Bangkok is the capital of Thailand and the country’s most populous city. It occupies an area of just over 600 square miles and has a population of over 8 million. According to this list, Bangkok is the world’s 18th largest city by population, ranking just behind Cairo and just ahead of Los Angeles.
The cover photo of the Doors’ Morrison Hotel album was taken by Henry Diltz at Morrison Hotel, South Hope Street, Los Angeles. The band weren’t given permission to photograph there, so did so while the clerk was called away from the desk. The band jumped right behind the windows and hit their places without shuffling as Diltz took the shot. The rear cover features a photograph of the Hard Rock Café at nearby 300 East 5th Street. The founders of the later (and otherwise unrelated) Hard Rock Cafe chain used the name, having seen it on the Doors’ album.
The Heartbreak Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee was demolished to make room for the Guest House at Graceland, which opened in 2015. The hotel featured a heart-shaped pool and special themed suites, like the “Burning Love” (think: a lot of red), and “The Gold & Platinum” (golden furniture!).
Lynyrd Skynyrd’s record “Gold & Platinum” (1979) includes 16 of the band’s top songs from 1972 to 1977. Although one of the band’s most popular song is Sweet Home Alabama, the band hailed from Jacksonville FL. Ronnie Van Zant, Bob Burns, Gary Rossington, Allen Collins, and Larry Junstrum are all from Jacksonville, and in 1964 they formed a band called My Backyard. Finally in 1969 they named themselves Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Lynyrd Skynyrd released 5 albums in just over 4 years from August of 1973 through October of 1977. The fifth album, Street Survivors, was released just 3 days before the plane crash that claimed the lives of two of the band members, Ronnie Van Zant and Steve Gaines.
The original cover for Street Survivors had featured a photograph of the band engulfed in flames, with Steve Gaines nearly obscured by fire. Out of respect for the deceased, that picture was replaced with the album’s back photo, a picture of the band against a simple black background.
Richard M. Nixon, Republican of California, and Spiro Agnew, Republican of Maryland, were inaugurated for second terms as President and Vice President of the United States on Jan. 20, 1973. Within 19 months, both had been driven from office for corruption and malfeasance.
Abram Agnew was a pioneer from Ohio who settled in Santa Clara Valley around 1873. He donated 4 acres for a railroad station, and the budding town came to be known as Agnew’s. Agnew’s Village no longer exists, it was annexed into Santa Clara in the mid 1980s, but the railroad depot still stands near the 49ers’ Levi’s Stadium.
The town of Saugus, California, which is now part of Santa Clarita but whose high school name remains, was named by Henry Newhall, the Southern Pacific Railroad board member and land investor there who came from Saugus, Massachusetts. I lived next to his grandnieces, who remained back in New England, for many years.
In Los Angeles County, the CA-126 highway is named for Henry Newhall, but interestingly it is called Henry Mayo Drive. Henry Newhall‘s full name is Henry Mayo Newhall.
In the Airplane! movie, when Capt. Oveur (played by Peter Graves) is talking to a Mayo Clinic doctor on one of the airport’s courtesy phones, he is standing in front of a shelf lined with jars of mayonnaise. Then, an operator interrupts with an emergency call from a Mr. Hamm, to which Oveur replies: All right, Give me Hamm on five, hold the Mayo.
Ross Harris, the Airplane! actor who played Joey, the little boy questioned by Capt. Oveur in the, er, cockpit, said in a March 2010 interview that he was completely unaware at the time of the meaning of their conversation.
Ron Glass played Detective Ron Harris on Barney Miller, one of the first TV shows to feature an openly gay couple, the flaming Marty Morrison and the more sedate Darryl Driscoll, who ionce said to Marty “If we can stop perpetuating stereotypes here…”
In early drafts of his stories, British author A. Conan Doyle referred to his world-famous detective as Sherrinford and not Sherlock Holmes.
The origin of the sarcastic phrase “No shit, Sherlock!” is unknown, but may have originated in an unused ending for the 1986 film Little Shop of Horrors, a musical remake of the 1960 Roger Corman horror/schlock version with an unknown young Jack Nicholson.
Jack Nicholson was born in 1937, the son of an unmarried 17 year old woman. His mother’s parents agreed to raise him without telling him of his true parentage, and his mother acted as his older sister. It wasn’t until 1974 that Nicholson learned that his ‘older sister’ was really his birth mother.
John F. “Jack” Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, began campaigning for the 1960 Democratic nomination for President of the United States soon after falling short in his reach for the party’s Vice Presidential nomination in 1956.
Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen, the 1988 Democratic nominee for Vice President along with Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, is best remembered for his debate with the Republican nominee, Arizona Senator Dan Quayle, telling the younger man who had compared himself to Kennedy, “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
Murphy Brown’s storyline when Murphy became a single mother, made the show a subject of political controversy during the 1992 American presidential campaign. On May 19, 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. During his speech, he criticized the Murphy Brown character for “mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone”.
Quayle’s remarks caused a public discussion on family values, culminating in the 1992–93 season premiere, “You Say Potatoe, I Say Potato”, where the television characters reacted to Quayle’s comments and produced a special episode of FYI showcasing and celebrating the diversity of the modern American family.
Murphy Brown was played by Candice Bergen, daughter of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. She was irritated as a child at being referred to as “Charlie McCarthy’s sister”, referring to her father’s best-known dummy. Her first television appearance was with her father on Groucho Marx’s “You Bet Your Life”.
What can brown do for you? — the old UPS slogan.
In 1916, Charlie Soderstrom joined UPS and selected brown for their uniforms and delivery vehicles. He chose a hue of brown that was similar to “the color used on Pullman rail cars because the color reflected class, elegance, and professionalism – and dirt is less visible on brown uniforms and vehicles”, according to UPS. By 1929 the color brown that is still used today was adopted across the company.