Crystal Gayle was born Brenda Gail. She took the name Crystal when she entered show business, by most accounts because it was Loretta’s nickname for her because she loved Krystal hamburgers.
25- year old William Lawrence Bragg is the youngest Nobel Prize winner
to date, and was a member of the only father-son team to share a prize.
Their prize, in physics, was awarded “for their services in the analysis of
crystal structure by means of X-rays”.
Marie Skłodowska-Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. Her daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie also won a Nobel.
Since Marie Curie was from Poland, element #84, which she and Pierre discovered, was named polonium. At the time, Poland did not exist as a country, and Marie hoped that the name would help win support for the cause of rescuing her homeland from its partitioning among Prussia, Austria-Hungary, and Russia.
Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, employed J.S. Bach’s son as his court composer, and once met the great man himself.
An odd coincidence between two men who lived a century and a continent apart and had nothing whatsoever in common beyond being human males: Johann Sebastian Bach, Sr., and abolitionist John Brown both had 20 children and in both cases it was 7 from a first wife who died in childbirth and 13 from a second wife who was 17 years younger than them and who outlived them.
I can notice and remember completely meaningless trends like this but can’t remember the names of my friend’s kids.
Harmonica virtuoso John Sebastian is best known as the leader and songwriter for the Sixties group The Lovin’ Spoonful. His godmother was Vivian “Ethel Mertz” Vance. He played backup on the Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues”, but his only Top 40 hit as a solo artist was the theme song for “Welcome Back, Kotter”.
Gabe Kaplan, star of "Welcome Back Kotter, made the WSOP Main Event final table in 1980.
Gabe Kapler played Major League Baseball for several teams from 1998 to 2006, then retired and became the manager of a Boston Red Sox farm team. After that season (2007), he resumed his playing career and hung around until being released by the Dodgers earlier this year.
On August 8, 2005, Gabe Kapler, Kevin Youkilis, and Adam Stern all played for the Boston Red Sox, setting an American League record for most Jews in a lineup with 3. The major league record remains at 4, set by the 1941 New York Giants (Sid Gordon, Morrie Arnovich, Harry Feldman, Harry Danning).
Sandy Koufax of the Dodgers refused to pitch in the first game of the 1965 World Series because it was Yom Kippur. Don Drysdale took Koufax’s turn and was beaten by the Minnesota Twins. Koufax pitched games 2, 5 and 7.
The steam frigate USS Minnesota ran aground at Hampton Roads, Va. late on March 8, 1862, and was saved by the ironclad USS Monitor from the CSS Virginia’s attack the next day.
Toots & the Maytals recorded a reggae cover version of John Denver’s classic “Take Me Home, Country Roads” in which the lyrics are altered to describe Jamaica: “Almost heaven, West Jamaica,” for instance, replaces Denver’s “West Virginia.”
In 1832, an act to abolish slavery in the state of Virginia failed by only seven votes. The western part of the state was abolitionist, but the eastern planters were slaveowners who had just enough votes to vote down the measure. When the Civil War began, the western counties remained in the Union and formed the state of West Virginia.
Although latter-day Confederate apologists correctly note that most Southerners in 1861 didn’t own slaves, an estimated 85% of all state legislators - those actually voting on ordinances of secession - did. Vice President Alexander Stephens even gave a speech calling slavery the “cornerstone” of the Confederacy: Cornerstone Speech - Wikipedia
In a letter to a friend Margaret Mitchell stated that Alexander Stephens’ house, Liberty Hall, was her model for Tara as portrayed in the novel Gone With the Wind.
Picture of the house’s rear today- it looks much different now than when Mitchell would have known it; but you can tell how rambling it was.
Margaret Mitchell was a distant cousin of gunfighter Doc Holliday, and may have based Ashley Wilkes on the dentist who was present on that fateful day at the O.K. Corral.
That is a hilarious revelation for anyone who remembers Kirk Douglas’s
portrayal of Holliday as a profane, carousing, violent drunk in the 1957 movie.
Peter Schickele, known for his compositions and performances as his alter ego “P.D.Q. Bach” as well as a musical historian specializing in the character, directed performances of several of his works by the “Okay Chorale”. Their most significant recording was the P.D.Q. Bach oratorio Oedipus Tex, which “demonstrates that the only two sure things in life are death and Texas.” Their co-stars were The Greater Hoople Area Off-Season Philharmonic and Grandmaster Flab and the Hoople Funkharmonic.
Cuba and North Korean both sent small military detachments that fought on the side of the Arab states in the Yom Kippur War.