During one of Abraham Lincoln’s two visits to New Orleans as a young man on a cargo keelboat he attended a performance by Junius Brutus Booth, probably of Richard III (a play Booth is known to have performed in NOLA around that time).
Shortly before Lincoln was assassinated, his son, Robert Todd Lincoln, nearly fell between a train and its platform and was saved from serious injury (or even death) by Edwin T. Booth, John Wilkes Booth’s brother.
The death of Salvation Army founder William Booth inspired Vachel Lindsay to write the poem General William Booth Enters Into Heaven. The poem was subsequently set to music by Charles Ives, who had been a neighbor of Booth’s daughter Evangeline.
Three generations of British royalty have been educated at Gordonstoun, a Scottish boarding school, since its establishment in 1934, including the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Charles (the latter of whom hated it, describing it as “Colditz in kilts”).
The Colditz Cock was a glider secretly built in the attic of Colditz Castle’s chapel by RAF prisoners, in an escape attempt. It never flew, but only because the facility was liberated first.
“The concept was fictionalized, depicting a successful flight and escape, in the 1971 TV movie The Birdmen starring Doug McClure, Chuck Connors, Rene Auberjonois and Richard Basehart. It is also depicted in the final escape from Colditz Castle in the fictional story depicted in Prisoner of War, a game on the Sony PlayStation 2.”
Escape (The Pina Colada Song) was written and sung by Rupert Holmes. Holmes was also the piano player for the goup The Buoys on their recording of Timothy, which told the story of miners trapped in a cave-in who resorted to cannibalism.
The general mnemonic for determining which side of the ship a navigation buoy should be when you’re passing it is “red right returning.” Red buoys designate starboard, Green buoys (formerly black) designate port. “Returning” means going into a harbor.
“Red sky at night, sailors delight; red sky in morning, sailors take warning” refers to the meterological fact that weather generally moves from west to east. A red sunset suggests clear skies to the west, meaning fair weather. A red sunrise suggests clouds to the west, meaning a storm is coming.
Maureen Stapleton (who in spite of claims to the contrary was no relation to Jean Stapleton) won an Oscar for the 1981 Warren Beatty film Reds. She played Emma Goldman, a real-life radical anarchist who would probably be amused to learn she was a character in two 1990s musicals (Ragtime and Assassins).
Screenwriter William Goldman has had a long career in Hollywood, writing screenplays like **Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, A Bridge Too Far, Magic, ** and of course, the screenplay of his novel, The Princess Bride.
BTW, I just noticed this thread has been going on for six months as of today. 
William Goldman is a graduate of Oberlin College, founded in 1833, and the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit women and minorities.
Another Oberlin alumnus was Al Haig. No, not the Secretary of State who declared he was “in charge here” in the aftermath of John Hinckley’s shooting of Ronald Reagan, but a jazz pianist known as one of the pioneers of bebop. Haig played with such luminaries as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis.
Chief O’Brien was a character on Star Trek: The Next Generation for several years before the writers gave him a first name: Miles. Colm Meaney, who played O’Brien, didn’t like the name but wasn’t asked for his input.
Myles Standish was one of the founders of the Plymouth Colony, and was captain of its militia. People who recognize his name today probably recall the Longfellow epic The Courtship of Miles Standish, where Standish purportedly sent his friend John Alden to tell “the Puritan maiden” Priscilla of Standish’s love for her.
John Alden and Priscilla Mullens had ten children. Their daughter Sarah married Myles Standish’s son Alexander, and through other children they were the ancestors of John Adams and his wife Abigail Smith (John and Abigail were distant cousins) and of course of John Quincy Adams.
Thomas Adams was the first to market chewing gum. He was trying to develop the gum from the chicle tree into rubber and one day popped it into his mouth and tried chewing it. He liked the sensation and began to add flavorings. Probably his most successful gum brand was Chiclets.
Of course, chicle was chewed by native American populations for centuries before Adams “discovered” it.
Public offices held by Thomas Jefferson included Member of the Continental Congress, Governor of Virginia, U.S. Minister (ambassador) to France, Secretary of State, Vice President and President.
Thomas Jefferson’s epitaph mentions three of the man’s distinctions – author of the Declaration of Independence, founder of the University of Virginia, and author of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom.
In Silence of the Lambs Clarice Starling is a graduate of the University of Virginia, which she tells Dr. Lecter “is no charm school”, with a degree in Criminology; U of VA graduates were somewhat amused because UVA doesn’t have a criminology major (just criminal justice).
The U.S. Navy steam frigate USS Merrimack, captured by the Confederacy when Gosport Navy Yard near Norfolk, Va. was abandoned in the early days of the Civil War, was rebuilt, armored and recommissioned as the CSS Virginia. As such, after destroying several wooden Federal warships, she fought the ironclad USS Monitor to a virtual draw (but failed in her mission to lift the blockade) in March 1862.