“One Night in Bangkok” is a song originally sung by Murray Head on the 1984 concept album for the musical Chess. Its music was composed by former ABBA members Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, with lyrics by Tim Rice. It peaked at #3 in both Canada and the United States, and at #12 in the U.K. It is the last show tune to chart in the American top five to date.
American Atheists founder Madalyn Murray O’Hair, her son and her adopted daughter/biological granddaughter were kidnapped in 1995 and murdered shortly after, though their dismembered and decomposed remains (along with the head and hands of another man) were not found until their killer, an employee whose main motive was robbery, voluntarily disclosed the location in 2001. Her surviving son (the biological father of the granddaughter) was a born-again Christian who referred to his mother as a despicable human being, but stated even she did not deserve that death.
Sean O’Hair is a successful professional golfer on the PGA Tour. As a child and teenager, Sean’s father Marc subjected Sean into extremely rigorous physical and psychological regimen. Marc made Sean sign a contract requiring that Sean give Marc 10% of his golf related income. The contract has been broken and Sean and Marc are now estranged.
Sean Connery first played British secret agent James Bond in the movie Dr. No in 1962. The movie was based on the 1958 Ian Fleming novel of the same name.
The British film Return of the Baskervilles, starring Arthur Wontner as Holmes and Ian Fleming (not the author) as Watson, is actually a fairly faithful adaptation of the Holmes story “The Adventure of Silver Blaze,” with a frame tale about Moriarty tacked on. Wontner was Conan Doyle’s choice as the screen version of Holmes that was closest to what he had in mind.
Sean Connery played the Franciscan friar William of Baskerville in the movie version of The Name of the Rose.
(Stay with a golf theme)
Justin Rose (an Englishman) is the third round leader of this weeks PGA tournament in Philadelphia. Early last month, Justin won his first PGA Tour event in Dublin Ohio. In 1998, Justin made a big splash in the golf world by finishing 4th in the British Open as an 18 yr amateur.
The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, the state equivalent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is based in Dublin, Ohio. It is supervised by the Attorney General of Ohio, Richard Cordray.
Dublin, Ireland was originally called Dubh Linn, meaning Black Pool. The pool to which the name referred is the oldest known natural treacle lake in Northern Europe and currently forms the centrepiece of the penguin enclosure in Dublin Zoo.
The Northern Wisconsin National Canoe Base was, before its closure in 1983, one of only a handful of high-adventure areas owned and operated by the Boy Scouts of America. The best-known of all was - and is - Philmont Scout Ranch in northern New Mexico, near Cimarron.
Oklahoma’s Cimarron County (the western tip of the panhandle) is the only county in the USA that borders on four other states (Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico).
“Cimarron” (1931) is one of only three Westerns to win the Best Picture Oscar, and the only one not to have come waaaaay after the golden age of Western movies had ended.
The first film version of Showboat, which like Cimarron was based on a novel by Edna Ferber and starred Irene Dunne, was directed by James Whale,who is best remembered today for directing Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein (and for designing the monster). He was portrayed by Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters, a highly fictionalized account of his last days.
The song, “Bill” in Showboat is the one original song not credited to Oscar Hammerstein II. It was written 1917 by Jerome Kern and P.G. Wodehouse, but never used. Hammerstein reworked the lyrics, but refused to take credit. There is no character named “Bill” in the play.
P.G. Wodehouse was briefly interned by the Germans at the outbreak of WWII and gave a humorous broadcast while under what amounted to house arrest. He was criticized for doing so upon his release, but George Orwell, among others, defended Wodehouse, saying he was no Nazi but was essentially apolitical.
The Chad Mitchell Trio originally recorded “The I Was Not a Nazi Polka”, but after Chad Mitchell had been replaced by John Denver. The 1965 album was titled “That’s the Way It’s Gonna Be / Violets of Dawn”, two of their more popular protest songs. The album also included “Lucy Baines”, “Song for Canada”, and “Your Friendly, Liberal, Neighborhood Ku Klux Klan”.
The capital of Chad was known as Fort Lamy until 1973, when the former French colony decided it was time to stop honoring a French army major who had died in his country’s bid to control the area. The city is now known as N’Djamena.
The Dick van Dyck Show had a plot parodying the British Invasion of music by having the fictional group “The Redcoats” appearing on the Alan Brady show. The band was played by the real-life British Invasion act Chad and Jeremy.
British troops occupying Boston in the days just before the American Revolution were called “redcoats” or, more commonly, “lobsterbacks” by their many opponents in the city.
A sailor named Crispus Attucks was the first to be fatally injured in the event known as The Boston Massacre (which began when a crowd assailed British sentries with snowballs and other objects while calling them lobsterbacks, then grew to become a riot). He commonly appears on lists of famous African-Americans though in fact his ancestry is not known for sure; early reports called him a ‘molatto’, a term interchangeable with mulatto that meant biracial but not necessarily black/white. He probably had native-American heritage (it is known that there was a biracial white-Wampanoag family in Massachusetts in the early 18th century who went by the surname Attucks) and may have had European and or African ancestry as well.