Jackson Browne and Jeff Beck both played at the 25th anniversary concert of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009.
Slaves in the Jackson, Miss. area, who secretly monitored Confederate military operations around the capital, assured the Union intelligence network that Maj. Gen. U.S. Grant could focus on his siege of Vicksburg in the summer of 1863 without fear of attack from behind. Vicksburg fell on Independence Day, July 4, 1863.
John Tyler, the 10th president of the US (1841-45) and who sided with the Confederate government, winning election to the Confederate House of Representatives shortly before his death in 1862, has two living grandsons (at least as of last month) through his son Lyon Gardiner Tyler (1853–1935). Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr was born in 1924, while Harrison Ruffin Tyler was born in 1928 and maintains the family home, called Sherwood Forest.
(And I thought it impressive that I’m the grandson of someone born two months before Custer’s Last Stand. These guys have a grandfather born during the Washington presidency!)
John Tyler Morgan was a Confederate general during the Civil War and a six-term U.S. Senator from Alabama following that state’s readmission to the Union. He advocated both annexation of Hawaii and the construction of an interoceanic canal in South America, eventually settling for the Panama Canal, which was not completed until years after his 1907 death.
All Morgan horses are descended from a stallion named Figure, who was owned by 18th-century Vermont farmer, hymn composer, and horse breeder Justin Morgan. The breed is the oldest surviving one to have been created in America.
Coal Black Horse by Robert Olmstead is a novel about a Southern boy setting out on a fine, almost supernatural horse to find his father, who is thought to have fallen at Gettysburg.
The night before Singapore’s government shut down “red-light” Bugis Street, three Singaporean students sat at a table there practicing their memorization of Gettysburg Address.
Dwight Eisenhower was the only president to have a Gettysburg address.
Estelle Getty, who was best known for playing Sophia Petrillo on “The Golden Girls”, spent her early career in the Yiddish theater and the Catskills “Borscht Belt”, and later on Broadway as Harvey Fierstein’s mother in “Torch Song Trilogy”. Although her GG character was Bea Arthur’s character’s mother, she was actually one year younger than Arthur.
King Arthur’s parents were Uther Pendragon, King of the Britons, and Igraine (or Ygraine), Duchess of Cornwall.
Duchess Gloriana XII is the hereditary leader of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. The country was featured in the book and movie The Mouse That Roared. The movie featured Peter Sellers as the Duchess.
Keira Knightley played the celebrated and scandalous Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, in the movie The Duchess. Ralph Fiennes played her emotionally-distant and philandering husband.
Alexis Bledel of “The Gilmore Girls” made a cameo appearance as Georgiana, the sister of Will Darcy (played by Martin Henderson), in 2004’s Bride and Prejudice, a Bollywood musical based on the Jane Austen novel Pride and Prejudice. It was the first English-language performance by former Miss World Aishwarya Rai, “The Queen of Bollywood”, as Lalita Bakshi (Elizabeth Bennett in all other performances, including Keira Knightley’s in the more-traditional 2005 film version).
Pat Darcy is best known as the Cincinnati Reds pitcher who allowed Carlton Fisk’s walk-off homer in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, setting the stage for Fisk’s Boston team to lose the decisive seventh game the next day.
The Boston Police Department is one of the oldest in the U.S., tracing its roots back to the town night watch established in 1635.
In 1996, the official dessert of Massachusetts was declared to be Boston Cream Pie (atually a sponge cake with cream filling and chocolate icing).
Bill Clinton won a second term as President of the United States in 1996, the first Democrat elected to a second full term since FDR sixty years earlier. As in 1992, however, he won by a plurality and not an outright majority.
William W. Keen was one of the first doctors to treat FDR when he became paralyzed. 28 years earlier, Keen had participated in the surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from President Grover Cleveland.
Geoffrey Keen played Frederick Gray, the Minister of Defence in six James Bond films between 1977 and 1987:
The Spy Who Loved Me (in this film Bond calls him “Freddie” – in private, after the briefing at the naval base – when Gray tells him that he is to go to Egypt.)
Moonraker
For Your Eyes Only
Octopussy
A View to a Kill
The Living Daylights
Desmond Llewelyn, as Q, appeared in 17 James Bond movies, more than any other actor.