Welsh singer Charlotte Church is the youngest person to have a #1 album on the classical crossover chart. Her debut album Voice of an Angel hit #1 when she was just 14 years old.
One of the ships which U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry captured in the Sept. 10, 1813 Battle of Lake Erie was the 16-gun sloop HMS Queen Charlotte. There have been four warships of that name in the Royal Navy over the years.
The Royal Navy Submarine Service has adopted the Jolly Roger as their official emblem, as a cheeky retort to Admiral Wilson’s WW1-era opinion that “Submarines are underhand, unfair, and damned un-British” and that their crews “should be treated as pirates and hanged”.
The emblem of the Oakland Raiders resembles a Jolly Roger except with crossed swords behind a helmet-clad, eyepatch-adorned man’s face, who legend has it was modeled after cowboy/war movie actor Randolph Scott. Scott was the longtime living partner of Cary Grant, although neither man could come out without destroying their film careers.
Roger Maris won the AL Most Valuable Player Award his first two years with the Yankees.
After making his big-league debut with the Cleveland Indians in 1957, Roger Maris was traded the next year to the Kansas City Athletics, who included him in a swap with the New York Yankees in 1959. In that era, the A’s functioned more or less as a farm club for the Yanks, sending up-and-coming players to New York for has-beens and never-weres. Among the players KC received in the trade with the Yankees were future Met immortal “Marvelous” Marv Throneberry and 1956 World Series perfect-game tosser Don Larsen.
Gaylord Perry won his first Cy Young Award while pitching for the Cleveland Indians in 1972. In 1974 sports card manufacturer Donruss issued a set of cards called “Baseball Super Freaks” that parodied many well-known players of the day; among those was a creature called “Spitball Sperry”, which was loosely based on Perry and his penchant for throwing spitballs. Another creature was called “Marvin the Strike-Out King”, which parodied the hapless Marv Throneberry.
U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson, Democrat of Wisconsin, served from 1963-1981. An ardent environmentalist, he is credited as being one of the key founders of Earth Day.
April 22 was chosen for Earth Day because it is the birthday of actor Eddie Albert of Green Acres fame, who was a staunch environmentalist and spokesperson for The National Arbor Day Foundation. He spoke at the inaugural Earth Day ceremony in 1970.
Frank Cady, now a resident of a retirement community in Arizona, portrayed the character of Hooterville’s leading merchant and telecommunications executive and postmaster and fire marshal Sam Drucker in Green Acres, Petticoat Junction and Beverly Hillbillies.
Mort Drucker was the main artist for* Mad Magazine* movie and TV parodies since the 1950s and is the longest tenured artist in the magazine’s history.
MAD Magazine publisher William Gaines was known for striking out the standard contract clause “All disputes are to be settled in a reasonable manner,” stating “I will never agree to being reasonable.”
The “reasonable person” standard in English and US common law of negligence in tort liability was created in 1837 in the English case Vaughn v. Menlove, which involved spontaneous combustion of a haystack that burned a neighbor’s barn. US standards were clarified in the Hand Test, named for Judge Learned Hand.
Before becoming a lawyer, being named to the Federal appellate bench and rising to legal immortality, Learned Hand attended Harvard College, where he was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club and appeared as a blond-wigged chorus girl in the 1892 student musical.
Michael Learned played Olivia on “The Waltons” - no, not in drag, that was her real name; her father wanted a boy. Her disappearance from the show was explained by the character getting TB and being sent to a sanatorium.
Olivia de Havilland is one of the few cast members of Gone with the Wind who is still alive. She had a longtime professional rivalry with her sister Joan Fontaine (Rebecca), with whom she was not on speaking terms for decades.
Professional and personal hatred is more like it. Each has vowed not to die before the other. You gotta love carrying out a pact like that to ridiculous extremes–they are now 94 and 93 years old!
Geoffrey de Havilland, a British cousin of Olivia’s and Joan’s, founded the aircraft company named for him, which produced such notable airplanes as the Moth series of trainers, the wooden Mosquito (one of the fastest and most versatile aircraft of WW2) and the Comet, the first passenger airliner to enter production. The airliner was named after the DH88 Comet, which won the 1934 MacRobertson race from England to Australia. Two of de Havilland’s three sons died flight-testing his airplanes.
Four de Havilland Comets crashed due to metal fatigue and other design flaws, killing dozens of passengers and aircrew, before being withdrawn from service and largely redesigned.
Former child star Jane Withers returned to prominence as Josephine the Plumber in a series of television commercials for Comet cleanser. The brand was originated by Procter & Gamble but was sold later to Prestige Brands.