Fanny Van der Grift was born in Indianapolis, married Samuel Osborne in 1857 when she was 17, met Robert Louis Stevenson in France in 1876 and married him in San Francisco in 1880. Opinions of her are very varied; some critics see her as an inspiration and help to Stevenson; others believe that she hindered him, wasting his time and money in supporting her and her children and trying to promote the writing of her untalented son Lloyd.
David Lloyd George was the last Liberal Prime Minister of the U.K., a century ago: 1916 to 1922.
Liberal, Kansas is in the southwest corner of the state and just above the Oklahoma panhandle. Reportedly, the city gained its name from the common response to his acts of kindness, “That’s very liberal of you.”
David Lloyd George, the last Liberal Prime Minister of Great Britain, was also the only one to have been born to Welsh parents (although in Manchester, England) and to have been raised speaking Welsh. He was a friend, mentor and early patron of Winston Churchill’s.
Actor Richard Burton, unfortunately best known as one of Elizabeth Taylor’s husbands, had Welsh as his native language, not English. His original name was Richard Walter Jenkins Jr., but he adopted the name of his beloved schoolmaster.
MLB baseball player Kelby Tomlinson was drafted by the San Francisco Giants in 2011, and while the Giants won the World Series in 2012 and 2014, he was not on the big leagu club’s roster for either team — he was still in the minor leagues. Tomlinson made his major league debut in 2015. Kelby Tomlinson was born in Chickasha, Oklahoma (only 50 miles NE of Fort Sill). He played college ball at Seward County Community College in Liberal, Kansas. As such, his native language is English.
English actor David Tomlinson achieved his greatest success across the pond, in Disney films. He is primarily remembered for his roles as authority figure George Banks in Mary Poppins, fraudulent magician Professor Emelius Browne in Bedknobs and Broomsticks and as hapless antagonist Peter Thorndyke in The Love Bug. Tomlinson was posthumously inducted as a Disney Legend in 2002.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the first and oldest feature length animated film released by Disney. The movie made its debut on December 21, 1937 and was released nationwide on February 8, 1938. Upon its initial release, Snow White earned over $8 million and at one point was the highest-grossing film with sound.
Robin and the 7 Hoods is a 1964 American musical film directed by Gordon Douglas and starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Bing Crosby. The picture features Peter Falk, Barbara Rush, and an un-credited Edward G. Robinson. Written by David R. Schwartz, the film transplants the Robin Hood legend to a 1920s Chicago gangster setting, though this story’s utterly opportunistic Marian is very different from the faithful Maid Marian of the original legend. Produced by Frank Sinatra, the film introduced the hit song “My Kind of Town” by Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song and achieved a career of its own independent of the film.
My favorite scene of his: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV_25f-6z_o
In play:
Dean Martin was born in Steubenville, Ohio, as was Lincoln’s second Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton.
Actor Harry Dean Stanton occasionally toured nightclubs as a singer and guitarist, playing mostly country-inflected cover tunes. He appeared in the Dwight Yoakam music video for “Sorry You Asked”, portrayed a cantina owner in a Ry Cooder video for “Get Rhythm”, and participated in the video for Bob Dylan’s “Dreamin’ of You”.
Stanton, California, in the northwest part of Orange County, is 5 miles west of Disneyland. The city began populating around 1905, was named for Phillip Ackley Stanton, a Republican assemblyman for Los Angeles from 1903 to 1909, and was incorporated in 1911. The population of Stanton is around 38,000.
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Disneyland was named as such in John Hughes’ short story “Vacation '58”, which was published in the magazine National Lampoon. The moviemakers, fearing The Mouse’s notoriously-carnivorous legal team, renamed it to “Walley World” for the movie, where Marty Moose was the mascot.
In the movie National Lampoon’s Vacation, the owner of Walley World is a man named Roy Walley. It was an amazing coincidence that Walt Disney had a brother named Roy.
The trackball, a related pointing device, was invented in 1946 by Ralph Benjamin as part of a post-World War II-era fire-control radar plotting system called Comprehensive Display System (CDS). Benjamin was then working for the British Royal Navy Scientific Service. Benjamin’s project used analog computers to calculate the future position of target aircraft based on several initial input points provided by a user with a joystick. Benjamin felt that a more elegant input device was needed and invented what they called a “roller ball” for this purpose. The device was patented in 1947, but only a prototype using a metal ball rolling on two rubber-coated wheels was ever built, and the device was kept as a military secret.
The earliest known publication of referring to a “roller ball” as a mouse is in Bill English’s July 1965 publication, “Computer-Aided Display Control” likely originating from its resemblance to the shape and size of a mouse, a rodent, with the cord resembling its tail.
The Royal Navy officially counts its own founding as being in 1546, when Henry VIII created the Office of the Admiralty; he’d been building up the navy for years before that, though.
Catherine of Aragon, the daughter of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile, was betrothed at the age of three to Arthur, Prince of Wales and the heir apparent to the English throne. The two married in 1501, when they were both 15 years old; both of them became ill from an unknown sickness soon after, and Arthur died five months after their marriage.
In 1509, seven years after Arthur’s death, Catherine married Arthur’s brother, Henry VIII, shortly after the death of Henry VII. The marriage occurred despite lingering questions over papal dispensation to permit Henry VIII to marry his brother’s widow, as well as the resolution of Catherine’s dowry.
Patrick Henry (1736-1799) is perhaps best known by his 1775 declaration, “Give me liberty, or give me death!”, at the Second Virginia Convention of 20 March 1775. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Richard Henry Lee were among the attendees.
Thomas Jefferson ran for President in 1796, losing to John Adams in the Electoral College 71 to 68. Because of the presidential election procedures at the time, Jefferson was elected Vice-President. John Adams had previously been Vice-President, so he was the first Vice-President and second President. Jefferson was the second Vice-President and third President. However, Aaron Burr, the third Vice-President, was never elected President.