The Norman Conquests are a trilogy of plays by Alan Ayckbourn, telling of the events in one house in a single weekend. Table Manners is set in the dining room, Round and Round the Garden in the garden, and Living Together in the living room. The same characters are in all the plays, and the events of each play shows what was happening while the events of the other plays were going on. Thus, a character might leave the living room for the dining room in one play, and be shown entering the dining room in the other.
King Arthur, legend has it, established the Round Table of Camelot so that no single knight would be favored or have higher status than any other. There have been various theories over the years as to exactly which still-existing castle, if any, is Camelot, or was built on its site.
Many Arthurian scholars believe the name Camelot comes from Camulodonum, a Celtic village in what is now Essex and named for Camulos, a British war god. It became a major city under the Romans who rededicated it to Mars and the emperor Claudius and renamed it Colonia Victricensis. Today it is the city of Colchester (from “colonia” plus “chester” [meaning fort]).
Chester W. Nimitz was the US Navy’s last surviving Fleet Admiral. He had overall command of Navy operations in the Pacific in WWII, and served as Chief of Naval Operations 1945-47. Interstate 880, in the Bay area, is named the Nimitz Freeway in his honor, as is the class of ship comprising most of the Navy’s current aircraft carriers.
The USS Nimitz, the first supercarrier of its class, appears in the movie The Final Countdown, in which it is sent through a time portal and its crew attempts to avert the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
In the movie Stalag 17 the U.S. POWs know that one of the men in the barracks is informing on them to the Germans. They ultimately discover that Captain Price/Peter Gravesis German when he says he was eating dinner when he heard the radio broadcast about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The bombing happened early in the morning in Hawaii and late morning/early afternoon in the continental U.S. but at dinnertime in Germany.
Bandleader “Swing and sway with” Sammy Kaye wrote the lyrics to the song Remember Pearl Harbor. The patriotic tune was recorded on December 17, 1942, a little over a year after Kaye’s NBC Radio show had been interrupted by news of the attack.
Frank Loesser, who later became better known for the musical “Guys and Dolls”, wrote the hit song “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” in 1942. It was based on a legend based on Chaplain Lt. j.g. Howell Forgy of the USS New Orleans, based at Pearl Harbor during the attack, who did not actually man a gun himself but only used the phrase as encouragement of the crew during the attack. The 1943 recording by Kay Kyser and his Orchestra was the only one to reach Number 1 on the charts, though.
“Guys and Dolls” was based on the short stories of Damon Runyan whose literary career began when he wrote newspaper articles for his hometown papers as a teenaged soldier in the Spanish-American War; he later covered the raids of and interviewed Pancho Villa and was very close friends and gambling buddies with several known mobsters in New York, particularly those in the Dutch Schultz mob, who inspired some of the characters in the stories and later the musical.
A young George S. Patton served in the Gen. James J. Pershing-led U.S. expeditionary force that unsuccessfully tried to capture Mexican guerilla Pancho Villa in 1916-17 after several border raids.
Francis Ford Coppola earned an Oscar for the screenplay to *Patton *and George C. Scott won but refused an Oscar for playing the lead. Earlier considerations for the role had included John Wayne and Lee Marvin; Frank Sinatra had requested an audition but it wasn’t granted.
The tradition of using the word “Pilgrim” to address someone when doing a John Wayne impersonation comes from the film “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”, in which Wayne’s character repeatedly addresses Jimmy Stewart’s that way to make fun of his prissiness. Liberty, who needed killin’, was played by Lee Marvin, in his first major studio role.
The songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote a song called “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.” The song was not used in the movie, but became a Top 10 hit for Gene Pitney.
A darned good movie. Just watched it again recently.
Had to throw this in: I have visited what is now a state park in New Mexico where Pershing was based for the raids. It still contains what was the first grease rack in the US, which Pershing used to service his mechanized vehicles. And Villa’s raids were designed to have the US Army chase him. He figured if they followed him in far enough, they would see the wretched conditions in the country and overthrow the government. (This was during the revolutionary years.) His plan might have succeeded if Pershing had not been urgently recalled to participate in WWI. I believe one border town in New Mexico still has a reward offered on their books for Villa’s head.
Now for my Trivia play: The Liberty Bell acquired its distinctive large crack sometime in the early 19th century. A widespread story claims it cracked while ringing after the death of Chief Justice John Marshall in 1835.
Chief Justice John Marshall was an ardent Federalist and clashed politically on several occasions with his distant Virginia cousin, Thomas Jefferson, a Democratic-Republican. Perhaps most significantly, he ruled against the interests of the Jefferson Administration in Marbury v. Madison and, presiding at the treason trial of Aaron Burr (whom Jefferson detested), acquitted the former Vice President.
Actually, he ruled for the Jefferson Administration interests in Marbury vs. Madison; they didn’t want Marbury to take his post and Marshall ruled that the law under which Marbury was appointed conflicted with the Constitution and thus he couldn’t be appointed. Jefferson probably didn’t mind the result per se, but the claim that the Supreme Court could make such a ruling infuriated him.
James Callender, a Richmond journalist, was tried for violating libel laws and the Sedition Act in his anti-Federalist editorials; he was found guilty, fined $200 and sentenced to a year in jail (though Adams pardoned him on his last week in audience so he got out a few weeks early). In Jefferson’s attack on the judiciary he engineered the impeachment of Callender’s judge, Samuel Chase, to date the only SCotUS justice to be impeached, and this in part for alleged judicial misconduct in the Callender trial. Ironically Callender soon blackmailed Jefferson, demanding to be appointed postmaster of Richmond or another lucrative post in exchange for Callender not publishing the stories of Sally Hemings, which he did when Jefferson refused to appoint him. Callender drowned in a shallow ditch soon after.
Margaret Chase Smith was a Republican Senator from Maine, and one of the most successful politicians in Maine history. She was the first woman to be elected to both the U.S. House and the Senate, and the first woman from Maine to serve in either. She was also the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for the U.S. Presidency at a major party’s convention (1964 Republican Convention, won by Barry Goldwater).
Kate Chase was a real life D.C. hostess and tragic figure who figures prominently in some of Gore Vidal’s novels. She was the daughter of Salmon Chase and as he was a three-time widower by the time she was grown she served as his hostess during his lavish parties before and during the Civil War. She married William Sprague, a millionaire by inheritance and governor of Rhode Island, but the marriage was extremely unhappy and ended in divorce due to both parties committing adultery. She died in genteel poverty in the dilapidated mansion of Edgewood, her father’s farm in D.C…
That was my point. Whether or not Marbury got his commission was far less important than establishing the principle of judicial review.
Salmon P. Chase was a prominent abolitionist lawyer who was dubbed “attorney general for the Negro” for his many cases on behalf of fleeing slaves and free blacks. He served as governor of Ohio, U.S. senator and Secretary of the Treasury before being appointed Chief Justice of the United States by President Lincoln, against whom he’d manuevered for the Republican nomination in both 1860 and 1864. Even on the Supreme Court, he never lost his dream of living someday in the White House.