Liam Neeson has signed to play Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s long-delayed biopic of the 16th President.
When Abraham Lincoln was challenged to a duel by Colonel James Shields in 1842 he chose broadswords as the weapon and Sunflower Island (now in Missouri, then a no-man’s land) as the location. (Both parties arrived with broadswords and seconds but the dispute was resolved peaceably.)
Miyamoto Musashi, the Japanese swordsman and samurai who authored The Book of Five Rings, fought 60 duels (at a conservative estimate) and was never defeated.
Charles Dickinson was the only man killed by President Andrew Jackson in one of his 13 duels.
Julie d’Aubigny, better known as ‘La Maupin’, was a female opera singer in 17th century Paris who was also considered one of the most skilled sword fighters of her time; she was exiled by Louis XIV for fighting (and defeating) 3 of his nobles in a single duel in 1693.
According to legend, Louis XIV only bathed twice in his life.
Joseph Louis Barrow dropped his last name and became a heavyweight boxer as “Joe Louis.”
Clyde Barrow walked with a limp during his days with Bonnie Parker because he had hired another inmate to chop off two of his toes in 1930 in order to get transferred from the prison farm where he was incarcerated. (He didn’t get the transfer but he did get an early parole, serving less than 2 years instead of the 14 he had been sentenced.)
Joe Louis Arena, home of the Detroit Red Wings, is one of only three remaining NHL arenas without a corporate sponsorship name (Rexall Place, Verizon Center, et al.)
Edit: Crap.
Sentenced was a doom/gothic metal band that played death metal in their early years. The band formed in 1989, in the town of Muhos, Finland, and broke up in 2005.
The Grim Reaper (long a personification of Death) tells the dinner party in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life that they were all killed by food poisoning. The culprit? The salmon mousse.
The name ball python refers to the animal’s tendency to curl into a ball when stressed or frightened.
Ball pythons, most of them former exotic household pets or their offspring, are reaking havoc as an introduced species in the Everglades and other parts of the southeast.
Guido van Rossum is the author of the open source programming language Python. Now an employee of Google, he continues to direct development of the language with the official title “Benevolent Dictator for Life.”
The recent cold snap in Florida caused the death of numerous Burmese Pythons, at least 70 American Crocodiles and over 60 Manatees.
Comedian Don Novello was briefly arrested while filming a satirical piece in Vatican City, dressed as his alter ego, Father Guido Sarducci.
Father Guido Sarducci once ran a bit on Saturday Night Live called “Finda Da Popes In Da Pizza”, where you were supposed to find likenesses of all the popes in a pie when you compared it to the one on the TV.
:mad::mad:
The Italian-American archetypes exemplified by the cast of “Jersey Shore” are called “Guidos and Guidettes”.
The Tony-winning musical “Jersey Boys” tells the story of Frankie Valli and the 4 Seasons.