Sir Walter Scott was a Scottish novelist whose book Rob Roy (much later made into a movie starring Liam Neeson and Jessica Lange) is credited in part with fueling the craze for tartans, clans, kilts etc. of Queen Victoria’s early reign.
Sir Walter Raleigh’s widow, the former Lady Elizabeth Throckmorton, had his severed head embalmed and kept it in her house; she carried it with her in a red velvet bag whenever she traveled.
The athletic teams at Sleepy Hollow High School, in the village next to Tarrytown, NY, are called the Horsemen, after the headless central character in Washington Irving’s story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. The Headless Horseman legendarily is the ghost of a Hessian soldier who lost his head to a rebel cannonball in the Revolution, and rides every night searching for it.
Leonidas Polk, an Episcopal archbishop and Westpoint graduate generally considered to have been one of the worst commanders in a war that was known for its bad commanders, was killed by a cannonball that took off his arm and exploded against a tree on Kennesaw Mountain during the battles for Atlanta.
The 1st commissioner of Major League Baseball, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, was named after the Civil War battle. It that battle, Landis’s father nearly lost his left leg.
I’d read that Leonidas Polk was actually disembowelled by the cannonball which hit him.
Judges Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John G. Roberts were each serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit when they were appointed to the Supreme Court by Presidents Reagan, Clinton and Bush, respectively.
Continuing the thread of missing body parts:
Ronald Reagan is generally considered to have given his finest performance as an actor in the film King’s Row — in which his character utters the famous line “Where’s the rest of me?” upon waking to find that both of his legs have been amputated.
Donald Regan served as both Secretary of the Treasury and White House Chief of Staff during the 1980s; he served in both posts under a man whose name sounds quite similar to Regan’s: Ronald Reagan.
Judith Regan has published works by authors as diverse as Mario Puzo, Jenna Jameson, Michael Moore, and José Canseco.
On the TV show Richard Diamond, Private Detective, Diamond’s secretary, Sam, had only her legs showing. The part was originally played by Mary Tyler Moore.
I’m not about to go searching back through this thread, but I think that one may have already been used.
However, The Mary Tyler Moore Show was originally planned to be about a divorced woman, but because divorce was still a hot subject in 1970, they settled for a broken engagement instead. Also, the network was afraid people would think that Mary had divorced Rob Petrie, her character’s husband on “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” losing the audience’s sympathy.
Queen Mary of England, Elizabeth Tudor’s half-sister and predecessor, several times thought she was pregnant, but apparently never was. Her final supposed “pregnancy” turned out to be what doctors now believe was the tumor which killed her.
Actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio appeared in a number of high-profile movies in the last 1980s and early 1990s, including The Color of Money, The Abyss, The January Man, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. She largely stepped away from film acting after that point (and after marrying the director of The January Man, Pat O’Connor). She has since focused on stage acting (she was nominated for a Tony in 2003), as well as raising a family.
Kevin Kline, M.E. Mastrantonio’s co-star in The January Man, will portray Edwin Stanton in The Conspirator, an upcoming Robert Redford produced film about Mary Surratt.
Early in Joan Rivers’ stand-up comedy career, she used the stage name Pepper January, instead of her birth name Joan Alexandra Molinsky. That was after a brief attempt at an acting career, whose highlight was the play “Seawood”, in which she played a lesbian with a crush on the character played by then-unknown Barbra Streisand.
Joan Rivers’ first film appearance was as Joan, a bored upper middle class housewife who is attracted to the pool party crashing title character (played by Burt Lancaster) in The Swimmer, based on the short story of the same name by John Cheever.
John Cheever’s alleged bisexuality was referred to in the Seinfeld episode “The Cheever Letters.” The characters learn that George’s girlfriend Susan Ross’s father had an affair with Cheever years earlier, which was recorded in a set of love letters. The letters survived the fire, started by one of Kramer’s cigars, that burned down the Ross cabin.
Race driver Eddie Cheever, despite being American, grew up in Rome, Italy (and still has a trace of an accent). By the time he was 15, he had already won the Italian and European karting championships, and eventually had a career in Formula 1. His most impressive win, however, was in the 1998 Indianapolis 500, driving for his own team.
A classic Pizza Margherita (named for a former Italian queen) has green basil leaves, red tomatoes, and white mozzarella cheese, representing the three colors on the flag of Italy.
Eddie Rickenbacker, an Ohioan, Medal of Honor winner and perhaps the most famous American ace of World War I, gave his name to a major airfield in Columbus, Ohio. He never flew over Italy during the war.