Murry Wilson, the father and manager of Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, had no training in intellectual property/music publishing management and sold the publishing rights to all Beach Boys songs prior to 1969 for a small fraction of their worth.
John Lennon released Give Peace a Chance in 1969
When the Monty Python crew had trouble finding money for their third feature film, Live of Brian, George Harrison of the Beatles saw a script and took the chance to came up with the money (by mortgaging his house). He formed HandMade Films as the production company. HandMade went on to produce many critically acclaimed movies of the 1980s, including The Long Good Friday, Time Bandits, Mona Lisa, Withnail and I, and Nuns on the Run.
[del]The Lennon Sisters who performed on Lawrence Welk’s show were Dianne, Peggy, Kathy, and Janet. They are all still alive, but Dianne and Peggy no longer perform with the group. At Welk resort gigs, Kathy and Janet are now joined on stage by younger sister Mimi.[/del]
George Harrison’s I Me Mine is to date the only autobiography released by a Beatle.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X was actually drawn from Alex Haley’s notes of numerous interviews he had with Malcolm, and some of the Nation of Islam leader’s own writings. Haley was later accused of plagiarism for his blockbuster Roots.
Roots is still the most watched mini-series in network TV history.
The mandrake plant is best known for its large brown root, running 3 to 4 feet into the ground. The female mandrake has a forked root that look like a pair of human legs, whereas the male has only a single root.
In addition to the debut of Superman, Action Comics #1 also introduced Zatara the Magician (a knockoff of the popular newspaper strip, Mandrake the Magician) to the DC universe. Zatara himself rarely appears, but his daughter Zatanna shows up from time to time, usually looking for her missing father.
Superman: Red Son is a what-if comic series in which the spacecraft carrying the infant refugee from Krypton crashes in the Ukraine instead of Kansas. Superman becomes Stalin’s right-hand man and eventual successor, while the U.S. goes into a steep geopolitical and economic decline, despite presidential advisor Lex Luthor’s best efforts.
By the time he was twelve, Stalin’s left arm had been permanently damaged by two carriage accidents.
Josef Stalin, unquestioned leader of the Soviet Union for almost 30 years, had an odd habit of clinking ice water in a glass to try to hide the sound of his farts.
Joseph Pujol, aka LePetomane, was a “fartiste” known for uniquely entertaining ways of passing gas through his anus. His specialties included playing the French national anthem, Le Marseillaise on an ocarina.
One of the most celebrated incidents of flatulence humor in early English literature is in “The Miller’s Tale” by Geoffrey Chaucer, which dates from the 14th century. The character Nicholas sticks his buttocks out of a window at night and humiliates his rival Absolom by farting in his face. But Absolom gets revenge by thrusting a red-hot plough blade between Nicholas’s cheeks (“ammyd the ers”)
Daisy Miller, in the Henry James novel, lives in Schenectady, NY, though the story takes place in Europe. James’s family had origins in nearby Albany, where a James Street still exists.
Albany is 1st alphabetically of all state capitals.
The Mississippi State Capitol, in the state capital of Jackson, appears briefly in the current summer hit film The Help.
The area known as the “Mississippi Delta,” home of blues musicians such as Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters and B.B. King, is actually an alluvial plain formed by the Yazoo, Tallahatchie, and Big Sunflower Rivers. It should not be confused with the Mississippi River delta in Louisiana.
The Mississippi Delta gave its name to Delta Airlines, formerly Huff-Daland Dusters, Inc., a crop-spraying business in Monroe, LA. Its first passenger route was Dallas-Shreveport-Monroe-Jackson in six-seat Travel Air 6000’s. Those were made by a Wichita company founded by Clyde Cessna, Walter Beech, and Lloyd Stearman, who all later founded their own aircraft firms.
The famous opening to The Adventures of Superman radio show ("Faster than a speeding bullet . . . ") was spoken by announcer Jackson Beck.
Relief pitcher Rod Beck, whose best years were with the San Francisco Giants in the 1990’s, once defended his physique by saying “I never heard of a player going on the disabled list with pulled fat.” He was buried in his Chicago Cubs uniform, despite playing there for only two years, after his possibly-drug-related 2007 death.