Richard M. Nixon was fond of cottage cheese with ketchup. He was portrayed by the Oscar-nominated Frank Langella in the movie version of Frost/Nixon, about his famous post-Watergate TV interviews by David Frost (played by Michael Sheen).
Ketchup originated as a Chinese concoction of pickled fish and spices called ke-tsiap, the origin of the alternate spelling, catsup. Other theories of its etymology, some fanciful, exist as well.
British colonials discovered it in Malaya. Tomatos were added to the recipe later by Americans, and fish removed, so that the condiment is now tomato-based by definition.
The tomato plant is native to the western coast of South America, but was introduced in Europe in the early 1500s by returning Spanish colonists. North Americans believed tomatoes were poisonous until 1820, when Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson disproved that myth during a public demonstration on the courthouse steps in Salem, New Jersey.
RJ Reynolds tobacco named two cigarette brands after their corporate headquarters, Winston-Salem, NC.
The very real Lucky Strikes brand of cigarettes was the leading client of the fictional Sterling Cooper ad agency (later reformed as Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce) on AMC’s Mad Men; on the show the CEO of Lucky Strike was Lee Garner (played by Broadway and Northern Exposure vet John Cullum) later replaced by his closeted son Lee, Jr…
The Lucky Strikes slogan that Sterling Cooper “invented” in 1960 (“It’s Toasted”) actually was first used by the brand in 1917 and continued to be used into the 60s.
Woodrow Wilson, Democrat of New Jersey (although born in Virginia) was inaugurated for a second term as President of the United States in March 1917, having narrowly defeated Charles Evans Hughes, Republican of New York, the previous November. Hughes later succeeded William Howard Taft as Chief Justice of the United States; both had lost presidential elections to Wilson.
Nitpick: His last name was Kilpatrick.
Lucky Strike sponsored radio’s Your Hit Parade, which featured North Carolina auctioneer Lee Aubrey “Speed” Riggs. As each show ended, Riggs intoned his trademark phrase “Sold, American”, an allusion to the fact Lucky Strike was a product of the American Tobacco Company.
Edit: Riggs’s and American Tobacco’s home state of North Carolina borders Virginia!
Virginia Dare, daughter of Eleanor White and her husband Ananias Dare and granddaughter of artist John White, was born August 18, 1587, the first recorded child born to English parents in what is now the United States. Her fate, like that of the Roanoake colony where she was born, is uncertain; a series of stonesfound throughout the Carolinas and north Georgia recording her father’s murder, her colony’s migration, Virginia’s death and her mother’s remarriage to a tribal chieftain are now believed to be early 20th century hoaxes.
[del] Complaint: Nobody remembers Jane Curtin telling Dan Ackroyd “Dan, you pompous swine-ass”. No, it’s only his retort.
Lucky Strike changed its packages from green to white in 1942, allegedly to save chromium, used in green ink, for the war effort, under the slogan “Lucky Strike Green Has Gone to War! So here’s the smart new uniform for fine tobacco”, a slogan created by American Tobacco Company’s irascible president, George Washington Hill. Radio listeners taking part in a 1943 Woman’s Day Magazine poll voted it their most disliked commercial, but it increased sales 38 percent. [/del]
The only tangible clue to the fate of the “Lost Colony” of Roanoke Island in 1590 was the word “CROATOAN” carved into a post of the fort. This may have meant either that the colonists were moving to Croatoan Island (where they were not found) or were overcome by the Croatan Indians.
While the Lost Colony’s fate has been more discussed in novels than in UFO theories, there are still some who link the word “CROATOAN” to the word “STENDEC” repeatedly transmitted by the “Star Dust”, a British South American Airways Avro Lancastrian airliner, immediately before its crash in the Andes in 1947 - only ten years and less than half a planet away from the disappearance of Amelia Earhart’s plane.
(I thought “STENDEC” was only broadcast once?)
The British airliner Star Dust was carrying, among its six passengers, a King’s Messenger, a diplomatic courier for His Majesty King George VI’s Government. The plane was apparently caught in the jet stream (poorly understood at the time), lost its way and hit a glacier in Argentina, triggering an avalanche which buried it. Many parts were recovered in 1998-2000, by which time the glacier had moved well downhill. Some human remains were also recovered, too badly deteriorated for DNA testing.
Despite the difficulties posed by the deterioration of ancient DNA, researchers have been able to extract and analyze DNA from Neanderthal bones. A draft of the complete Neanderthal genome was published this year. The authors of the genome draft found evidence for gene flow between Eurasian humans and Neanderthals, which suggests that Neanderthals and humans may have interbred.
A backlog in testing DNA in criminal cases by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Identification was an issue in the recent race for Attorney General of Ohio. Richard Cordray, a Democrat, former Jeopardy! contestant and the incumbent A.G., was defeated by Michael DeWine, a Republican and a former U.S. senator.
(Trivia time: My high school “In the Know” team kicked the butts of Cordray’s Grove City HS team. 
I still have the tape somewhere.)
Cole Porter’s song “It’s De-Lovely” first appeared in his 1936 musical Red, Hot, and Blue, and in the 1962 revival of the malleable Anything Goes. Chrysler used the song, with minor changes to the lyrics, to advertise its DeSoto automobile brand.
The subject of the English nursery rhyme “Old King Cole” is obscure, possibly a play on Coel Hen, from an area of northern England. Singer and jazz pianist Nathaniel Adams Coles adopted the professional name Nat Cole and perhaps inevitably, gained the nickname “King.”
In 1948, Nat King Cole purchased a house in the all-white Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. The Ku Klux Klan responded by placing a burning cross on his front lawn. Members of the property-owners association told Cole they did not want any undesirables moving in. Cole retorted, “Neither do I. And if I see anybody undesirable coming in here, I’ll be the first to complain.”
King Edward VII of Great Britain and Ireland was a notorious womanizer; among his many lovers over the years was actress Lillie Langtry, aristocrat Alice Keppel, and American expat Jennie Jerome Churchill (Winston’s mom).
Although Judge Roy Bean admired Lillie Langtry and named his saloon “The Jersey Lily” in her honor (she was born on the Channel Island of Jersey), the Texas town of Langtry in which the saloon was located was not named for her, but for railroad employee George Langtry.
Gay actor Anthony Perkins lost his hetero-virginity to actress Victoria Principal when both were working on the movie The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. Later he married photographer Berry Berenson (sister of actress Marisa) with whom he had two sons- Osgood Perkins II and Elvis Perkins. Perkins died of AIDS related complications in 1992; his widow died on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to crash into the WTC on 9-11.