Mason City, Iowa, hometown of The Music Man composer Meredith Willson and the model for River City, has a statue of Robert Preston in a bandleader’s uniform in Music Man Square.
The music for Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator was written by Meredith Willson.
President Woodrow Wilson refused to accept the credentials of the newly-appointed British ambassador when he learned that the diplomat had made a mildly risque joke about the second Mrs. Wilson. The ambassador was recalled to London, having never officially taken his post.
Ambassadors to London are formally accredited to “the Court of St. James’s,” even though St. James Palace hasn’t been the primary royal residence since Victoria moved out in 1837 or so.
The second Mrs. Wilson, born Edith Bolling and the widow of jeweler Norman Galt before meeting and marrying Woodrow, claimed descent from Pocahontas. She lived until 1961, long enough to see John F. Kennedy inaugurated as president. During her courtship with Mr. Wilson, a newspaper article intended to read “rather than paying attention to the play the President spent the evening entertaining Mrs. Galt” suffered a typo, and came out " … the President spent the evening entering Mrs. Galt."
ETA: Intended to play off Elendil’s Heir’s post, but I’ll leave it since “[c]ourt” is part of the word “courtship”.
The Mile High Club was founded in November, 1916 by Lawrence Sperry, inventor of the autopilot, and Mrs. Waldo Polk, over New York City. One of them accidentally switched off the autopilot of Sperry’s flying boat, which crashed into the water. Some quick, unconvincing explanations were made to rescue boat crewmen for their nakedness.
Denver is nicknamed the Mile-High City because its elevation is one mile, or 5,280 feet (1,609 meters) above sea level, although there are other cities of similar or higher elevation.
Mile High Stadium in Denver was built in 1948 for the Denver Bears minor league baseball team. In hope of attracting a major league baseball franchise, the stadium was greatly expanded in 1960. The stadium then become the home of the Denver Broncos of the upstart American Football League. The stadium was demolished in 2001 and replaced by Invesco Field at Mile High.
Character actor Denver Pyle is best known for his role as Uncle Jesse in The Dukes of Hazzard.
Ben Jones played mechanic Cooter on The Dukes of Hazzard. After the series he served two terms as a Representative (D) from Georgia, opened “Cooter’s Museums” in Nashville and Gatlinburg, and occasionally appears as a pundit on CNN and other networks.
George Lindsey played mechanic Goober Pyle on “The Andy Griffith Show”, after Jim Nabors left to star in his own show, “Gomer Pyle, USMC”. Gomer’s cousin Goober took over the job at Wally’s Filling Station in Mayberry, NC.
Andy Young, a stalwart of the Civil Rights Movement, served as mayor of Atlanta, Ga. and as Jimmy Carter’s ambassador to the United Nations.
Anthony Young of the New York Mets lost 27 consecutive decisions in 1992 and 1993, the longest losing streak in baseball history.
The U.S. Marine Band played John Philip Sousa’s “The Liberty Bell,” best known as the theme song of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, during a pause in the inaugural ceremonies for President Bill Clinton on Jan. 20, 1993 at the U.S. Capitol.
Liberty Bell 7, flown by Gus Grissom, was the second Mercury spacecraft to go into space, and the only one to sink at sea after splashdown. It was located and retrieved from the seabed in the Bahamas in 1999 after 38 years, and was restored and put on display by the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, KS. Grissom named his second spacecraft, Gemini 3, Molly Brown.
Mercury was a treatment for syphilis and other STDs from at least as early as the 11th century through the 19th century. Application varied from inhaling the vapors of boiling mercury to plasters on the skin to oral ingestion, and had massive and sometimes fatal side effects. This led to a cautionary saying that appeared in many forms and languages over the centuries: “A night with Venus can lead to a lifetime with Mercury”.
Model/actress/pitchwoman Jill Wagner is best known for a series of car commercials featuring the tagline “You’ve gotta put Mercury on your list!”
Jill Wagner (whose name I didn’t know before, although I’ve admired her in the ads) is no relation of either actor Robert Wagner or the late anti-Semitic opera composer Richard Wagner.
Rheingold Beer, possibly named for Wagner’s opera, Das Rheingold, was the official beer of the New York Mets in the 1960s. The scoreboard used the “h” and “e” in “Rheingold” to indicate whether a play was a hit or an error; the appropriate letter would light up.
The 1962 Mets posted a 40–120 record, one of the worst in major-league history, and the most losses in one season since 1899. The 1969 “Miracle Mets” win the new National League East division title, and then defeat the heavily-favored Baltimore Orioles to win the 1969 World Series.