Neither catchers nor first basemen in baseball wear gloves while playing defense. They wear mitts, which don’t have individual fingers.
The new U.S. Secretary of Defense is Leon Panetta, formerly Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, White House Chief of Staff (under President Clinton), and a longtime Congressman from California.
On the TV series Roseanne, Martin Mull played Leon Carp, who was Roseanne’s Boss and later her business partner. Leon was a gay guy who later married Scott, played by Fred Willard.
Fred Willard played a bartender on the '80’s show “D.C. Follies” a show with puppets of various contemporary public figures.
Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly – the two biggest names in film dance – only danced together once in their prime, in the film Ziegfeld Follies for the number “The Babbit and the Bromide.” Kelly has said one reason they didn’t dance together was that their dancing styles were so different.
Plus that they preferred to dance with women.
Fred Vinson was one of Harry Truman’s poker buddies. As President, Truman appointed Vinson to the top spot on the Supreme Court as Chief Justice of the United States.
Carl Vinson was the youngest member of Congress when he took office in 1914. He went on to serve more than 50 years, rose to become chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and had an aircraft carrier named after him.
Archdue Franz Ferdinand was assasinated in during a 1914 trip to Sarajevo, leading to WWI.
In 1885, Sarajevo became only the second city in the world (the first being San Francisco) to be served by an electric tram network running throughout the community.
Francisco Franco is still seriously dead.
Chevy Chase began the Saturday Night Live Weekend Update running gag about Spanish dictator Francisco Franco still being dead when there were several earlier NBC News erroneous reports of his death. The last report turned out to be true!
Franco Zeffirelli was nominated for an Oscar for his direction of 1968’s Romeo and Juliet, with Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, although he has also devoted much of his career to opera productions. During WW2, he served as an interpreter for a Scots Guards regiment. Zeffirelli has managed to be proudly/politically gay and proudly/politically Catholic simultaneously.
Olivia de Haviland, 95, is the last major castmember of the 1939 Civil War epic *Gone with the Wind * still alive.
Willis Haviland was the sixteenth member of the Lafayette Escadrille in the Aeronautique Militaire, joining the US Navy later. He earned a U.S. Navy Cross, a French Croix de guerre with two palms and one star, a Belgian Croix de guerre with palm, an Italian Croce di Guerra (“Cross of War”), and an Italian Medal of Military Valor. Haviland later became the first pilot to fly a military airplane (a Sopwith Camel) off a battleship, using a wooden deck on top of a gun turret. He was related to Willis Haviland Carrier, the inventor of air conditioning.
The Carrier Dome is the home to Suracuse University’s football, basketball and lacrosse teams. Despite its name, the Dome is not actually air conditioned.
Filippo Brunelleschi was an Renaissance architect and engineer, best known for for designing the dome on the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, Italy, the largest dome in its era. Brunelleschi had to develop new ways of building and of design. The dome still survives today.
Fillipo Berio is a brand of olive oil imported from Italy and sometimes mentioned on the NPR program Car Talk, hosted by Tom and Ray Magliozzi, aka “Click and Clack, the Tappet brothers.”
Tom and Ray Magliozzi, aka “Click and Clack, the Tappet brothers,” appeared as thinly-veiled automotive versions of themselves in the Pixar movie Cars. Famous racecar Lightning McQueen was a celebrity spokesvehicle for their characters’ product, Rust-Eze.
Historian Michael Wallis, who was the voice of the Sheriff in Cars, is the author of a new biography of Congressman David Crockett (who did not like to be called Davy).
Yes I did watch Daily Show tonight- why do you ask?
Actor Bill Hayes, best known for his portrayal of Doug Williams on the soap Days of Our Lives, hit #1 on the Billboard magazine chart with his rendition of The Ballad of Davy Crockett. Hayes’ version spent consecutive five weeks at the top of the chart, staying at the summit until April 23, 1955. It ranked #7 on the year-end list of 1955’s top recordings and wound up selling three million copies.