After being awarded two honorary doctorates, singer Pearl Bailey earned a B.A. in theology from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1985, when he was 67 years old.
That should be “she” (unless Pearl had a secret I didn’t know about), right?
Ronald Reagan was inaugurated for a second term in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20, 1985; it was too cold to go outside, and the inaugural parade was cancelled.
After being sworn in, Reagan flew to Stanford CA to perform the opening coin toss for Super Bowl XIX (19) between the San Francisco 49ers and the Miami Dolphins.
When the All-America Football Conference folded, three of its teams joined the National Football League for 1950 – the San Francisco 49ers, Cleveland Browns, and Baltimore Colts (who lasted only one season in the NFL, although a new Colts team was formed in 1953 and eventually moved to Indianapolis).
The Colt Single Action Army pistol is better known as “the Peacemaker” and a recurring plot element in the series Supernatural involves a charmed Peacemaker that can kill (or otherwise destroy) supernatural creatures.
The Convair B-36 “Peacemaker” had a maximum range of 6,000 miles and a maximum payload of 72,000 pounds. During the 1950s it was the only method of delivering large nuclear weapons from the United States to the heart of the USSR, but was made obsolete by the development of the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM.)
The B-36 Peacemaker was part of the U.S. arsenal from 1949-59. It was the largest mass-produced piston engine aircraft ever made, and had the longest wingspan of any combat aircraft ever built, although there have been larger military transports.
The Spruce Goose is the largest plane to ever fly.
In the final scene of the original version of The Fly, Vincent Price and Herbert Marshall required multiple takes, because whenever they saw the animatronic head that was supposed to be the fly, they burst out laughing. The movie starred David Hedison, who was billed as “Al Hedison” at the time.
Vincent Price played the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith in the 1940 movie Brigham Young; Dean Jagger, who was not Mormon at the time, played the title role and later converted to Mormonism. (Any resemblance between the film and historical accuracy is incidental.)
Vincent Price starred in the original “House on Haunted Hill”
Joe Hill, author of Heart-Shaped Box, Horns and Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft, is the son of horror writer Stephen King. He took his pen name from that of a noted labor leader; his actual name is Joseph Hillstrom King.
Authors Stewart O’Nan and Stephen King are both diehard Boston Red Sox fans. They had talked for years about co-writing a book covering the day-to-day of one season of Red Sox games.
They finally got around to it at the begining of tyhe 2004 season, the first year the Sox would win the World Series since 1916! The resulting book Faithful Two Diehard Boston Red Sox Fans Chronicle the Historic 2004 Season is excellent.
The Screen Actors Guild does not allow two actors to use the same name in credits. Thus, when English actor James Stewart moved into films, he was required to use a different name, since another James Stewart was already using it. He changed his name to Stewart Granger and went on to some success.
Brigadier General James Stewart appeared in the BBC documentary The World at War to discuss the strategic bombing campaign of Nazi Germany. According to Wikipedia {{NOT:RS}}, he was credited only as “James Stewart, Squadron Commander” to keep the episode’s focus on the war and away from his far better known career in the movies (for which he earned many Lifetime Achievement awards).
Bernard Fox played Dr. John H. Watson to Stewart Granger’s Sherlock Holmes in a 1972 film adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Slylock Fox, a detective, is a character in a kid-oriented comic strip. Slylock regularly confronts a problem to be solved, with the solution printed upside down at the bottom of the cartoon panel. Other characters include Slylock’s assistant/sidekick, Max Mouse, and the strip’s villain, Count Wierdly.
Count Dooku, played by Christopher Lee, is the right-hand-man of Darth Sidious, the Sith lord at the heart of the Star Wars prequels.
James Earl Jones was not the physical Darth Vader, William Prowse was.
William Prowse also appears as the caretaker of the old writer who yearns for revenge against Alex in A Clockwork Orange.