When they joined the American Football League as a charter member in 1960, the Bills’ head coach was Buster Ramsey. Ramsey had previously headed the defense of the Detroit Lions, and is credited with devising the 4-3 defense as well as introducing the concept of blitzing linebackers in pro football.
Grover Cleveland served as sheriff of the Buffalo, N.Y. area before becoming Governor of New York and later President of the United States. As sheriff, he sometimes personally carried out court-ordered executions.
Teddy Roosevelt served as president of the board of the New York City Police Commission before becoming Governor of New York and later President of the United States.
Roosevelt, as a reformist Republican state legislator, and Cleveland, as a reformist Democratic governor, worked closely together in Albany.
Albany is derived from Alba (Gaelic for Scotland) and its Latinisation, Albania. In older English, it is used to mean Scotland generally, and in particular the part of Scotland north of the Firth of Forth and Firth of Clyde.
The 60s cartoon character Clyde Crashcup was a scientist/inventor whose invented by drawing his inventions with a pen (much like Harold’s Purple Crayon). He was featured in one segment of Alvin and the Chipmunks. It’s likely his name was inspired by New York Giants and Jets quarterback Lee Grosscup.
The first U.S. presidential inauguration was that of George Washington, in New York City on April 30, 1789. A statue on Wall Street now marks the spot where he took the oath.
At 1hr 45min William Henry Harrison’s presidential inauguration speech
was the longest to date.
The length of the speech may have had something to do with why Harrison
had the shortest term of office (32days): it was delivered on a snowstorm,
and Harrison developed a fatal case of pneumonia shorty afterwards.
President John Quincy Adams’s middle name was pronounced KWIN-zee by his family, and natives of Massachusetts till pronounce the city of Quincy the same way.
The first name of Mr. Magoo, voiced by Jim Backus, was Qunicy. Despite being fictional, he is among the most notable alumni of Rutgers University.
Jim Backus was the first (and possibly only) TV actor who appeared on two different shows on two different networks that ran simultaneously in the very same time slot. From January to August of 1965, The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo (NBC) and Gilligan’s Island (CBS) ran from 8:30-9:00 on Saturdays.
Jim Backus also appeared as a very drunk pilot in It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.
Jim Backus appeared on The Brady Bunch as a gold prospector. In a later episode, he played Mike Brady’s boss.
The first major gold rush in the United States occurred in the mountains of north Georgia beginning in the late 1820s and ultimately resulted in the Cherokee removal from that state and made John C. Calhoun one of the richest men in the south due to his investments in mines and businesses catering to prospectors. North Georgia College, a public military school in the mountain town of Dahlonega (a Cherokee word for gold) still has an active gold mine on campus.
John C. Calhoun of South Carolina served as Vice President to both John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts and Andrew Jackson of Tennessee. His disagreements with Jackson over nullification (the power of states to ignore federal laws with which they disagreed) got so bad that Calhoun finally resigned, the first VP to do so.
Thomas Adams developed chewing gum after serving as a secretary to Antonio López de Santa Anna in Mexico. Santa Anna would chew on chicle, the resin from a Mexican tree. Adams first tried developing chicle as a rubber substitute, but found that, with flavoring and sugar, it was tasty enough to market. Starting with Chiclets in 1906, the Adams Gum company became a major gum manufacturer.
After graduating from Notre Dame with a degree in pharmacy, Knute Rockne worked with Prof. Reverend Julius Nieuwland at the university on developing artificial rubber. The product of Nieuwland’s research eventually led to the invention of Neoprene by DuPont.
King Canute (or Cnut or Knut, all a variant of the same name as Knute) of England is most remembered for the legend that he attempted to order the tide to turn back. While the entire story is probably apocryphal, the notion that he did so from arrogance or dementia is definitely not true: in the original tale he did so because he was disgusted by sycophants and disregard to religion (the real Cnut probably was a very devout Christian judging by his endowments of monasteries and convents and churches) and wanted to show he was only a man and as nothing compared to God (i.e. a king could not even control the waters while God could raise mountains).
Cnut was preceded as King of England by Edmund Ironside, who was preceded by Ethelred the Unready. His appellation does not mean what it appears to - raed was Old English for “counsel”, and “unready” more closely means Ethelred didn’t listen to anybody. His reign is best known for his having lost England to the Danes.
After Perry Mason, Raymond Burr starred as Robert Ironside, a top cop who had been paralyzed and solved cases from a wheelchair.