“When the Saints Go Marching In” was first used as a funeral march. In the funeral music tradition of New Orleans, Louisiana, often called the “jazz funeral”, while accompanying the coffin to the cemetery, a band would play the tune as a dirge. On the way back from the interment, it would switch to the more upbest version of the song that is commonly heard today.
The Pilgrims didn’t call themselves that, nor did anyone else in 1620; they generally called themselves “Saints.”
The Pilgtims original destination was Virginia, before landing in Provincetown MA.
The Provincetown Players was a theater group that started out in Provincetown, MA to produce original plays. Eugene O’Neill got his start there and, when the group moved to New York City, premiered his early plays with the theater and the troupe was instrumental in developing plays that have become the basis of modern American theater.
At the age of 18, Eugene O’Neill’s daughter Oona married the 54-year old Charlie Chaplin. The marriage lasted for 35 years, until Chaplin’s death in 1973.
Oona O’Neill pops up every three or four pages in this thread, I think… 
Two individuals served as Vice President of the United States in 1973, Spiro Agnew of Maryland, who resigned in the face of corruption charges, and Gerald R. Ford of Michigan, the House Minority Leader, appointed by President Richard M. Nixon under the 25th Amendment to replace him.
Ford turned down an NFL contract to attend Yale Law School.
Yale is named after Elihu Yale, who became a governor of the East India Company.
The Grand Union flag, the first U.S. national flag, was very similar to the East India Company’s flag. Historians are divided as to the actual design or inspirational linkage between the two.
Dutch East India Company, in 1602, had history’s first IPO.
Probably because the participants in the thread also do crossword puzzles. 
The New York Mets team colors are orange and blue, the same colors of the flag of the Dutch East India company and the official colors of the City of New York.
The colors of Princeton University are orange and black, the colors of King William III of the House of Orange-Nassau. Nassau Hall was, for many years, the principal building on campus.
President Woodrow Wilson was President of Princeton when he was elected governor of New Jersey.
Woodrow Wilson is the only former President buried within the city limits of Washington, D.C. He is interred in the National Cathedral, with both the Princeton coat of arms and the Presidential seal carved on his tomb.
The District of Columbia (DC) wasn’t always coterminous with the city of Washington. It was originally a 100 mi[sup]2[/sup] area (a 10 mile by 10 mile square turned 45º) that straddled the Potomac River in a swampy region that was ceded from the states of Maryland and Virginia. Although the southwestern portion was ceded back to Virginia in the mid 19th century (eventually becoming half of the City of Alexandria and Arlington Co.), many of the original boundary stones, set every mile from the corner points, still exist.
Maryland and Virginia were both named after queens–Henrietta Maria of France, and Virgin Queen Elizabeth I of England.
Spiro Agnew was Governor of Maryland before being elected Vice President of the United States in 1968. He is the only Greek-American to have been elected to either of the top two Federal posts; Mike Dukakis would’ve been the second, in 1988, had he been elected.
Mike’s cousin Olympia, is an accomplished actress, her best known role being “Moonstruck”.
The Opel Olympia, a family car model, was introduced at the Berlin Auto Show of 1935 and named in honor of the fact that Germany would be hosting the Olympic Games (both winter and summer) the following year.
Germany is one of 6 nations who’ve hosted both season’s Olympics. The others: USA, Canada, France, Italy, Norway, Japan. (Russia will join the list in 2014)