Bob Dole served in the U.S. Army in World War II. In April, 1945, while in combat in Italy, Dole was seriously injured when he was hit by German machine gun fire. Though he recovered from his injuries, Dole remained physically impaired, most notably in his right arm, in which he never regained full mobility.
During his time in politics, Dole would carry a pen, clenched in his right hand, to minimize the appearance of the injury, and used his left hand for most actions (including shaking hands).
From 1952 to 2004, there was only one presidential election which did not have Nixon, Dole or a Bush on the ballot, either for Prez or Veep. The one exception was 1964, when the GOP nominated Goldwater and Miller.
Cynthia Nixon is one of 31 performers who have won an Emmy, a Grammy and a Tony award. As of 2009 she needs only an Oscar to complete the EGOT awards slam, which only 15 people have done, starting with Richard Rogers in 1962, and, 15 years later, Helen Hayes and Rita Moreno in 1977.
Rita Moreno was the first Latina actress to win an Academy Award. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her role of Anita in West Side Story (1961).
Rita Hayworth (nee Margarita Carmen Cansino) is one of the most glamorous actresses ever; and was Fred Astaire’s favorite dancing partner.
Fred Astaire’s birth name was Frederick Austerlitz.
Despite the really, really German name, he was from Omaha, Nebraska. His parents moved the,m all to New York City when he was six; Mrs. Austerlitz was utterly driven to have her kids get into show business, and both Fred and his sister Adele become professional entertainers.
Gerald Ford, who was born in Omaha, awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Lady Bird Johnson — the only former First Lady to have received this award from an opposite-party President.
Two former Presidents have received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from an opposite-party President: Ford from Clinton, and Bush-41 from Obama.
Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton are the only two US Presidents to have changed their names, both in respect of their stepfathers after their mothers remarried. Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. and William Jefferson Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III.
Gerald Ford is the only President of the United States, to date, to have been an Eagle Scout. Other notable Eagles are Steven Spielberg, Neil Armstrong, Michael Bloomberg, Bill Bradley, Michael Moore, Robert Gates, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeff Sessions, L. Ron Hubbard and Marion Barry.
Since 1912, more than 2.25 million Boy Scouts have achieved Eagle.
Other Eagle Scouts include astronaut Jim Lovell, Bill Gates, Sr. (Father of the rich guy), H. Ross Perot, “Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe, William S. Sessions, John Tesh, and Dr. Robert M. Gates.
The American bald eagle is in Genus Haliaeetus, along with the white-tailed eagle and other ernes (sea eagles). The “true eagles” are in Genus Aquila, which is in a different Subfamily from Haliaeetus.
Jay and the Americans are an American pop rock group popular in the 1960s. Their first single appeared on the charts in 1962, with John “Jay” Traynor singing lead vocals. Traynor soon left the group, and he was replaced by David Black, who agreed to take the name Jay Black before joining the group. Their biggest hit single was ‘Come a Little Bit Closer’ which peaked at #3 on the Billboard chart in 1964.
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory has detected collisions between two black holes, and collisions between two neutron stars. But 13 days ago it appears to have detected a first: a collision between a black hole and a neutron star.
The Black Hole of Calcutta was a small dungeon, in which a large number of British prisoners-of-war (and other prisoners) were held in June of 1756. The room was approximately 14’ by 18’; depending on the account, dozens (and possibly well over 100) prisoners were stuffed into the room, most of them dying from suffocation during an overnight imprisonment.
The term has since passed into popular usage, to describe particularly horrible or inescapable confinement. It was also apparently an insipration for the naming of the astronomical features known as black holes.
The main airport of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) is Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport, formerly named Dum Dum Airport after the outlying city in which it is located. The expanding bullet called a “dum-dum” is named for the former British Dum Dum Arsenal, whose grease-coated cartridges were the ostensible cause of the Sepoy Mutiny.
Bob Balaban played Dr. Chandra in the sf movie 2010: The Year We Make Contact. Unlike in the book which inspired the movie, 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke, the movie character was not from India and did not smoke cigars.
From the late 1800s to the mid-20th century, exploding cigars were a popular practical joke, frequently advertised in newspapers. Ulysses S. Grant supposedly gave one to an acquaintance, and an altercation between Turkish military officers and Ernest Hemingway ensued when he pranked one of them with an exploding cigar.
Exploding cigarette loads can be bought today at usaMagicTricks.com: https://tinyurl.com/y3ztqvoe
In 1960, the CIA poisoned a box of Fidel Castro’s favorite cigars with botulinum toxin in one of a number of weird, and failed, assassination attempts.
The 1960 United States presidential election was a closely contested election, in which Democrat John F. Kennedy defeated the incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon. This was the first election in which all fifty states participated, and the last in which the District of Columbia did not. It was also the first election in which an incumbent president was ineligible to run for a third term due to the term limits established by the 22nd Amendment.
