John F. Kennedy Jr. had known actress Daryl Hannah since their two families had vacationed together in St. Maarten in the early 1980’s. After meeting again at the wedding of his aunt Lee Radziwill in 1988, they dated for five and a half years, though their relationship was complicated by her feelings for singer Jackson Brown.
Daryl Hannah’s breakout role was as the mermaid in Splash, which was also Tom Hanks’ breakout film. Glynis Johns had previously played a mermaid in Miranda and Mad About Men, although she is best known as the mother in Mary Poppins.
In the 2003 Quentin Tarantino movie Kill Bill, Daryl Hannah plays the role of a one-eyed assassin named Elle Driver. Driver, whose code name is California Mountain Snake, is a member of an assassination team known as the Deadly Vipers. The leader of the team is Bill, played by David Carradine. Bill’s code name is Snake Charmer. Other code names of team members are Copperhead, Cottonmouth, and Sidewinder.
Sidewinders are a style of slip-on shoe: Some were sneakers, and others were more dressy leather loafers, but the pink variety in Billy Joel’s classic song “It’s still Rock and Roll to me” more likely referred to the canvas-topped version.
The AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking air-to-air missile was first introduced into service in 1956, and remains in service today after several rounds of upgrades. The Russian-made K-13 Vympel (AA-2 Atoll in NATO code) is a direct copy, based on an example, shot by a Taiwanese F-86, that lodged in a Chinese MiG-17 without exploding in the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis. Even the part numbers are duplicated.
From 1946 to 1962, the US Air Force worked on plans for nuclear powered aircraft that could fly indefinitely without refueling. The problems were daunting. Making a nuclear reactor flightworthy is difficult. Shielding it from exposing the crew to dangerous radiation might be impossible. Engineers proposed to solve the problem by hiring elderly Air Force crews to pilot the hypothetical nuclear planes, because they would die before radiation exposure gave them fatal cancers.
In the movie Top Gun, the aircraft used for the fictional MiG-28s are Northrop F-5E (single seat) and F (two seat) Tiger IIs, which were used by TOP GUN as aggressor aircraft.
When Queen denied permission for Sylvester Stallone to use “Another One Bites the Dust” in Rocky III, he asked Survivor to come up with an original song. Their song The Eye of the Tiger was used in the film, nominated for an Oscar and a Grammy for Song of the Year.
The eyes of the tiger are situated on the front of its head, and not to the sides. This helps with three-dimensional perception and depth perception, since both eyes look ahead. Also like humans, tigers have binocular vision. This enables them to be able to use their sense of depth perception to judge distances, giving their pouncing and jumping actions a distinct accuracy
Peltier Glass Company is considered to have made the first true cat’s-eye marbles in the 1930’s. These marbles are generally referred to as “bananas” because of the simple curved form of the injected glass, which is typically yellow, red, blue, green, or white in a crystal clear base. Other types of marbles include aggies (agate), commie (common), and allie (alabaster).
I found this hard to believe…until I found the article that you referenced. Good work!
In play:
‘Cat’s in the Cradle’ is a 1974 folk rock song recorded by Harry Chapin. It hit #1 in the Billboard Top 100 in December of 1974, and is Chapin’s only top-rated song.
Harry is a nickname for Henry. There have been eight English kings named Henry. The first three were Normans/Angevins; the next three were Lancastrians; and the last two were Tudors.
It’s coming up on five centuries since the last King Henry, who died in 1547.
There was a chance at a Henry IX. The eldest son of James I/VI was named Henry, and considered a very promising heir, but he died as a teenager of a fever, possibly caused by an infected blister after playing tennis.
Instead, James was succeeded by his second son, Charles, who didn’t turn out so well.
“I’m Henry VIII, I Am,” was a hit for the English pop band Herman’s Hermits in 1965. The song was originally written in 1910, and had been a signature song for music hall performer Harry Champion in the early part of the 20th Century.
The song is often sung in a Cockney accent, with “Henry” being pronounced as “'Enery” (and the name in the title is sometimes spelled out as “Henery”).
"I’m Henry VIII, I Am” was sung annoyingly and repeatedly by Patrick Swayze (as Sam Wheat, already dead and a “ghost” by then) to Whoopi Goldberg (as Oda Mae Brown, the psychic) in the movie, Ghost (1990j.
Sam Wheat was trying to be annoying and he sang it over and over and over. It worked. Oda Mae Brown relented and agreed to help Sam reach his girlfriend Molly Jensen (played by Demi Moore in her pre-breast enhancement days; gImages https://goo.gl/uKqUgE; before-and-after https://goo.gl/tdaRW3).
YouTube: - YouTube
Truly annoying.
Whoopi Goldberg won the 1990 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Ghost. Goldberg, whose real name is Caryn Elaine Johnson, was born in New York City in 1955. She claims that she took the stage name Whoopi from a whoopee cushion.
Whoopi Goldberg is extremely pro-choice. When her eldest daughter Alexandrea Martin got pregnant at age 16, Whoopi totally supported her, and she gave birth to her daughter on Whoopi’'s 34th birthday.
Whoopi Goldberg was inspired as a child to enter acting by seeing Nichelle Nichols as Uhura on Star Trek. Years later, Goldberg herself played a recurring role as the bartender/sage Guinan on Star Trek: The Next Generation. And got to meet Nichols: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/X-L3DeOEW4k/maxresdefault.jpg
Whoopi Goldberg’s character of Guinan on Star Trek: The Next Generation was named after Marie “Texas” Guinan, who was known for running speakeasies during Prohibition, as well as being an actress and singer.
The term speakeasy is reported to have originated with saloon owner Kate Hester, who ran an unlicensed bar in the 1880s in the Pittsburgh area town of McKeesport, Pennsylvania, often telling her rowdy customers to “speak easy” to avoid attention from authorities. Many years later, in Prohibition-era America, the “speakeasy” became a common name to describe a place to get an illicit drink.
The Nakajima B5N was the standard carrier-based torpedo bomber of the Imperial Japanese Navy for much of World War II. The Allies nicknamed the Nakajima B5N the “Kate”.
In World War II, Admiral Yamamoto was shot down when he was riding in a Japanese bomber, but he was in a “Betty” and not a “Kate” – the Betty was the Mitsubishi G4M.