Mark Harmon, a former UCLA quarterback who upset #1 ranked Nebraska in his first game, is the son of Tom Harmon, the 1940 Heisman winner as a Michigan tailback.
Earlier this week UCLA fired head basketball coach Steve Alford, who had been in that position since 2013. Assistant coach Murry Bartow was named interim coach for the remainder of the season. Bartow is the son of Gene Bartow, a former UCLA basketball coach who took over in 1975 after the legendary John Wooden resigned. Gene Bartow held the position for two years and finished with a higher winning percentage at UCLA than Wooden.
The UCLA Undie Run starts at the corner of Strathmore Dr & Gayley Ave, Los Angeles CA (gMap, Google Maps) at midnight on Wednesday nights of Finals Weeks.
Be there or be square.
The United States Navy’s Los Angeles class of nuclear-powered fast attack submarines has more active nuclear submarines - 35 at this time - than any other class in the world. Submarines of the class are named after American towns and cities, with the exception of the USS Hyman G. Rickover, named the late admiral sometimes called “the father of the nuclear Navy.”
A nuclear-powered aircraft is a concept for an aircraft intended to be powered by nuclear energy. The intention was to produce a jet engine that would heat compressed air with heat from fission, instead of heat from burning fuel. One inadequately solved design problem was the need for heavy shielding to protect the crew and those on the ground from acute radiation syndrome. With the advent of ICBM’s and cruise missiles, the projects for such an aircraft were cancelled.
“Leaving on a Jet Plane” was written by John Denver in 1966, when he was 23. It was most famously recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary. Denver’s original title for the song was “Babe, I Hate to Go”.
Te airplane that John Denver died in while piloting it was designed by Burt Rutan, who also designed the Rutan Voyager which was the first airplane to fly non-stop, around the world, unrefueled. The Rutan Voyager was piloted by Burt Rutan’s brother, Dick Rutan, and Jeana Yeagar in December 1986.
The Rutan Voyager circumnavigation took 9 days and 3 hours to accomplish. In 2006, Steve Fossett flew another Rutan-designed aircraft, the GlobalFlyer, around the world in 77 hours. It was the first solo around-the-world flight.
Fossett died in September of 2007 when an aircraft he was piloting crashed in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. The crash site was so remote that it wasn’t located until a year later when a hiker discovered Fossett’s ID cards a half-mile from the wreckage.
The General Motors Corporation (GMC) Sierra pickup truck is mechanically identical to the Chevolet Silverado. It was introduced in 1988 and the name is still in use today.
The author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was the mysterious “B. Traven.” No one is entirely sure of Traven’s real name, though it’s known he was originally from Germany. When making the movie, John Huston met with a Hal Croves, who claimed to be Traven’s agent. It’s unclear whether Croves was Traven himself; Huston didn’t think so, but others on the set did.
Both John Huston, the director, and his father Walter Huston, who played a grizzled prospector (the one who danced while yelling “Gold!”), won Oscars for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The win by John’s daughter Anjelica for Prizzi’s Honor made them the only three-generation family of Oscar winners.
John Huston’s final film is an adaptation of the short story “The Dead” by James Joyce. Huston directed most of the film from a wheelchair, as he needed an oxygen tank to breathe during the last few months of his life. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards, and was praised by critics. Huston died in August 1987, four months before the film’s December 1987 release date.
After the conclusion of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy had small silver Tiffany calendars of October 1962 made as gifts for Vice President Lyndon Johnson, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and his key advisors. The initials of the recipient, and of the President himself, were engraved on each.
http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2012/estate-of-robert-mcnamara-n08913/lot.14.html
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929-1994) was 12 years younger than her first husband, President John Kennedy. She was only 31 years old when he was inaugurated, making her the second-youngest First Lady in the history of the United States. The youngest was Frances Cleveland, who was just 21 years old when she married her husband, President Grover Cleveland, in 1886 in a White House ceremony. She was 28 years younger than her husband.
President James Buchanan was engaged when young, but the fiancée heard rumors, broke off the engagement, and soon died. Buchanan never courted another woman. There is some suspicion that Buchanan had a homosexual affair with William Rufus King, who became Vice President under Pierce.
Buchanan’s niece, Harriet Rebecca Lane, served as First Lady during his Administration, starting when she was just 26 years of age; she is recognized as an “official” First Lady by the First Ladies’ Library. She was a very popular First Lady, called the “Democratic Queen,” and is sometimes compared to Jackie Kennedy.
Rufus King never set foot in Washington while Vice-President. He was dying of tuberculosis when elected, and went to Cuba in a vain attempt to improve his health. He was sworn in as Vice-President while in Cuba, then returned to the United States and died in his Alabama plantation. He was Vice-President for only six weeks.
The two hits by The Sandpipers that reached the highest position for them (#3 on the US Adult Contemporary chart) both had a Cuban connection: their 1966 recording of “Guantanamera” and their 1967 cover of “Cuando Salí de Cuba”.
Guantanamera may be the best known Cuban song. The song is famously played in The Godfather Part II, at the New Year’s Eve party in Cuba where Michael Corleone tells his brother Fredo Corleone that he knows that he betrayed him.
“I know it was you, Fredo.”
Guantanamera was one of Pete Seeger’s favorite songs, in part because the words were written by the Cuban revolutionary martyr, José Julián Martí y Pérez. Seeger liked to sing this song with his grandson, Tao Rodríguez-Seeger. In 2009, Seeger and Rodríguez-Seeger joined with Bruce Springsteen to sing a different song.
That ‘different song’ is This Land is Your Land.
In 1940, Woody Guthrie wrote This Land is Your Land because he was tired of the radio overplaying Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” which he thought was unrealistic and complacent.
Two verses not normally sung:
Was a high wall there that tried to stop me
A sign was painted said: Private Property
But on the back side it didn’t say nothing
That side was made for you and me.
And
One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple
By the Relief Office I saw my people
As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering
If this land was made for you and me?
This ‘different song’ was sung in 2009 by Pete Seeger and Tao Rodriguez-Seeger in 2009 at, as septimus posted, Barack Obama’s inauguration. Those commonly-ommitted verses were included.
Woody Guthrie’s original “copyright” on his song reads:
This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin’ it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.