The Napoleon Dynamite Festival is held each summer in the town of Preston, Idaho. Among the events are: the Tetherball Tournament, the Tater Tot Eating Contest, the Football Throwing Contest, and a Napoleon Dynamite “look-alike” contest.
Actress Sandy Martin, who played the grandmother in Napoleon Dynamite, has a recurring role as ‘Brother Selma’, an enigmatic and violent cross-dressing senior wife of polygamous cult leader Hollis Green (and sister of his archenemy Roman Grant [Harry Dean Stanton]) in the HBO series Big Love.
Harry Dean Stanton was the singing voice of Brave Heart Lion in The Care Bears Movie.
The Repo Man’s Code, as recited by Harry Dean Stanton in Repo Man, is a paraphrase of Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. In addition, the man driving the car with the dead aliens in the trunk that is the film’s McGuffin is made up to look like Asimov.
According to historian David McCullough, President Harry Truman and his wife Bess broke a bed while making love in Blair House while the White House was being rebuilt and renovated. Mrs. Truman was very embarrassed when she had to ask the Blair House staff to have a new bed brought in.
Byron Rollins was the Associated Press photographer who took the famous photo of Harry holding a copy of the Chicago Tribune featuring the DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN headline.
Donald Duck’s nephews were Hubert, Deuteronomy and Louis, better known as Huey, Dewey, and Louie. (The longer versions were given in one of their shorts when their angry mother calls them by their full names.)
On Johnny Carson’s final Tonight Show, he showed a slide show of of his guests. The final image, and one of only two black and white images in the slide show, was that of Johnny with Hubert Humphrey.
During his acceptance speech at the 1980 Democratic convention, Jimmy Carter paid tribute to Humphrey, whom he unfortunately called “Hubert Horatio Hornblower.”
Lauren Bacall was Humphrey Bogart’s fourth wife – he had previously been married to Helen Menken (1926-27), Mary Philips (1928-37), and Mayo Methot ('38-'45).
Bogie and Bacall celebrated their wedding and honeymoon at Malabar Farm near Mansfield, Ohio, owned by their friend, novelist Louis Bromfield. He won a Pulitzer for Early Autumn, all 30 of his novels were best-sellers, and some, such as The Rains Came and Mrs. Parkington, were filmed. Bromfield later turned to pioneering conservation work and innovative farming methods.
The state of Ohio claims 24 NASA astronauts (either by birth or residence), including three of the most well-known astronauts: John Glenn (first American to orbit the Earth), Neil Armstrong (first man on the moon), and Jim Lovell (commander of Apollo 13).
The TV show Topper showed the adventures of Cosmo Topper, who was haunted by three ghosts: George and Marian Kirby, plus the alcoholic St. Bernard dog, Neil. It was based upon a film that starred Cary Grant as George Kirby and Roland Young as Topper. The TV version has Leo G. Carroll as Topper, Robert Sterling as George, Anne Jeffreys as Marian, Billie Burke as Mrs. Topper, and Buck as Neil.
George Kirby was a black comedian who briefly hosted and starred in Half the George Kirby Comedy Hour. Among his many talents, Kirby was an impressionist who attracted some controversy for including white celebrities in his repertoire of impersonations.
George Washington visited his beloved Mount Vernon plantation home just once in eight years during the American Revolution, when he was passing nearby on his way to command the Yorktown siege in late 1781.
Vernon Presley, the father of Elvis Presley, had a complicated relationship* with a man named Orville Bean for whom his father and brother and occasionally Vernon himself sharecropped. When Vernon altered a $3 check (for a pig) from Bean to read $8 Bean had him arrested, pressed full charges, and Vernon was sentenced to 3 years at Parchman Farm (the Mississippi state penitentiary and one of the roughest prisons in America), of which he only had to serve 8 months and the rest was on probation, but while he was in prison his wife and Elvis (then 3 years old) were evicted and forced to live on the charity of relatives.
While you would think this would have made Vernon hate and avoid Bean he in fact bought two houses from him over the next few years, borrowed money from him, and Bean’s daughter- who was Elvis’s 5th grade teacher- was the first to praise his musical ability and urge him to learn guitar and consider a career in singing.
*Not in the romantic sense
It is estimated that at the time of his death, Elvis weighed approximately 260 lbs.
In their rockumentary, the British band Spinal Tap visits Elvis’s tomb at the Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tenn., but find themselves unable to harmonize when they try to sing “Heartbreak Hotel” in the King’s honor.
Elvis’ own catchphrase, used between him and the Memphis Mafia and others in the inner circle was “TCB”, standing for"Taking Care of Business", which was lifted from the Bachman Turner Overdrive song of the same name.
Memphis is the largest spot cotton market in the world, with nearly half of the US cotton crop going through the city.