“Black Beauty”, Green Hornet’s car, was a 1966 Chrysler Imperial Crown sedan customized by Dean Jeffries at a cost of $13,000. Two cars were built for the show and both exist today. Black Beauty 1 is located in the Petersen Automotive Museum collection and Black Beauty 2 has been fully restored and is located in a private collection in South Carolina.
On “Car Talk”, Tom Magliozzi repeatedly reminisced, and recriminated, about the day his brother Ray sent his beloved 1965 AMC Ambassador, a.k.a., "The Sleek Black Beauty," to the crusher.
Black Beauty was a miniature horse that was the smallest living horse, according to Guinness World Records, from 2001 to 2006. She was only 17 inches tall.
Movie critics, who hailed Disney’s 1991 animated version of Beauty and the Beast as one of the year’s finest musicals, immediately noted the film’s Broadway musical potential when it was first released, encouraging Disney CEO Michael Eisner to venture into Broadway. All eight songs from the animated film were reused in the musical, including a resurrected musical number which had been cut from the motion picture. Original songwriter Alan Menken composed six new songs for the production alongside lyricist Rice, replacing Howard Ashman who had died during production of the movie. The show ran on Broadway for 5,461 performances for thirteen years (1994 - 2007), becoming Broadway’s tenth longest-running production.
Black Beauty, an 1877 novel by English author Anna Sewell, was a best-seller in its time and for many years later, and a successful force against animal cruelty. Its narrator, a horse named Black Beauty, speaks movingly against the mistreatment of horses in Victorian times; the book led to several reforms including the banning of the “check-rein” which held horses’ heads at a high angle meant to make them look “smart”.
It remained a children’s favorite for generations and was adapted into many film and TV versions.
(As a child I had an abridged illustrated version which I remember fondly)
After the publication of her only novel Black Beauty, Anna Sewell fell seriously ill. She was in extreme pain and completely bedridden for the following months, and she died on April 25, 1878 of hepatitis or tuberculosis, only five months after the publication of Black Beauty.
Black tough guy and occasional legbreaker Hawk is a friend and valued ally of the smartass but sensitive Boston PI Spenser in the novels of Robert B. Parker. In the original TV adaptation of the novels, Spenser: For Hire, and its spinoff, A Man Called Hawk, the role was filled by Avery Brooks, a graduate of my alma mater, Oberlin College.
Oberlin College was the first co-ed college in the United States; it was one of the first mixed-race colleges as well.
Ellen Swallow Richards was the first woman admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She graduated in 1873 and later became its first female instructor. Mrs. Richards was the first woman in America accepted to any school of science and technology, and the first American woman to obtain a degree in chemistry, which she earned from Vassar College in 1870. She was the founder of the home economics movement characterized by the application of science to the home, and the first to apply chemistry to the study of nutrition.
The “Seven Sisters” are a group of prestigious liberal arts colleges in the northeastern United States, all of which had historially been women’s colleges. The group consists of Bryn Mawr, Barnard, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Wellesley, Vassar, and Radcliffe.
Five of the seven are still all-female (at least for undergraduates); Vassar went co-ed in 1969, and Radcliffe is no longer an independent entity, having merged with Harvard in 1999.
Vassar College, founded in 1861, is in Poughkeepsie, NY, a short drive from Hyde Park, the ancestral home of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Roosevelt Franklin was a Sesame Street muppet during the 1970s. He even made an album.
The Franklin half dollar coin was minted between 1948-1963, at which time it was replaced by the Kennedy half dollar. The Franklin half had Franklin in profile on the obverse and the Liberty Bell on the reverse. The coins were 90% silver all through their issue. Top grade Franklin halves in Proof 67 condition can sell for tens of thousands of dollars. The Kennedy half that replaced it only contained 90% silver in the 1964 issue. In 1965, the silver content was reduced to 40%, and in 1971 silver was eliminated altogether.
Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt were the sons of Texas oil billionaire Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, Jr. In 1979, they attempted to “corner” the silver market and were estimated to have accumulated over 100 million troy ounces of silver, contributing to the increase in price from $6 per troy ounce to $48.40 per troy ounce in January of 1980.
An early sketch on the British comedy show Monty Python’s Flying Circus, about the death of Admiral Lord Nelson, showed a dummy dressed in 1805 Royal Navy uniform being thrown from the top of a London high-rise.
In 1950, Admiral appliances was selling a line of seven TV sets, with four models having a 12.5 in. tube size (between $179.95 and $379.95, equivalent to $1,874 to $4,165 today), a 16 in. model at $299.95 ($3,124), and two 19 in. models (at $495 and $695, equivalent to $5,155 and $7,237).[2] Success in their television sales enabled Admiral to branch out into major appliances such as refrigerators by the 1950s.
The Frigidaire appliance brand was owned by General Motors from 1919 to 1979 and is now owned by Electrolux. That Swedish-based company also owns the Kelvinator brand name, which was owned by Nash Motors and its successor, American Motors, from 1937 to 1968.
In the early stages of deciding the music for the original movie of The Lion King, lyricist Tim Rice recalls he contacted the Swedish pop group ABBA to possibly have Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus to write the music for the film, having already worked with them on the 1986 musical Chess. But the rest of the production team wasn’t on board.
“It was a real head scratcher for a lot of us,” says The Lion King producer Don Hahn. “But they couldn’t do it. There were conflicts — they got a tour or a new album they were working on or something. His next idea was Elton John, which to a degree was also a head scratcher because he hadn’t done a musical before.” But Elton agreed, and the rest is history.
According to this Wiki page, Elton John is the fifth-best selling musical artist of all time, ranking behind The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and Madonna. Number 6 on the list is Led Zeppelin.
Ah, yes, but Elton John’s mother stiffed him in her will