Vice President Dick Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, left office on January 20, 2009, succeeded by Joe Biden, Democrat of Delaware. Cheney was confined to a wheelchair on Inauguration Day after injuring his back while moving boxes as he prepared to move a few days earlier.
Pitcher Tom Cheney of the Washington Senators holds the record for most strikeouts in a single major league game.
Of course, his 21 strikeouts look less impressive when you consider it was a 16 inning game.
Seantor Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-Washington) was considered liberal on civil rights and environmental issues, but conservative on national defense. He was a candidate for President in 1972 and 1976. One of his strongest supporters was Max Shachtman, formerly a Marxist and associate of Leon trotsky.
While in exile in Mexico Trotsky and his wife were houseguests of Mexican Communist artist Diego Rivera and his wife artist and poet Frida Kahlo. In spite of an almost 30 year age difference Frida and Trotsky, old and tired and in mourning for his 4 children*, became lovers, which in spite of his own many extramarital affairs caused Rivera to throw the Trotskys out in a jealous fit. Soon after Trotsky met the famous pickax in a rented house nearby.
*Trotsky had 4 children: his two sons both met violent ends, one daughter died in young adulthood of tuberculosis and another by suicide, all of them dying before their father.
When Trotsky was exiled from the Soviet Union, he left on a ship named the Illyich – ironically, Lenin’s patronymic.
The title character in Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a judge who dies a slow, painful death after accidentally injuring himself while making home repairs.
Christopher Plummer was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Tolstoy in last year’s The Last Station.
Though it is often called Grand Central Station, the name is incorrect. It’s technically Grand Central Terminal, since railroad lines terminate there.
“Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt was a notorious miser in many regards but he spared no expense in building Grand Central (Station or Terminal) which he considered little less than a temple to himself. He spent more than $500,000 (millions and millions of dollars in 2010 money) on a 150 foot long 50 ton bronze frieze that included a niche for a 4 ton statue of himself as a centerpiece. Today the frieze is gone- removed and melted down when the complex was remodeled- and his statue was moved to much lower ground in the 1930s.
The Commodores originally called themselves the Jays, but then changed their name (randomly picking it out of a dictionary) since there was already a band called the O’Jays.
The O’Jays formed in Canton, Ohio which is the location of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Stephen Colbert made a comment about John McCain making a campaign stop in Canton, Ohio, and “not the crappy Canton in Georgia.” Colbert apologized for the story, adding that the “real” crappy Canton was in Kansas. Colbert later apologized to citizens of Canton, Georgia and Canton, Kansas, while mocking Canton, South Dakota. Colbert then apologized to Canton, South Dakota before proceeding to mock Canton, Texas. After Barack Obama visited Canton, Ohio, Colbert then pronounced it crappy, as well.
Stephen Colbert, a self-described Tolkien geek, owns a replica of Anduril, Aragorn’s sword in The Lord of the Rings movies. The sword, forged by the Dwarf blacksmith Telchar of Nogrod, was originally known as Narsil.
During World War II, Nazi Germany started a project to forge British banknotes and drop them over the UK, thus destabilizing their economy. Their forgeries were indistinguishable from the real thing, but they never developed a mechanism to get them into the UK. The same unit also tried to counterfeit US banknotes, but couldn’t manage it until the war was almost over, so never produced more than a handful.
from T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land
I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
In Little Big Man supercentenarian (or liar) Jack Crabbe recalls his life as the adopted grandson of Cheyenne chief Old Lodge Skins whose family includes a transvestite son (or hemaneh, or berdache) named Little Horse who becomes a lifelong friend and a “contrary” named Younger Bear who becomes his lifelong enemy. When Crabbe returns to the tribe as an adult he marries Sunshine, the daughter of his adoptive uncle Shadow-that-comes-in-sight.
Singer George Jones (“He Stopped Loving Her Today”) did the Indian chanting heard in Johnny Preston’s song Running Bear.
Georgette Jones, the daughter of George Jones and Tammy Wynette (who Georgette played in Sordid Lives: the Series), released a song called You and Me and Time, a duet sung with her father (whose 7 decades of really hard living is written all over him).
George Jessel (1898-1981) appeared as himself in “Valley of the Dolls.”
Russ Meyer’s cult classic *Beyond the Valley of the Dolls *was co-written by Roger Ebert.