Shirley Jones, who played the mother on *The Partridge Family *was married to Jack Cassidy, father of David Cassidy, who played Keith Partridge. The producers were unaware of the pair’s real-life relationship when they were hired for the roles.
The character Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, and the character Cody Pomeroy in several other Kerouac works, were based on his friend, fellow Beat Generation author Neal Cassady. Later a member of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, he also appeared in Kesey’s book Demon Box as “Superman” in the chapter “The Day After Superman Died”. The Grateful Dead called him Cowboy Neal in their song “The Other One”.
Neal Cassady was one of Ken Kesey’s “Merry Pranksters,” who got on a bus and handed out LSD (still legal at that point) to anyone they met at events called “acid tests.” They were profiled in Tom Wolfe’s book, The Electric Kool-Ade Acid Test
LSD was first synthesized on November 16, 1938 by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland as part of a large research program searching for medically useful ergot alkaloid derivatives. LSD’s psychedelic properties were discovered 5 years later when Hofmann accidentally ingested an unknown quantity of the chemical.
Hehe. I read an interview with him once in which he related that first acid trip. He was bicycling home when it took effect. 
Swiss safe deposit boxes containing vital secrets play key roles in the novels Fatherland, The Bourne Identity and A Matter of Honour.
Sam Beckett had trouble remembering things when traveling in Quantum Leap because the process “Swiss cheesed” his brain.
Quantum Sports Cars (not to be confused with the Volkswagen Quantum) is a British company which bases its vehicles on the Ford Fiesta.
Edward VIII was the only British king to reign in the past several centuries without ever having been actually crowned. After the death of his father, King George V, he ascended to the throne, reigned for just 325 days and then abdicated, all in 1936, without ever having a coronation. His brother George VI was crowned instead, and reigned until 1952.
King George’s given name was Albert Frederick Arthur George, and he was known by his family as “Bertie.” Born left-handed, he was forced to learn to write with his right hand. This may have caused the stammer which afflicted him in youth and as a young man, which he was able to overcome after extensive speech therapy.
George Washington was just 22 when he was placed in command of Virginia militia during the French and Indian War.
The full name of the man responsible for the wheel so common to fairs and amusement parks was George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr.
The London Eye, aka Millennium Wheel (as well as other nicknames) is currently owned by the Tussaud Group which also owns Mme. Tussaud’s Museums, Warwick Castle, Legoland, and several other attractions.
The Prime Minister’s official residence is at 10 Downing Street, London, while the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s is at 11 Downing Street. All of the rooms are actually accessible from one another behind the facade of the building.
Hank Aaron’s record breaking 715th career home run was hit off Dodgers pitcher Al Downing.
Before pitcher David Aardsma, now with the Seattle Mariners, reached the majors in 2004 with the SF Giants, Henry Aaron was alphabetically first among all men who had ever played major league baseball.
The player who is alphabetically last among all baseball players is still Dutch Zwilling, who managed to play his entire ML career in one city – with three teams (Chicago White Sox, Chicago Cubs, and Chicago Whales of the Federal League).
Chicago’s Wrigley Field, one of the “shrines of the game”, was built for the Chicago Whales as Weeghman Field. Charles Weeghman sold it to the Cubs, of whom he bought a piece himself, when the Federal League folded.
The Cubs’ previous facility was West Side Park, which had a lunatic asylum just beyond left field as a neighbor, apocryphally accounting for the term “out of left field”.
The fictional Federal Security Agency was Sean Connery’s character’s employer in the 1981 sf drama Outland, which owed much to the Gary Cooper 1952 classic Western High Noon.
Gary Cooper’s film debut was a minor one in the 1927 silent Wings, one of a number of aviation-related projects by William Wellman, and the first film (and only silent) to win an Academy Award as Best Picture. Cooper played an Army aviation cadet whose accidental death sobers co-leads Buddy Rogers’ and Harold Arlen’s characters. The film is most notable, besides for its flying scenes, for the huge eyes and overwrought physical movements of “The It Girl”, Clara Bow, who played the token babe.
Harold Stassen, governor of Minnesota from 1939-1943, was a perennial and much-mocked candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the United States, seeking it twelve times (1944, 1948, 1952, 1964, 1968, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996 and 2000) but never winning it.