“Bullet” Bob Hayes, who played most of his career with the Dallas Cowboys, is the only person to have won an Olympic gold medal and a Superbowl championship.
U.S. Senator and Vice Presidential candidate Lyndon Johnson and his wife were jeered, menaced and spat upon by a crowd in Dallas during the 1960 campaign, and UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson was hit in the face by a conservative protestor during a visit to the city just a few weeks before President John F. Kennedy visited Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
At least three future presidents were in Dallas within the 24 hours before JFK’s assassination: Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush and (teenaged) George W. Bush. Much is made of Nixon and Bush Sr.'s presence there by conspiracy theorists.
In the 1979 film Alien, first of the franchise, Tom Skerritt played Dallas, captain of the space cargo ship Nostromo.
Speaking of Joseph Conrad’s 1904 work set in the fictional South American country of Costaguana, F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “I’d rather have written Nostromo than any other novel.”
Bye Bye Birdie was a hit Broadway musical starring Dick Van Dyke and Chita Rivera. The main character, Conrad Birdie, was based upon Elvis Presley (though the name seems to derive from Conway Twitty), and especially Elvis going into the army.
Chita Rivera played Anita in the Original Broadway cast of West Wide Story. Rita Moreno played the role in the movie.
Gerard Alessandrini wrote an incredible duet for his parody show Forbidden Broadway with Chita and Anita debating who was the best Anita, to the tune of WSS’s America:
Chita: This little ditty reminds you
Who is the one and the Who’s Who
She gets the movies and bravos
Rita - I get the night clubs and bomb shows.
Rita:I’m a versatile actress
Chita - Long as you stay on the matters.
Rita - I can play any role I choose…
Chita - Gypsies, Italians and black Jews!
Both - So, if you want to keep Who’s who’s straight.
Here’s how to settle the great debate
I am the one you should emulate
She is the one who should migrate.
There is Rita, and Chita, and Liza And Lisa, and Liza, and Chita, And Pia Zadora and Lisa, And Mia, and Liza, and Chita. Mia, Liza, Rita, Chita, “Rio Rita”, Liza, Pia, Pita Debbie Allen… …Ahn! And me!
Rita Moreno is the only Hispanic performer to have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony. The others who have won the Grand Slam in competitive categories are actors John Gielgud, Helen Hayes, Audrey Hepburn, and Whoopi Goldberg; composers Marvin Hamlisch, Richard Rodgers, and Jonathan Tunick; and directors Mel Brooks and Mike Nichols. Rodgers and Hamlisch also won Pulitzer Prizes.
Pittsburgh-born aviator Cal Rodgers was the first to fly across the continental U.S. He did it in two months, crash by crash, in late 1911. His plane Vin Fiz, named after his soft-drink sponsor, had been almost entirely rebuilt by his accompanying team of mechanics by the time he completed the arduous journey.
Cal Hubbard is the only person to be a member of both the Pro Football Hall of Fame (as an offensive tackle for the Giants and Packers) and the Baseball Hall of Fame (as an umpire). He is also a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.
The hubbard squash (at the time nameless) is widely believed to have come to Marblehead, Massachusetts through Captain Knott Martin. A woman named Elizabeth Hubbard brought the fruit to the attention of her neighbor, a seed trader named James J. H. Gregory. Mr. Gregory subsequently introduced it to the market using Mrs. Hubbard’s name as the eponym. Gregory later bred and released the blue hubbard, which has a bluish-gray skin. The other major variety, the golden hubbard squash, has a bright orange skin. Gregory advertisements for the squash date from at least 1859.
Queen Elizabeth II’s husband, Prince Philip, had to renounce all claim to the Greek throne upon marrying her (she was a princess herself at the time, her father King George VI still occupying the throne). Unlike Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, has never been formally named Prince Consort.
The last King of Greece, Constantine II, represented his country in the 1960 Rome Olympics, winning a gold medal in sailing (Dragon class), becoming the only reigning monarch since Nero to be a champion at the Games. He was also a strong swimmer and had a black belt in karate, with interests in squash, track events and riding.
The three main types of sailing courses are running (going roughly in the same direction as the wind is blowing), reaching (going roughly 90 degrees to the wind), and tacking (heading generally in the direction the wind is blowing). Racing competition tries to set up a course where taking is a large portion of the race, since it requires the most skill.
Hard tack is a biscuit made from a simple recilpe of flour, water and salt, then baked multiple times to make it non-perishable. It is a staple of soldiers and campers although it has mostly been replaced by canned and packaged foord. The G. H. Bent Company, of Milton, Mass., made hard tack for soldiers during the American Civil War, and continues to produce it today.
Civil War soldiers also dined on salt pork (jokingly called “salt horse”) and dessicated (or “descrated”) vegetables, as well as whatever they could scrounge from local farms. Malnutrition was common.
Napoleon’s troops were able to move so swiftly because they could stay ahead of cumbersome supply lines, subsisting instead on what they could scrounge from the surrounding countryside.
Napoleon is said to have remarked, “An army travels on its stomach.” He was carried into his final exile aboard the British warship HMS Bellerophon.
Napoleon ultimately died from stomach cancer like his father, although some scholars believe arsenic poisoning a more likely cause.
Napoleon XIV had a novelty hit single in 1955 with “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha Haaa,” with “!aaaH-aH ,yawA eM ekaT oT gnimoC er’yehT” as the B side. The name was a pseudonym for record producer Jerry Samuels.