In 1956, incumbent President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Republican of New York, defeated Adlai Stevenson, Democrat of Illinois. This was a repeat of the 1952 election returns, although Eisenhower won by an even bigger margin the second time around. Stevenson would go on to serve as UN Ambassador during the Kennedy Administration.
After winning the Democratic presidential nomination in 1956, Stevenson announced that he would leave the choice of a vice-presidential nominee to the convention delegates. With only one day between Stevenson’s announcement and the vote, the delegates chose Senator Estes Kefauver, who had finished second in the voting for the presidential nomination, over Senator John F. Kennedy.
Estes-Cox Corporation of Penrose, CO was founded in 1958 as the first mass-market manufacturer of model rocket engines for hobbyists, after fireworks manufacturer Vern Estes became appalled at the number of serious injuries to people who were making them on their own. Estes is still the major manufacturer of model rocket engines and rocket kits.
Stephen King’s novel Misery, about an author kidnapped and tortured by his “Number One fan,” is set in an isolated, rural area of Colorado.
Stephen King’s novel The Shining is about a hotel located in Colorado that is closed during the state’s snowy, skiing season.
You could drive a truck full of MAD Magazines (who pointed it out in their parody of the movie) through that plot hole, Stephen.
Scatman Crothers appeared in Bronco Billy and two episodes of Laverne & Shirley in the same year, 1980, as he was in the Stanley Kubrick movie of The Shining.
Broncho Billy Anderson was the first cowboy film star, getting his start performing in the genre in the first western, The Great Train Robbery. Later, with George Spoor, he formed Essanay (“S and A”) Studios, one of the major studios of the early silent days, and hired Charlie Chaplin away from Mack Sennett. Chaplin made 15 films there (the last was constructed out of outtakes) including “The Tramp.”
The romance between Sennett and actress Mabel Normand formed the basis of the plot for the Broadway show Mack and Mabel. Although the musical did not have a successful run on the “Great White Way” in 1974, the original cast album shot up the charts eight years later after the British ice-dancing team of Torvill and Dean performed to the overture en route to claiming the gold medal at the World Figure Skating Championships.
The original cast of Mack and Mabel featured Robert Preston and Bernadette Peters. Preston was famous for his performance as Harold Hill in The Music Man and Peters had received a Tony award nomination for her portrayal of Hildy in the 1971 revival of On the Town.
Tony Blair played guitar in a rock band when he was young, and continued playing occasionally in his off-hours at 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Chicago blues musician Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson, who early in his career backed up Muddy Waters, was one of the many performers with bit parts in “The Blues Brothers”.
Andrew Johnson was trained as a tailor before he entered politics in Tennessee. He was the only Southern U.S. senator to remain in the Senate after the Confederacy fired on Ft. Sumter, served as U.S. military governor of Tennessee, was Lincoln’s running mate in the 1864 election, and succeeded him in office after Lincoln’s death on April 15, 1865.
Andrew Johnson was taught to read by his wife Eliza McArdle Johnson who married him when she was 16 and he was an impoverished 18 year old; she was a reclusive First Lady who turned duties over to her daughters and other hostesses but she did personally host a banquet for Emalani Kaleleokalani, called Emma, the widow of Hawaii’s King Kamehameha IV.
The Hawaiian Islands were not united until 1810, when Kamehameha I, born on the Big Island of Hawaii, completed his conquest and proclaimed the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Kamehameha I, who had several wives (some of whom had an additional husband), is one of two people who lived in polygamous unions to be portrayed on a currently used piece of U.S. currency, the other being Sacagawea whose husband Toussaint Charbonneau had at least one other wife (Otter Woman) while married to her. Two men pictured on currency could be argued to have married bigamists: Andrew Jackson for certain (who married Rachel before her divorce from her first husband was complete) and Ben Franklin (whose common-law-wife Deborah Reade may not have ever have legally divorced her first husband).
The USS Franklin is the only Essex-class aircraft carrier to have been so badly damaged during World War II that it had to be withdrawn from action. None were ever sunk.
Benjamin Franklin is the only person to have had 2 US Navy ships named after him in service simultaneously: the WW2 carriers USS *Franklin *and USS Bonhomme Richard.
The Franklin Automobile Company of Syracuse, New York, was responsible for many innovations. The first four-cylinder automobile manufactured in the USA was a Franklin, and the company was the first to undertake a newspaper advertising campaign for the new-fangled horseless carriages. Incidentally, the name was not a tribute to Ben, but resulted from the vehicles being produced by one Herbert H. Franklin.
The four-cylinder Ford Model T engine, although not the first automobile engine to have the cylinders machined in a single cast block rather than bolted on separately, was the first to have a separate, detachable head. It was in production for 12,000 days, from 1908 to 1941.
The first automobile patent in the US was granted to Oliver Evans in 1789. In 1805, Evans demonstrated his first successful self-propelled vehicle, which not only was the first automobile in the US, but was also the first amphibious vehicle, as his steam-powered vehicle was able to travel on roadwheels on land and via a paddle wheel in the water.