In 1931, Wiley Post piloted the Winnie Mae to a then-record time of 8 days,15 hours, and 51 minutes for a circumnavigation of the globe by an aircraft.
C.W. Post once visited the Battle Creek Sanitarium (operated by John Harvey Kellogg), and, inspired by the health-food products used there, founded his own firm, the Postum Cereal Company.
John F. Kennedy won both the Navy Cross, for his heroism in commanding PT-109 and saving most of his crew after it was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer during World War II, and the Pulitzer Prize, for writing Profiles in Courage, about six courageous U.S. senators.
John E. Kennedy was a utility infielder who played for the Senators, Dodgers, and Yankees in the 1960s. He was best known as being part of the trade that brought Frank Howard to Washington and Claude Osteen to Los Angeles.
The name of the dead man in the first issue of Action comics (first appearace of Superman, June 1938) is Jack Kennedy. On February 1, 2010, a copy sold for $1,000,000!
Writers C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley both died the same day as John F. Kennedy, November 22, 1963.
(Sorry about your N key, Annie.)
C.S Lewis’ friend J.R.R. Tolkien criticized “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” so much that Lewis almost didn’t finish it.
J.R.R. Tolkien was born in South Africa but immigrated to the United Kingdom, from where his parents originally came, when he was a small child. He has appeared on newspapers’ lists of both the greatest South African and British writers.
In 2010, South Africa became the first African nation to host soccer’s World Cup. The tournament, won for the first time by perennial contender Spain, was notable for introducing the world to the plastic horn called the “vuvuzela” as a continuous, entire-crowd one-noted musical instrument, in an instant African tradition, rather than as the solo-asswipe’s noisemaker it had been known as elsewhere.
The Stanley Cup – the trophy for winning the championship of the National Hockey League – was named for Lord Stanley of Preston, Governor General of Canada from 1888 until 1893. Stanley fell in love with hockey after becoming Governor General, and founded the idea of a “championship cup” for the game. He purchased a punch bowl from a London silversmith, to be used as the trophy for this championship.
The city of Kisangani, Democratic Republic of the Congo, was formerly known as Stanleyville. That name honored Henry Morton Stanley, most famous for reportedly asking “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” in Ujiji, Tanganyika, when he encountered the explorer who had not been heard from in some time.
Stanley and Helen Roper (Norman Fell and Audra Lindley) were the bickering aging landlords in Three’s Company, based on George and Mildred Roper from the Britcom Man About the House. Like their British counterparts the Ropers received a spinoff in which they sell their apartment complex and irritate the neighbors in their upscale new home, but unlike the British sitcom (George & Mildred) The Ropers was not a hit.
Brian Murphy, who played George Roper in Man About the House, was born on the Isle of Wight. Murphy also played the title role in Theatre Royal Straford East’s 1973 production of Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
The Roper Poll was one of the oldest polling organization in the US, founded by Elmo Roper after WWII. Roper founded one of the first market research firms, Cherrington, Wood, and Roper in 1933 and correctly predicted FDR’s landslide victory over Alf Landon (when the Literary Digest became famous for saying just the opposite).
Michael Landon was born Eugene Maurice Orowitz, son of a Jewish father and an Irish Catholic mother who would hang his sheets to dry for his bedwetting (which he did well into his teen years), causing him to become a very fast runner to get home to remove the sheets before his friends could see them. He dramatized this in not one but two movies (The Loneliest Runner and Sam’s Son).
In 1954, Michael Landon threw a javelin 193 feet, 4 inches – the nation’s best mark by a high-school athlete that year. He earned a track scholarship to the University of Southern California, but soon tore shoulder ligaments and saw his athletic career end prematurely.
The athletic teams of the University of California-Santa Cruz are called the Banana Slugs. The offbeat but now-beloved name was chosen by student referendum in 1986.
Banana Slugs are hermaphrodites and the genital opening and anus of the Banana Slug are right under the right side of its mantle.
The four mascot/performers on the Hanna Barbera series The Banana Splits were Bingo (a gorilla), Drooper (a lion), Fleegle (a dog), and Snorky (an elephant).
A lion and a unicorn are the animals supporting the British royal coat of arms, which displays the lions of England and Scotland, and the harp of Northern Ireland. Wales is not represented on the United Kingdom’s coat of arms.