Don McLean flatly refuses to discuss the lyrics to American Pie. When asked what it means, he replies “It means I don’t have to ever work again if I don’t wan to.”
The opening verses of “American Pie” clearly match up with “The day the music died”, the Iowa airplane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper. A later, eerily comparable crash in the country music world, in Tennessee in 1963, killed Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and Cowboy Copas, and featured in the film “Coal Miner’s Daughter” about Cline’s protegee Loretta Lynn.
Buddy Holly’s pregnant wife María Elena Holly heard the news of her husband’s death on television and suffered a miscarriage the following day, reportedly due to “psychological trauma.” In the months following the crash, authorities would adopt a policy against releasing victims’ names until after the families had been notified.
Maria Elena Holly and Buddy Holly met sometime in 1957 when she was working for the music publisher Peermusic, which also employed Buddy Holly’s publishing manager. Their first date was in June of 1958; on that first date, Buddy handed Maria a rose and asked her to marry him. They were married less than two months later in Buddy’s hometown of Lubbock, Texas.
Maria Elena Holly was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1932, and is now 86. After Holly’s death, she remarried, had three children but later divorced. She is now a grandmother living in Dallas, Texas.
Lubbock, TX is also the birthplace of Mac Davis, a country music singer, songwriter, and actor with crossover success. His early work writing for Elvis Presley produced the hits “Memories”, “In the Ghetto”, and “A Little Less Conversation”. A subsequent solo career produced the hit songs “Baby, Don’t Get Hooked on Me” and "It’s Hard To Be Humble, making Davis a well-known name in popular music. He also starred in his own variety show, a Broadway musical, and various films and television programs.
Jefferson Davis, former President of the Confederate States of America, was confined under military guard at Fortress Monroe, Va. after the 1865 end of the Civil War, but was eventually released without being charged with treason or any other federal offense.
Davis’s first wife was Sarah Knox Taylor, the daughter of Zachary Taylor, who would later be President. She died just three months later, as they had both contracted malaria.
The Whig Party was founded in 1833 and dissolved in 1856. Four Presidents were members of the Whig Party: William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, and Millard Fillmore. Of these four, only Harrison and Taylor were elected. Tyler assumed the Presidency after Harrison’s death in 1841, and Fillmore became President after Taylor died in 1850.
Eight U.S. presidents have died while in office. Four died of illness: Harrison, Tyler, Harding, and Franklin Roosevelt. The remaining four died in (or from complications stemming from) assassinations: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy.
the voice of the cartoon cat in the animated TV series “Garfield and Friends” was played by Lorenzo Music. In the movie, however, Music was replaced by Bill Murray.
In the movie “Ghostbusters,” Dr. Peter Venkman was played by Bill Murray. In the subsequent TV adaptation, “The Real Ghostbusters,” Venkman was instead played by… Lorenzo Music.
Lorenzo Music was often heard, but his face was never seen, on “Rhoda”, a spinoff of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”. He was Carlton, the drunken doorman who was only heard over the intercom in Rhoda’s apartment.
A 4:1 mix of oleic acid and erucic acid used to treat adrenoleukodystrophy is known as Lorenzo’s Oil named after Lorenzo Odone. The treatment was developed by his parents.
In 1471, when he was 21, Lorenzo de’ Medici estimated that his grandfather Cosimo, his father Piero and he himself had spent some 663,000 florins (about US$460 million today) on charity, buildings and taxes since 1434. He wrote: “I do not regret this for though many would consider it better to have a part of that sum in their purse, I consider it to have been a great honour to our state, and I think the money was well-expended and I am well-pleased.” He continued his philanthropic giving for the rest of his short life, dying in 1492 aged 43.
The second son of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Giovanni, would become Pope Leo X. Medici’s nephew, Giulio, who was adopted by Lorenzo, would become Pope Clement VII.
Pope Francis, the incumbent and the first top Catholic prelate from South America elected by the College of Cardinals, is properly referred to without a Roman numeral after his pontifical name. He would not become “Pope Francis I” until there is a “Pope Francis II.”
As a child, Alexander Pope survived being once trampled by a cow, but at the age of twelve began struggling with tuberculosis of the spine, or Potts’ Disease, along with fits of crippling headaches which troubled him throughout his life. He is the second most quoted poet in the English language, after Shakespeare.
Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang: The Magical Car is a children’s book written by Ian Fleming, who was also the creator of the character of James Bond. It was Fleming’s only published children’s book.
The book, which Fleming wrote for his son Caspar, depicts the adventures of Commander Caractacus Pott, an inventor who restores an old car, which he names Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang, after how it sounds when he starts it. As Pott and his family travel in the car, they discover that it has become intelligent, and has a number of unexpected abilities, including being able to fly, and operate on the water.
Fleming died of a heart attack in 1964, shortly before the book’s publication. The book was adapted for the screen in 1968, with significant changes to the characters and story.
Mrs. Potts, the housekeeper turned into an enchanted teapot in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, was voiced in the 1991 animated version by Angela Lansbury, who won a Grammy award for her work. Emma Thompson played the role in the 2017 live action remake.
Emma Thompson’s 1995 Golden Globes acceptance speech for her adapted screenplay of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility was cleverly written as if by Austen herself.