Barbara Bach is a Bond Girl, having played a sultry Soviet agent in 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me. She has also appeared in Playboy four times.
P.D.Q. Bach (1807–1742 ?) was the son of composer Johann Sebastian Bach and the composer of such works as the Shlepette, and the “Concerto for Piano vs. Orchestra.” He works had been forgotten, but rediscovered by noted musicologist Peter Schickele of the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople.
Mott the Hoople was an English rock band popular during the 1970s. In the U.S. they are best known for their 1972 hit “All the Young Dudes”, written for them by David Bowie.
“The Dude abides” is one of the last lines of the Coen Brothers’ stoner-detective bowling comedy The Big Lebowski. You can even get an Obamaesque T-shirt based on the line: http://www.whatonearthcatalog.com/whatonearth/Item_Abide-Lebowski-T-Shirt_CF5872T_ps_srm.html
Ethan Coen has a degree in philosophy from Princeton University. His senior thesis was Two Views of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy.
The Green Mountain Men, a group of unofficial Vermont militia led by Ethan Allen, became famous for capturing Fort Ticonderoga in the Revolutionary War.
Allen, leading the Green Mountain Boys, supposedly demanded the surrender of Ft. Ticonderoga on May 10, 1775 “in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress.” Benedict Arnold, later to turn traitor against the Patriot cause, was with him at the time of the fort’s capture. Henry Knox, George Washington’s chief of artillery, used the cannon from the fort to force the the evacuation of British-held Boston the following spring.
Fort Knox, in Kentucky, was named after Henry Knox, who was also the country’s first war secretary. It contains the General George Patton Museum.
Alexander Hamilton and Henry Knox were both in a trench during the Yorktown siege in October 1781. An incoming British shell made both of them dive for cover, Hamilton behind the much larger Knox, who half-annoyedly said, “I ask that you not use me as a fortification again, Colonel Hamilton!”
Knox College is located in Galesburg, Illinois. The school’s athletic teams were once nicknamed the Siwash, a derogatory term used by European traders to refer to Chinook Indians. The nickname is now the Prairie Fire. Galesburg is in Knox County, whose name honors Henry Knox, but the school is not officially a tribute to Henry – nor Scottish Presbyterian leader John Knox, whose followers were prominent among the county’s early settlers. Knox College is the full name of the institution.
Jefferson Davis fell in love with Sarah Knox Taylor while serving under her father Zachary Taylor at a fort at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. Taylor liked Davis but forbade the match as he did not want his daughter to marry a soldier. He later relented when Davis resigned from the military but did not attend the wedding. The newlyweds contracted malaria on their honeymoon and Sarah (called Sallie by most but Knox by her husband) died three months after the marriage. Davis and Taylor reconciled during a chance meeting years later and Davis served as a Colonel under his former father-in-law in Mexico; Davis and his second wife were frequent guests of the Taylors at the White House.
Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky but moved to Indiana as a child, and eventually to Illinois, where he eventually rose to political power. He served in the Illinois legislature and had a single term as a U.S. Congressman before being offered an appointment as Governor of the Oregon Territory, but turned it down. A Whig early in his career, he was elected President in 1860 and captured the White House as a Republican, defeating (among other candidates) Sen. Stephen Douglas, a Democrat, who was also from Illinois.
Three recent New Jersey governors have broken their legs while in office–Christine Todd Whitman in a skiing accident, Jim McGreevey while walking on the beach with his wife, and Jon Corzine in a horrific car accident.
Welcome to the state of New Jersey, where goverors end up with a broken leg.
Because of his illegitimate son William’s staunch Loyalism, Benjamin Franklin became permanently estranged from him during the Revolution. William Franklin was the last colonial governor of New Jersey, a position he was given by King George III based on his father’s earlier lobbying efforts while the family lived in England.
William Franklin had an illegitimate son of his own, William Temple Franklin, who was raised mostly by Benjamin Franklin. Temple accompanied his grandfather to France where he served as his secretary and reconciled with his father after Ben’s death. Like his father and grandfather he also had illegitimate children. He is buried in Pere La Chaise Cemetery in Paris along with Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison.
The Temple Cup was an attempt to create a postseason series after the American Association went under in 1891. The champion of the AA had played the NL champ, and the owners, seeing an opportunity, set up a replacement of a playoff between the league’s first and second place teams. The attempt was a flop – attendance was so-so and the teams didn’t really take the competition seriously. Money was split evenly between the two teams, so there was no incentive to win. The Cup was contested from 1894-1897, when it was discontinued.
Temple, Texas, the “Wildflower Capital of Texas,” was founded in 1881 and named after Bernard Moore Temple. Home to the Scott & White Memorial Hospital, a veteran’s hospital and the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine, it has the highest number of physicians per capita of any city in the U.S.
John David Crow of Texas A&M won the Heisman Trophy in 1957. Not only has he so far been the only athlete from his school to claim the award, he was the only one of Bear Bryant’s players to do so (Bryant headed the Alabama Crimson Tide from 1958 to '82, and retired with the most wins of any head coach in the NCAA’s Division I/Bowl Championship Series grouping of elite programs).
Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant was played by Sonny Shroyer, a character actor best known for playing Enos on Dukes of Hazzard, in the movie Forrest Gump. The character’s identity was obvious (football coach at Alabama in the 1960s and wears a houndstooth hat) but his name wasn’t used in the movie itself for legal reasons (though it does appear on the imdb listing).
Sonny Bono served as mayor of Palm Springs, Calif. after he divorced Cher and concluded his show-biz career. He was later elected to Congress but died in a skiing accident in 1998. His widow Mary succeeded him in Congress, and has been reelected ever since.