Famed colonial preacher Cotton Mather was named for his maternal grandfather, John Cotton.
One of John Cotton’s sons was born aboard the ship Griffin en route to America in 1633 and thus was named Seaborn Cotton. Seaborn became a not uncommon given name due to the many immigrants born en route to America and those who were named after them (and it doesn’t hurt that it’s a cool name).
Sam Seaborn was the deputy communications director for President Josiah “Jed” Bartlett in the fictional TV series The West Wing." He had attended Princeton and Duke University Law School. He left his White House job to run for Congress.
Duke University is considered the foremost institution in clinical research into parapsychology; the Duke Endowment (controlled by Doris Duke) also funded the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (guru to the Beatles and other celebrities) after Doris Duke became enamored of Transcendental Meditation .
The full name of the character Duke in the comic strip Doonesbury is Raoul Duke, which is the pseudonym originally used by Hunter S. Thompson for the publication of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Nitpick: it’s “Bartlet.”
Las Vegas County was, before the current recession hit, the fastest-growing county in the United States, according to the Census Bureau. Five years ago, LVC had to add the equivalent of one elementary school every other week to its public school system.
Howard Hughes lived for three years on the 9th floor of the Desert Inn in Las Vegas buying up several local casinoes and other businesses and surrounded by bodyguards/assistants who were nicknamed “The Mormon Mafia”. One member of the Mormon Mafia was Wilford Brimley who later became a very successful actor.
Upstate New York was a hotbed of religious sects in the first half of the 19th century, with groups such as the 7th Day Adventists and the Church of Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) getting their start, as well as it being home to Shakers (who started in England, but prospered in New York), Spiritualism, and several religious communes like the Oneida Society. The area was called "The Burned-Over District.’
There have been eight warships in the U.S. Navy named the USS New York. The current one is an amphibious transport dock ship, launched in 2007, commissioned two years later, and partly constructed with metal salvaged from the World Trade Center.
The film World Trade Center was directed by Oliver Stone and included Nicolas Cage, Naggie Gyllenhall, and Maria Bello among its cast.
When John Cage died, they played his famous composition 4’33" instead of having a moment of silence.
Well, they should have. In any case, Cage is most famous for that particular piece.
Nicholas Cage chose to bear the name of his favorite comic book character (Luke Cage) instead of his father’s name (Coppola) so that no one would say he got his roles through his name alone. Get that ? Don’t blame Francis Ford Coppola for “The bees, aaah, not in my eyes !”
Although for Fast Times at Ridgemont High, he was billed as Nicholas Coppola. Seeing as how he shows up in so many bad movies, and has at best a mediocre talent, it seems fully obvious that he gets his roles because of who he’s related to.
.
Nicholas Cage is one of the highest paid actors in history but has major financial problems due to his real estate portfolio; at his height he owned multimillion dollar properties in Beverly Hills, Belair, Malibu, Las Vegas (several), San Francisco, Newport CA, Newport Rhode Island, New Orleans (several), New York City (several), private islands in the Bahamas and castles in Ireland and Germany. Several of his properties have been foreclosed on including the LaLaurie mansion in NOLA (considered by folklorists to be the most haunted mansion in America due to Mme. LaLaurie’s sadism) and his rambling Beverly Hills estate.
Hugh Laurie is currently the highest paid actor in American television.
Hugh Laurie’s previous partner in a number of British vehicles was Stephen Fry who received huge critical praise for playing the title role in Wilde, a role he first played on screen in the short lived 1993 U.S. western series Ned Blessing.
In 1984, Stephen Fry adapted the hugely successful 1930s musical, Me and My Girl, for the West End, where it ran for eight years.
The show-stopping number from Me and My Girl was “The Lambeth Walk”, which started a WW2 dance craze. A British propaganda film altering footage of goose-stepping Wehrmacht soldiers (from Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will) to make it appear they were doing the Lambeth Walk reportedly enraged Josef Goebbels into a physical tantrum.
Josef Goebbels was with Hitler to the last in the Berlin Fuhrerbunker in April 1945. Goebbels and his wife poisoned their children and then committed suicide; their remains were then doused with gasoline and burned in the Reichschancellery garden.
The last persons to leave the Fuhrerbunker alive were General Robert von Greim, whom Hitler had just ordered to replace Goering as the head of the extinct Luftwaffe, and famous test pilot Hanna Reitsch, who flew him out from the Tiergarten. Their Fieseler Storch was the last airplane to leave Berlin before the fall, and she always deeply regretted not having died along with her Fuhrer. Earlier, Reitsch had been the first female helicopter pilot and the first female jet pilot, and set many gliding records as well, but her primary accomplishments were in test-flying the Me-163 and V-1 rocket planes.