Henry Flagler, a Standard Oil multimillionaire, is considered the father of central and south Florida tourism due to the millions he spent building train lines, bridges, and hotels to open up the area. The legislature of Florida expressed their appreciation by changing the state’s laws to allow incurable insanity as grounds for divorce so that Flagler could legally divorce his (incurably insane) second wife and marry his mistress, Mary Lily Kenan, who was nearly 40 years his junior (and whose death would be quite interesting in time).
John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil not to market gasoline, but kerosene, which was used for lighting. He created a monopoly by buying up other kerosene companies, partly because he wanted to impose quality control standards on the industry. Impure kerosene would burn poorly or explode, and by standardizing, he could prevent that.
American W. Edwards Deming was the guiding light of post war
Japanese quality control. Hired first by the automobile industry
his teaching was soon adopted as Japanese industrial
standard operating procedure.
Japan’s most prestigious QC award is named the Deming Prize
in his honor.
Anthony Edwards whose first role was in the classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High went to San Marcos High School here in Santa Barbara along with Eric Stolz who was also his roommate at USC.
Nicolas Cage has a small role in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, one of his first.
Mike Ferrell and Richard Dreyfuss both had “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” appearances in The Graduate.
Mike Farrell was born in St. Paul, Minn. Before his MASH* career, he appeared on an episode of The Monkees and played a scientist in the Gene Roddenberry 1973 TV pilot The Questor Tapes, among other roles. He is a noted liberal activist today.
A prevalent urban legend states that Neil Diamond and Charles Manson were among those who auditionerd for The Monkees but were turned down; in fact Diamond had no interest in it at all (though they did record some of his songs) and Manson was still in prison when the auditions were held. Stephen Stills and Paul Williams were among those rejected for the group who became famous later.
Diamond married high school sweetheart, school teacher Jayne “Posey” Posner, in 1963. They had two daughters, Marjorie and Elyn, before they divorced in 1969. In December 1969, Diamond married Marcia Murphey, a production assistant; they also had two children, both sons, Jesse and Micah. Diamond’s second marriage ended in 1995. Diamond was in a relationship with Australian Rachel Farley, whom he met while she handled marketing during his 1996 Australian tour
Vladimir Posner (also sometimes transliterated from Cyrillic as Pozner), who became famous in the West for broadcast appearances explaining the Soviet take on policies and events during the Cold War, co-hosted a weekly TV show with Phil Donahue from 1991-94. During that stretch, he regularly commuted between New York (where he taped Pozner/Donahue) and Moscow (where he continued to appear on programs for the Russian audience).
Vladimir Illych Ulyanov took the nom de plume of “Lenin” to hide his identity from the Russian police. As was common, he actually signed his articles as “N. Lenin,” the “N” indicating it was a pen name. This led a lot of people in the west to believe his first initial was “N,” and, for some reason, it stood for “Nikolai.” Joe McCarthy referred to Nikolai Lenin in his response to Edward R. Murrow’s attack on him on See It Now (McCarthy was given equal time for a rebuttal).
Edward R. Murrow’s only child, his son Casey, is now an educator and publisher living in southeastern Vermont.
I could swear Ryan O’Neal too, as the frat boy shaving while telling Dustin Hoffman where Elaine’s wedding is, but I can’t find a reference to that.
Film actor Casey Affleck, younger brother of Ben, is married to Summer Phoenix, younger sister of River and Joaquin.
Chief Miles Edward O’Brien used to serve under Capt. Benjamin Maxwell, shown in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Wounded” to later be in command of the Nebula-class starship USS Phoenix.
Ken O’Brien, quarterback for the New York Jets, played for my Alma Mater, UC Davis, which at the time was a Division II school. I’m sure this is a fairly rare occurrence for an NFL quarterback, but he did lead UCD to an undefeated season and the Division II championship.
The “Chicago Eight” – Bobby Seale, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner – were charged with conspiracy after the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Due to his disrupting the courtroom, Bobby Seale’s trial was separated from the others; the group was thus referred to after that point as “The Chicago Seven.”
[del] Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Ken Anderson, the NFL’s 1981 MVP, went to Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, which plays football in Division III, the lowest level in the NCAA. The Seattle Seahawks’ Dave Krieg, a 6-time Pro Bowl selectee, played for Wisconsin’s Milton College, which no longer even exists. [/del]
English R&B singer Seal Henry Olusegun Olumide Adeola Samuel goes by the stage name “Seal”. He is married to supermodel Heidi Klum, the host of “Project Runway”.
While best known for writing the children’s classic “Heidi,” Johanna Spry wrote many other children’s books. However, she neither wrote nor endorsed the two written sequels. to Heidi
The Heidi Bowl was the name given to the game between the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders on November 17, 1968. With 1:05 left in the game and the Jets leading 32-29, NBC cut away from the game to show its scheduled movie, Heidi. The Raiders stormed back to score two touchdowns, to win 43-32.
The Raiders’ second touchdown in the Heidi Bowl was scored by the immortal Preston Ridlehuber. Ridlehuber’s other claim to fame is when he played with the Buffalo Bills, replacing an injured O.J. Simpson and scoring a winning touchdown. He wore number 31 on that play, a number the Bills had never assigned (and did not do again until 1991) because it was used as a generic player on one of their logos.