Harry Truman of Missouri became President after the death of FDR in April 1945, and was inaugurated for his first and only full term on Jan. 20, 1949, astonishing virtually everyone by defeating the heavily-favored Thomas Dewey of New York the previous November. Truman’s Vice President was Alben Barkley of Kentucky, who coined the term “Veep.”
Lee Majors’s first major TV role was Heath Barkley, the bastard son of Victoria Barkley’s late husband on The Big Valley.
The character of Reginald Barkley in the Star Trek universe was created by author Sally Caves. It was Caves’s only produced television script.
Gene Roddenberry, born this day in 1921, created the original TV show Star Trek, which ran on NBC from 1966-69. Later incarnations have included The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise, as well as many movies.
The space shuttle OV-101 was originally supposed to be named the Constitution. Due to a letter writing campaign of Star Trek fans it was renamed the Enterprise.
The sailing frigate USS Constitution, now a museum ship but still actively commissioned, was digitally scanned and served as the basis for the CGI-generated French warship Acheron in the Russell Crowe Aubrey/Maturin movie Master and Commander.
In the novel on which the film Master and Commander: Far Side of the World was based the enemy ship was the Norfolk, an American ship, but it was changed to French for fear it would hurt American ticket sales.
The ship used as HMS Surprise in the Fox movie Master and Commander was built in Nova Scotia as HMS Rose (a civilian vessel despite the prefix), a replica of an 18th-century British ship of the same name. Used as a training ship in the 1980’s and 90’s, she is now normally on display at the Maritime Museum of San Diego. She will also appear in the upcoming 3D Disney film Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, in which Captain Jack Sparrow will encounter Blackbeard while searching for the Fountain of Youth.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Labarre, France took command of the USS Stargazer after the death of its captain. He was cleared in a court-martial looking into his later loss of the ship, and in time rose to command the USS Enterprise, both NCC-1701-D and -E.
A stargazer is a venomous fish with both eyes on top of its head and a large mouth. It hunts its prey by hiding in the sand and leaping upward. Some species have a worm-shaped lure on their mouths as well.
The copperhead is one of four species of venomous North American snakes (the others are the cottonmouth, the coral snake, and the rattlesnake) and have the least dangerous venom (its less virulent and is injected in small amounts – and sometimes not at all).
Human deaths from bites are rare. There is an antivenin, but it is not usually used unless there are multiple bites, since the side effects can be more dangerous than the bit.
“Copperhead” was a derisive term for northern Democrats who opposed the Civil War and favored an immediate peace with the Confederacy. In 1863 General Ambrose Burnside issued General Order Number 38, which made it a military crime to criticize the war. Ohio congressman Clement L. Vallandigham, a copperhead, criticized the order and was arrested.
The duckbill platypus, arguably the most species-bending animal on earth, lays eggs and has a bill like a duck, produces milk for its young like other mammals, and has poisonous venom administered through spurs on its legs. (Only adult males produce enough poison to cause damage; it is not fatal to humans but it is extremely painful.)
Humans, Vulcans, Andorians and Tellarites were among the founding members of the United Federation of Planets, the multispecies, interstellar republic in Star Trek.
Page 100 - woohoo!
Skipping back a bit here but I wanted to share this piece of trivia about Clement Vallandigham. After being forced out of politics, Vallandigham returned to practing law. In 1871, he was representing Thomas McGehan, who was accused of shooting another man to death in a barroom fight. Vallandigham argued that the victim had accidentally shot himself during the fight. He was demonstrating how this could have happened in the court room and, not realizing that the gun was loaded, did in fact accidentally shoot himself as promised. Vallandigham died but apparently the jury was impressed - they acquitted McGehan.
The Roman god of fire and smithery, Vulcan, was known to the Greeks as Hephaestus. He was the son of Zeus (Jupiter) and Hera (Juno), and sat with the other gods and goddesses on Mt Olympus.
The world volcano comes from Vulcan’s name - in the myths, he used Mt. Etna as a forge.
Ham Fisher was the almost psychotically vain creator of the comic strip Joe Palooka. He had a practice of hiring young artists for the strip and paying them a pittance. One of these was Al Capp, and when Capp became an even greater success with his own L’il Abner, Capp wrote an article – not mentioning Fisher by name, but describing his mistreatment of his assistants. Fisher was furious. He put in the effort to forge a series of L’il Abner strips, adding pornographic images, and then had Capp charged with obscenity. The case was dropped when Capp’s lawyers showed the actual strips.
Vallandigham actually shot himself while in his hotel room, not in the presence of the jury, but the defendant was indeed acquitted, IIRC.
Al Gore, a Democrat, served as a U.S. Senator from Tennessee and was an unsuccessful candidate for President in 1988 before his selection as Bill Clinton’s running mate during the 1992 campaign. He served as Vice President from 1993-2001, but was defeated by Texas Gov. George W. Bush, a Republican, under still-controversial circumstances when he ran for President in 2000. He has not run for any other public office since.
Tennessee’s state fruit is the tomato.