On June 24th, 1947, pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine disk-shaped objects flying over Mount Rainer. He described these objects as “flying like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.” Newspapers reporting the story soon labeled the objects as “flying saucers”.
The Ranier Brewing Company, producer of the iconic Pacific northwest Ranier Beer was founded in 1884 and has been known in various incarnations as Claussen-Sweeney Brewing Company, Seattle Brewing and Malting Company, Sick’s Seattle Brewing and Malting, and Sicks Rainier Brewing Company.
In their one year in the American League, the Seattle Pilots played in Sicks Stadium.
New Jersey’s Sandy Hook Pilots were foundeds in 1694 when the population of New York City was under 3,000. In those days, the harbors of the Northeast were the commercial arteries of the New World.
In 1694 François-Marie Arouet (aka Voltaire) was born, well-known for writings such as “Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that ever infected the world.” To please his friend Benjamin Franklin, Voltaire was once initiated as a Freemason.
In 1968, Charles M. Schulz introduced the Black character of Franklin to his Peanuts comic strip. The move was somewhat controversial at the time, especially in Southern states. Franklin remained a part of the Peanuts gang, though his appearances were limited.
When Mad Magazine parodied Charles Schulz’s book, “Happiness is a Warm Puppy”, with their article, “Being Rich is Better than a Warm Puppy”, Schulz canceled his subscription.
Prince Charles has said that his second and current wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, will not take the title “Queen” when and if he becomes King, but under British law she will be due the title whether or not she chooses to use it.
Camilla and Rebecca Rosso are twin sisters who have – not surprisingly – played twins in several episodes of The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, as well as in Legally Blondes, a direct-to-DVD sequel to the film Legally Blonde.
The Sprouse brothers played Ben on “Friends”.
The name “Big Ben” was given to the bell in the clock tower in London attached to Parliament. It has since changed to mean the clock tower itself.
The Grateful Dead song “Cumberland Blues”, from their legendary 1970 album “Workingman’s Dead”, refers to an old brand of wind-up alarm clock:
*You keep me up just one more night
I can’t sleep here no more
Little Ben clock says quarter to eight
You kept me up till four
…
Got to get down to the Cumberland mine
That’s where I mainly spend my time
Make good money, five dollars a day
Made any more I might move away *
The album also included “Uncle John’s Band”, “Dire Wolf”, “High Time”, and “New Speedway Boogie”.
The name “Grateful Dead” was chosen from a dictionary. According to Phil Lesh, in his biography: “…[Jerry Garcia] picked up an old Britannica World Language Dictionary. In that silvery elf-voice he said to me: ‘Hey, man, how about the Grateful Dead?’” The definition there was “the soul of a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial.”
According to Alan Trist, director of the Grateful Dead’s music publisher company Ice Nine, Garcia found the name in the Funk & Wagnalls Folklore Dictionary, when his finger landed on that phrase while playing a game of “dictionary”. In the Garcia biography, Captain Trips, author Sandy Troy states that the band was smoking the psychedelic DMT at the time. The term “grateful dead” appears in folktales of a variety of cultures.
In the summer of 1969, Phil Lesh told another version of the story to Carol Maw, a young Texan visiting with the band in Marin County who also ended up going on the road with them to the Fillmore East and Woodstock. In this version, Phil said: “Jerry found the name spontaneously when he picked up a dictionary and the pages fell open. The words ‘grateful’ and ‘dead’ appeared straight opposite each other across the crack between the pages in unrelated text.”
The iconic artwork on the Skull and Roses Grateful Dead album was lifted by Stanley Mouse from the drawings by Edmund Joseph Sullivan in Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. I was surprised to find this in my 50¢ copy of the Rubaiyat that I bought way before the advent of Google searches.
In the 60s sitcom He and She, the Hollister’s accountant was named “Murray Mouse.” His wife’s name was Minnie.
When Dr. John H. Watson, Sherlock Holmes’s future companion and scribe, was wounded while serving in the British Army in Afghanistan, he was saved from bloodthirsty native tribesman by his orderly, Murray. It is unclear whether that was the orderly’s first or last name.
Hank Azaria played Nate, Murray’s dog walker on Mad About You, where Lisa Kudrow played Ursula. Azaria then played David on Friends, boyfriend to Phoebe Buffay, Ursula’s twin sister, also played by Lisa Kudrow.
In the comedy Mystery Men, Hank Azaria played Blue Rajah, a self-described “effete English superhero,” who would fling spoons or forks - but never knives! - with unerring accuracy.
In 1841, English-born James Brooke became the first White Rajah of Sarawak (a chunk of land on the island of Borneo). James was succeeded by nephew Charles in 1868, and Charles’s son Vyner took over in 1917. Vyner abdicated in 1946, and Sarawak became a British crown colony until it helped form the new nation of Malaysia on September 16, 1963 – four months after Vyner’s death.
William Holland Thomas was the only white man to serve as Chief in the Eastern Band of Cherokee, from 1839 to 1893. Adopted into the tribe at the age of 13 by Chief Drowning Bear, who was impressed by his ability at the trading post where he worked, he learned the law from some old books and became the tribe’s legal representative in Washington. Through his efforts, he was able to prevent the forced removal of much of the tribe to Oklahoma in the Trail of Tears. During the Civil War, Thomas led a quarter of all of Eastern Band Cherokees as a unit in the Confederate Army.