In the Tonkin Gulf Incident of 1964, U.S. Navy destroyers may - or may not - have been attacked by North Vietnamese warships on two consecutive nights off the coast of Vietnam. After the incident, President Lyndon B. Johnson got a resolution from Congress to defend American interests in the region however he saw fit. Congress never actually declared war on North Vietnam.
In the musical South Pacific, Joe Cable refers to Bloody Mary and her daughter Liat, whom he romanced, as “Tonkinese”, then a common term for someone from northern Vietnam. Tonkin was one of three administrative zones set up by French colonial powers - central Vietnam was Annam, and southern Vietnam was Cochinchina.
U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), although held for years and brutally tortured as a prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese, was a strong supporter of normalizing trade relations with Vietnam during the Clinton Administration.
After North Vietnam defeated South Vietnam, they renamed Saigon, the country’s largest city, as Ho Chi Minh City.
Ho Chi Minh, born Nguyen Sinh Cung, worked as a ship’s cook in his youth, and later as a baker at hotels in both Boston and London. Stories that he trained in France as a pastry chef have not been confirmed. He became a communist while living in Paris, and eventually rose to become leader of North Vietnam.
The Ho Chi Minh trail (actually a complex network of truck routes, footpaths, and navigable waterways) was called the Truong Son Strategic Supply Route by the North Vietnamese military forces and their allies. Truong Son is the local term for the range known in English as the Annamite Mountains.
[del] La Commune de Paris ruled the French capital from March to May 1871, following the country’s capitulation in the Franco-Prussian War and the deposition of Napoleon III. Established prior to the schism between Marxists and anarchists, both groups claimed it as the first assumption of power by the proletariat in the Industrial Revolution. Although its original purpose was to prevent resumption of the monarchy, it accomplished a wide range of republican reforms in its brief existence before it was overthrown by the regular French Army, commanded by Marechal Patrice MacMahon, Duc de Magenta.[/del]
Interdiction measures against the Ho Chi Minh Trail, actually a network of paths that extended into Laos and Cambodia as well, were the province of the CIA rather than the regular military because of the US desire to keep the war outside Vietnam a secret.
A statue of Nathan Hale, the first great American spy, hanged by the British after his capture, stands outside of Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Va.
Samuel Pierpont Langley was an American scientist who experimented with powered flight. Although his success with models attracted the interest of the U.S. government, he was unable to duplicate results with full-size “aeroplanes” before the Wright Brothers succeeded in 1903. A modified version of Langley’s design was finally flown by avaiation pioneer Glenn Curtiss in 1914.
“Langley” is a common nickname for Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, which is actually an unincorporated community formally part of McLean.
Homer and Langley Collyer were two brothers who became famous as recluses during their lives. Although rumored to be wealthy, and thus subjected to various break-in attempts to which Langley eventually responded by setting up booby traps, they were in fact hoarders protecting such treasures as piles of old newspapers. When asked about the accumulation, Langley responded, “I am saving newspapers for Homer, so that when he regains his sight he can catch up on the news.” (Homer had lost his sight due to hemorrhaging in his eyes, and Langley had prescribed a remedy featuring the consumption of one hundred oranges per week.)
Bud Collyer became famous as the host of “Beat the Clock” and “To Tell the Truth” on CBS in the 1950’s. He also moonlighted as the voice of Superman / Clark Kent on radio, TV, and film, and for radio roles on Terry and the Pirates, Renfrew of the Mounted, and Abie’s Irish Rose, The Guiding Light and The Goldbergs.
Abie’s Irish Rose began as a successful Broadway comedy-drama about the romance and wedding of a Jewish man and an Irish Catholic woman with two very disapproving families in NYC. Zero Mostel performed in a touring revival of it in the 1940s’ in real life he also married an Irish Catholic wife which, along with his divorce from his first (Jewish) wife, led to him being disowned by his orthodox family who held shiva for him.
(I think I already played that one, but I’m not about to search for it.)
That same ethnic pairing was echoed in the comedy act of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, frequent guests of Ed Sullivan, and later in the 1970’s TV series “Bridget Loves Bernie” starring David Birney and his future wife, the still-closeted Meredith Baxter.
Ed Sullivan got his start in newspapers as a sportswriter (he did some boxing). He moved on to a gossip column in the New York Daily News before he was tapped to do a variety show called The Toast of the Town, which eventually was renamed for him.
The oddly-named destroyer USS The Sullivans pays tribute to the five Sullivan brothers of Waterloo, Iowa, who all died when their ship, the USS Juneau, was sunk by the Japanese during World War II. The tragedy was alluded to in the movie Saving Private Ryan.
Major League (Red Sox, Philles, Twins) pitcher Frank Sullivan, who would retire after the 1963 season with a 97-100 Won-Lost record, said in 1961 “I’m in the twilight of a mediocre career”.
Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger and Wesley Snipes all appeared in the classic baseball comedy Major League. All have since had serious legal problems (and Snipes is likely to go to prison for felony tax evasion).
Tom Berenger, James Earl Jones, Kevin Costner, and Geena Davis, all Oscar winners, have also all played catchers in baseball movies. Respectively, they were Major League, The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars, Bull Durham, and A League of Their Own.