Chuck Berry’s only number 1 single was the sexual innuendo known as My Ding-a-ling.
Chuck Barris was a game show creator and host, and songwriter. He created “The Dating Game,” “The Newlywed Game,” and “The New Treasure Hunt,” as well as creating and hosting the talent show spoof “The Gong Show.” He also wrote the song “Palisades Park,” which was a top-10 hit for Freddy Cannon in 1962.
In 1984, Barris wrote an autobiography, “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” in which he claimed that he had, in addition to his work on game shows, been an assassin for the CIA in the 1960s and 1970s. The CIA disputed Barris’s claim, and Barris admitted that the book was a fanciful telling of what his life might have been like had he actually been able to join the CIA (he apparently had applied for a position with the agency at one point). The book was adapted into a film in 2002, directed by George Clooney, and starring Sam Rockwell as Barris.
Sam Rockwell was also Zaphod Beeblebrox in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
The Ford Galaxie was a full-sized car produced in the US from 1958 to 1974.
The Ford Galaxy is a minivan produced in Europe since 1995.
On Star Trek: The Next Generation, Capt. Jean-Luc Picard’s USS Enterprise, NCC-1701-D, is a Galaxy-class starship.
Frederic Weatherly, an English barrister, wrote two of the biggest hits of the early 1900s: “Danny Boy” in 1910, and “Roses of Picardy”, one of the most popular songs of World War I, in 1916.
President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill incorporating the Boy Scouts of America, on 15 June 1916.
Estes Industries has been a producer of model rocketry equipment, including rocket kits, rocket engines, and launching systems, since its founding in 1958, at the height of the “space race,” by Vernon Estes.
The company’s first model rocket kit was called the Astron Scout; the Scout kit remained in production by Estes for many decades.
Estes Park, Colorado is a town in the north-central part of the state and about 65 miles northwest of Denver (gMap). The elevation of Estes Park is over 7,500’, and the town is named after Missouri native Joel Estes, who founded the community in 1859 and moved his family there in 1863.
The Trail Ridge Road, reaching elevations more than 12,000’ high, is the highest continuous highway in the United States. It runs about 50 miles from Estes Park westward through Rocky Mountain National Park, reaching Grand Lake over the continental divide. The Trail Ridge Road is the highest paved through road in Colorado and it is also the highest paved road in Colorado that crosses the continental divide.
The only film John Belushi made without Dan Aykroyd following his departure from SNL was the romantic comedy Continental Divide. Released in September 1981, it starred Belushi as Chicago home town hero writer Ernie Souchack (loosely based on newspaper columnist and long-time family friend Mike Royko), who gets an assignment researching a scientist (played by Blair Brown) who studies birds of prey in the remote Rocky Mountains.
In 1978, John Belushi starred in Animal House, which was the second-highest grossing movie of the year. He also was part of The Blues Brothers, whose album Briefcase Full Of Blues reached #1 on the Billboard 200 chart. And, of course, he was a cast member of Saturday Night Live, which had its highest rated season ever that year.
In National Lampoon’s Animal House, Tim Matheson played Eric “Otter” Stratton, one of the members of the Delta Tau Chi fraternity. Matheson had been a child actor in the 1960s, and also did voice work for Hanna-Barbera, including being the original voice actor for the character Jonny Quest, in the cartoon of the same name.
Perhaps Tim Matheson’s best-known later TV role was as Vice President John Hoynes, Democrat of Texas, on The West Wing. Hoynes was brought down by a sex scandal during President Josiah Bartlet’s (Martin Sheen) second term.
Martin Sheen’s real name is Ramon Estevez, and Charlie Sheen’s real name is Carlos Estevez. Emilio chose to keep the family name.
When Martin Sheen was a teenager in Dayton OH he worked as a golf caddy at a private golf club. When he was 14, Sheen organized a strike of the golf caddies, because the golfers “often used obscene language in front of us… we were little boys and they were abusive… anti-Semitic… And they, for the most part, were upstanding members of the community.”
The 2010 film The Way was produced and written by Emilio Estevez and stars Martin Sheen. It was inspired by Emilio Estevez’s own son, Taylor, and his interest in the ancient Camino de Santiago in Spain.
Camino de Santiago, the Way of St. James, is a network of pilgrimages leading to the shrine of the apostle Saint James the Great in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain. It is listed in the World Heritage List by UNESCO.
The scallop shell, often found on the shores in Galicia, has long been the symbol of the Camino de Santiago.
The most common route in the Way of St. James begins at Saint Jean Pied de Port, France, and travels 500 miles through four of Spain’s 15 regions before ending at the cathedral in Galicia.
The Pied Piper of Hamelin wore multicolored (or, “pied”) clothing and lured rats away from the infested town of Hamelin, Germany with his magic pipe. But when the citizens refused to pay for this service, as the legend goes, he retaliated by using his instrument’s magical power on their children and led them away as he had the rats.
Haviland Tuf, owner and master of the ancient Earth seedship (military genetic-engineering starship) Ark in George R.R. Martin’s sf novel Tuf Voyaging, makes a veiled reference to the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin when a planetary government’s officials initially refuse to pay him for ridding their world of sea monsters. They soon pay up.