Carol Burnett’s first great success on the national level was a the comic song"I Made A Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles, a novelty song in which an obviously addled young woman sings about being “on fire with desire” for Dulles (who was then about 70 and far from movie star handsome).
Carol Burnett came to stardom as the princess in the original 1959 Broadway production of “Once Upon a Mattress”, based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea”. Jack Gilford, who seemed to have a role in everything at the time, was the King.
Danny Kaye played the lead role in the film Hans Christian Andersen, a non-biography of Andersen’s life. A title card at the beginning calls it “a fairy tale about a storyteller,” and the film makes no attempt to portray anything about Andersen accurately.
Danny Kaye’s last role was as a wacky dentist on The Cosby Show.
Rudy on “The Cosby Show” was originally intended to be a son, but Keisha Knight-Pulliam was so good, the role got gender-flipped.
Sean Astin starred in both Rudy and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. He now narrates Meerkat Manor on cable TV’s Animal Planet.
Sean Astin was said to be the son of Patty Duke and John Astin. DNA testing later revealed his true father was Michael Tell.
King Edward VIII was named the first and thus far, the only, Duke of Windsor upon abdicating the British throne and marrying Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee, in 1936.
Wallis Simpson was a native of Baltimore; another Baltimore native who married European royalty was Elizabeth Patterson, daughter of one of the richest merchants in the city, who married Jerome Bonaparte, younger brother of Napoleon from whom he received numerous titles including King of Westphalia. Napoleon was furious at the marriage and when the Pope refused to annul it (because it was completely legal both civilly and in the eyes of the Catholic church [it was performed by a Cardinal in fact] Napoleon forcibly annulled it himself and sent Elizabeth and her baby, Jerome Napoleon, packing. Luckily for her she came from a family wealthy enough to support her and her child in great comfort while her former husband remarried and started a family more to Napoleon’s liking.
The Peace of Westphalia was a series of peace treaties signed between May and October of 1648 in Osnabrück and Münster. These treaties ended the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) in the Holy Roman Empire, and the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648) between Spain and the Dutch Republic.
The Peace of Westphalia treaties involved the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand III of the House of Habsburg, the Kingdoms of Spain, France, Sweden, the Dutch Republic, the Princes of the Holy Roman Empire, and sovereigns of the Free imperial cities.
Reginald Bretnor, using the anagrammatic pseudonym Grendel Briarton, wrote a series of around 100 short short stories under the umbrella title of “Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot.” Each story put Feghoot in a historical or science fictional situation and ended with a pun (e.g., the furred creature who had a hypodermic needle in his hair was “the furry with the syringe on top”). Stories of this nature were called “feghoots” in the science fiction world, even when written by other authors. Isaac Asimov contributed three stories in the subgenre: “A Loint of Paw,” “Shah Guido G,” and “Death of a Foy.”
The actual governmental post of the title character in Isaac Asimov’s short story Shah Guido G. was Secretary-General of the United Nations. The title was a pun for “shaggy dog.”
In addition to his prolific work in science fiction, Isaac Asimov was a professor of biochemistry at Boston University. Due to a fear of flying, Asimov frequently took cruise ships to Europe, and often gave scientific lectures to passengers.
BU has the largest undergrad enrollment in the US.
The smallest accredited college in the United States is Alaska Bible College in Glenallen, Alaska, which in the past two decades has had as many as 50 and as few as 20 students. It currently has 38 at its 3 campuses (it has branches in Anchorage and Fairbanks).
Ghost Story (1981), was the last movie movie for Fred Astaire, for Melvyn Douglas, and for Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Iran freed the hostages it had been holding from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on the very day of President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, Jan. 20, 1981.
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded on Januaey 20, 1920.
Since 1937, U.S. Presidents are innagurated on January 20th. Previously, Innaguration Day was March 4th.
FDR’s last Inauguration Day, March 4, 1945, was the only time the ceremony was held outside at the White House - on the South Portico. The President died just a few weeks later, succeeded by his Vice President, Harry S Truman, Democrat of Missouri.
