Don McLean’s epic song American Pie, an allegory of 1960’s music, has been covered by many other performers, including the Brady Bunch.
The American President, a 1995 political romance, starred Michael Douglas, Annette Bening, Martin Sheen, Michael J. Fox and Richard Dreyfuss. It was written by Aaron Sorkin and had a considerable influence on his later White House project, The West Wing TV series.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus is the daughter of a billionaire and speaks French fluently.
Many years after the case was finally settled, an acquaintance was with Alfred Dreyfus (who had been falsely accused as a spy and sent to Devil’s Island until, after a long scandal, he was exonerated) happened to mention that there was talk of a spy in the French army. Realizing this was a bit impolitic to someone who had had his life upended by false charges of spying, he mumbled diplomatically, “But there’s probably nothing to the rumors.”
Dreyfus shook his head. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
(Dreyfus was something of an asshole; it was one reason they were willing to believe he was a spy – few liked him).
Richard Sorge was one of the Soviet Union’s most effective spies during World War II. He learned of German plans to attack Russia and warned his superiors, but was disbelieved by Stalin. Sorge was eventually caught, tried and executed by the Japanese in 1944; he was not acknowledged as a Soviet agent until 20 years later. He is one of the relatively few spies to have been featured on a postage stamp: File:Dr Richard Sorge spy.jpg - Wikipedia
While Japan uses the same calendar we use in the west, years are also counted in terms of the current emperor’s rule. Right now it is Heisei 22 in Japan. The current emperor’s reign, as it were, began 22 years ago.
Most aeronautic historians consider the Mitsubishi manufactured fighters for the Imperial Navy Air Service of Japan, better known as “Zeros”, far superior to most of the planes used by the Allies as actual aircraft because among other reasons they had far greater maneuverability and could fly hundreds of miles further without refueling. However, the armor plating on Allied planes slowed the aircraft but allowed far more pilots and crews to survive dogfights than Zeros, plus the Allies were able to outproduce the Japanese war industry and the Allied training programs were considered far superior (and longer in duration) than Japanese training. (There is a popular misconception that the Zeros contained explosives in the tips of their engines so that they could serve as manned kamikaze suicide bombers, but that was a completely different aircraft not used until much later.)
The kamikaze of WWII were named for two thirteenth-century typhoons, said to have destroyed Mongol fleets attempting to invade Japan. The word translates as ‘divine wind’, due to the thought that the typhoons were caused by the gods, protecting the islands.
The Mongol was one of the best-known brands of pencil manufactured by Eberhard Faber. Like many wooden pencil brands, it was painted yellow in a further attempt to evoke the exotic Oriental origins of the graphite deposits which provided its “active ingredient”.
Eberhard Faber named used the “Ticonderoga” trademark because the main source of graphite was in the appropriately named town of Graphite, NY, near Lake George at Hague, and not far from Fort Ticonderoga.
The nearest airport to Lake George is Floyd Bennett Memorial Airport in his hometown of Queensbury, NY. It, and Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, once New York City’s major airport, were named for the pilot of Admiral Richard Byrd’s expedition to the South Pole in 1926. They flew in a Fokker Tri-Motor named “Josephine Ford” after a daughter of Edsel Ford, who had financed the trip.
Expat entertainer and actress Josephine Baker was the first American woman to receive French military honors at her funeral, in 1975.
In the “I’m flying!” scene on the ship’s bow in the 1997 film Titanic, Jack sings a few lines of the classic hit “Come, Josephine, In My Flying Machine” to Rose. She repeats the song while floating in the ocean waiting to be rescued.
James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of Titanic, has developed considerable scientific and engineering skills, especially with respect to underwater exploration and photography, aided in part by his astro-physicist brother Michael Cameron, and his own undergraduate studies in the natural sciences, although he did not complete a degree. He has, somewhat controversially, been involved in efforts to understand and control, if not halt, the BP oil spill in the Gulf. Given his extensive experience in both managing and participating in underwater operations, some of them quite deep (and having personally developed some of the technology used), I for one do not find his participation unreasonable.
Another example of the U.S. government turning to entertainers for assistance with a matter of national importance occurred shortly before World War I. Noticing delays and numerous efficiency problems in transporting heavy equipment and supplies and troops by train and truck convoy, the U.S. army requested permission to send observers to the Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey circus, who transported a moving town of performers and equipment sometimes several times in a week. By all accounts, the circus was very helpful in making the army transport convoys more efficient.
General of the Armies John Joseph “Black Jack” Pershing was the top American general during World War I. For many years he was the senior general in U.S. history, until Congress, at the time of the 1976 Bicentennial, passed and President Gerald Ford signed a law giving George Washington a posthumous promotion and awarding him seniority among all U.S. Army officers ever.
Henry Ford was instrumental in the development of the charcoal briquette. He named the brand after his brother-in-law, E.G. Kingsford, who worked on the process.
In his dystopic novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley has the people of his mechanistic future society dating events “in the year of our Ford.”
Ford’s best known line of trucks have been the F150 series, which has been made from 1975 until the present. But the F does not stand for Ford - it stands for farm.
At the Battle of Assaye in 1803, the British forces under Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington) planned on attacking the Indian army which was on the other side of a river. The Indians had soldiers guarding the known river crossings and the British would have had to cross under fire.
But Wellesley noticed there were two villages directly across the river from each other at an unguarded spot. He reasoned that this was an unlikely coincidence and decided there must be another river ford between the villages. He ordered his army to cross at that point. He was correct and his troops were able to ford the river safely.