by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays, was recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary in July 1962, became a Top 10 hit, and won the Grammy Awards for Best Folk Recording and Best Performance by a Vocal Group. Trini Lopez’s 1963 single went to number three on the same Billboard chart.