Anderson Cooper’s mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, used to market her own brand of blue jeans.
Vanderbilt University in Nashville is a charter member of the Southeastern Conference. They are the only private school in the SEC and by far the smallest, with almost half the undergraduate population of the next largest school, Ole Miss.
The Grand Ole Opry, broadcast from the Nashville, Tennessee is the longest running live radio broadcast.
[del]Vanderbilt University was founded by “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt, then the richest man in the United States, even though he considered education beyond literacy a waste of time; it was to appease his much younger second wife (who was also his second cousin; his first wife was his first cousin).*
*Also to get revenge on a dead enemy but that’s a long story I won’t go into here.[/del]
The Parthenon in Nashville, built for the city’s centennial exhibition in 1897, is a full scale replica of the original in Athens and includes a statue of the goddess Pallas Athena.
James H. Clark, a founder of Silicon Graphics and Netscape Communications, commissioned construction of the Athena; at its 2004 delivery, it was the largest yacht in the world.
( And just because I liked it so much, but was beaten to the punch: “The “#18 Classic Red Wagon” has been produced by the company known today as Radio Flyer for more than seventy years; its shape is a registered trademark.” )
Netscape was the first popular web browser.
WorldWideWeb was the first web browser of any kind, invented by Tim Berners-Lee for CERN in 1991.
The term cobweb comes from the obsolete word coppe, meaning “spider.”
Pro skier “Spider” Sabich was killed by his lover, Claudine Longet, wife of singer Andy Williams.
Andy William’s only Billboard #1 hit was the single “Butterfly” a cover of a Charlie Gracie record on which Andy supposedly imitated Elvis Presley.
Andy Williams was among the first singers to own and perform at a dinner theater in Branson, Missouri; others include Roy Clark, Tony Orlando, John Davidson and Yakov Smirnov.
Clay Aiken, who also has his own theater in “So You Settled For” Branson, was NOT a winner of “American Idol”. He was narrowly beaten by Ruben Studdard.
Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser, was seated in the U.S. Senate even though, at 29, he was legally too young.
“The Betrothed,” Rudyard Kipling’s poem about cigars, contains the line, “There’s peace in a Larranaga, there’s calm in a Henry Clay.” Both Larranaga and Henry Clay were brands of cigars that still exist today.
British folk/blues singer Roy Harper provided the vocals on Pink Floyd’s song “Have a Cigar.”
Sigmund Freud, who is said to have said “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” (a reference to potential phallic imagery), had to have most of his jaw bones removed in later years due to oral cancer caused by his 20 cigar per day smoking habit.
In the Book of Judges, Samson slew hundreds of Philistines with the jaw bone of a donkey.
Lyle Lovett’s album Joshua Judges Ruth was released in 1992 by MCA Records.
Lyle Lovett’s Moritat - a Translation of the Moritat of Mackie Messer (BKA, Mack the Knife) - was used over the closing credits of Quiz Show.
Every year, the best faculty member at Columbia University receives the Mark Van Doren award, named for the English professor played by Paul Scofield in “Quiz Show.”