Bill Irwin played the role of Enrico Ballati, “The Flying Man”, on the television series Northern Exposure.
Harlan Ellison wrote one episode of “The Flying Nun,” using his pen name “Cordwainer Bird.”
A cordwainer (or cordovan) is someone who makes shoes and other things from fine soft leather. The word is derived from “cordwain,” or “cordovan,” the leather produced in Córdoba, Spain. The term cordwainer was used as early as 1100 in England.
In 1805 the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers was the first union ever to go on strike in U.S. history.
I know that because I wrote encyclopedia articles on them and their leader, but be damned if I can remember the name of that leader (though I do remember he was next to impossible to find biographical information on).
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s headquarters is in the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., on Pennsylvania Avenue about halfway between the White House and Capitol Hill, and a stone’s throw from Ford’s Theatre, site of one of the most notorious crimes in U.S. history. Special Agent Fox Mulder’s and Dana Scully’s office was in the basement of the Hoover Building in The X-Files.
During most X-Files seasons, Fox Mulder was the kooky, wide eyed paranoid who came up with off the wall supernatural theories for each and every case, while Dana Scully mostly rolled her eyes at him - of course, Mulder was right in 99% of cases, to the point where Scully’s constant denial and doubts about the supernatural became less and less “rational” considering what they’d both been through over the years.
During the last few seasons however, Mulder disappeared from the series entirely and Scully was assigned a new partner. In that new duo, Scully became the bonkers theory spouting one while her partner played her former, sceptical role.
Malcolm X’s daughter, Ilyasah Shabazz (the given name is an Arabic feminine form of Elijah as she was named for Elijah Muhammad) wrote a memoir entitled Growing Up X in which she recounts the ironic life and identity crisis brought about by growing up as a sheltered girl in a comfortable middle class mostly white suburb while being the daughter of a world famous streetwise ex-con black radical.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has kept a “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” for 60 years, since 1950 (occassionally the list will be temporarily expanded to eleven if necessary). Noted criminals listed have included Ted Bundy, Andrew Cunanan, “Railroad Killer” Ángel Maturino Reséndiz , Eduardo Ravelo, James Earl Ray, Usama bin Laden, and Mutulu Shakur, stepfather of late rapper Tupac Shakur and member of the Black Liberation Party and Republic of New Afrika (founded by the Malcolm X Society), who participated in a 1.6 million armored car robbery with a Weather Underground member. The list boasts a high success rate; 463 of the 494 criminals listed since 1950 have been arrested or located.
Tupac Amaru Shakur was named for Thúpac Amaru Inca, the last native emperor of the Incans who led an uprising against the Spanish. He was captured and beheaded by them in 1571, but a few of his descendants (who mostly fled to Mexico and later to Italy and Brazil) led occasional rebellions to restore the royal house for centuries (none of them of serious note).
U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., ran for President in 1980 but was defeated in the Democratic primaries by incumbent President Jimmy Carter, who famously said at a White House meeting earlier that if Kennedy ran, “I’ll kick his ass.” Carter would himself lose to Ronald Reagan that fall. Reagan, while old, had not been born in 1571.
Ronald McDonald was a minor league infielder in the New York Mets system in the late 70s, though he never played in the majors. His nickname, for some reason, was “Big Mac.”
One of the most famous stunts of Willard Scott, who claims to have originated the character of Ronald McDonald (who looked a lot differentwhen Scott played him), was when he dressed as Carmen Miranda on a dare to raise money for charity in the 1980s. Bryant Gumbel was appalled and addressed the event in a famous leaked memo.
The Willard Hotel, standing two blocks east of the White House at 1401 Pennsylvania Avenue, was the site where Julia Ward Howe wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” after hearing a regiment from her home of Massachusetts parade by singing the mocking “John Brown’s Body”. Martin Luthier King Jr. wrote his “I Have a Dream” speech there as well. Every President since Franklin Pierce has either slept in or attended an event at the Willard.
The 1971 horror film Willard starred Bruce Davison as a social misfit who trained a colony of rats to do his bidding. One of the rats, named Ben, eventually turns on Willard and leads the other rats to kill him. The theme song for the sequel movie, Ben, was recorded by Michael Jackson and would reach #1.
Former Massachusetts governor Willard Mitt Romney, who does not use his first name, was named by his father, former American Motors head and Michigan governor George Romney, after his close friend from the Mormon business community, hotelier J. Willard Marriott.
Jess Willard, the original Great White Hope, took the heavyweight boxing title away from Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champ.
Vitaly and Wladimir Klitschko of Ukraine are the only brothers who have each held a world heavyweight boxing championship, and are also the most recent white champs. Both are also the only PhD’s to have won the title.
Bruce Lee based some of the striking of his martial art, which he named “Jeet Kune Do,” on techniques learned from Championship Fighting: Explosive Punching and Aggressive Defense, a book by heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey.
Jay and the Techniques had a hit single with “Apple Peaches Pumpkin Pie” in 1967.
It took four tries to get American Pie (1999) an R-rating instead of an NC-17.