Teófilo Stevenson Lawrence (or Teófilo Stevenson), a former Cuban amateur boxer, is one of the only three boxers to win three Olympic gold medals, alongside Hungarian László Papp and fellow Cuban Félix Savón.
Hungarian pistol marksman Karoly Takacs was a world-class right-handed competitor when his shooting hand
was maimed in a grenade accident during military exercises in 1938.
Takacs switched hands, and after the WW2 interruption won consecutive Olympic championships (1948 & 1952)
in the 25m rapid fire pistol event, shooting left-handed.
The great, doomed White Star liner RMS Titanic’s sister ships included RMS Olympic and Britannic.
Despite its fame today, the sinking of the Titanic was pretty much forgotten until Walter Lord wrote A Night to Remember in 1955. Prior to that, the best-known major shipwreck was that of the Lusitania.
Maury Yeston, who wrote the score for the musical Titantic, was part of the creative team for a show called Phantom, based on the book Phantom of the Opera. They had success with several venues, and were in the process of raising the money to bring the show to Broadway when Andrew Lloyd Webber announced his plans to bring his smash London hit to Broadway.
All of the Phantom investors backed out.
British actor Bernard Hill, 66, has played two doomed leaders, Capt. Edward Smith in Titanic and King Theoden in The Two Towers and The Return of the King.
Basketball teammates who have been nicknamed “The Twin Towers” include Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson of the Houston Rockets, Tim Duncan and David Robinson of the San Antonio Spurs, and Dikembe Mutombo and Alonzo Mourning of the Georgetown University Hoyas.
The chorus to the Tex Ritter song “I’ve Got Spurs that Jingle Jangle Jingle” goes “And that song ain’t so very far from wrong.” Though nearly all people aware of the song thinks the meaning of that line is “That song is right,” a close analysis shows it means the opposite.
Louise Ritter of the USA won the gold medal in the women’s high jump at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
Greece’s flag-carrier airline, Olympic Air, succeeded Olympic Airlines when the latter went bankrupt in 2009. It had been owned 1957-73 by shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.
When Republic Airlines insisted that musician Tom Paxton put his guitar case in the luggage claim instead of taking it onto the plane, and they ended up breaking the neck off the instrument, what else could he do but write a song about it?
There could no satisfaction greater than if
you should be the next to go the way of Branif
Canadian musician David Carroll had a similarly unpleasant airline experience, which he immortalized in the viral sensation “United Breaks Guitars.”
Paxton did it first 
The first American production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" ran at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York opened on December 30, 1976, with a cast that featured Cleavon Little as the Narrator and David-James Carroll as Joseph.
President Gerald R. Ford welcomed Queen Elizabeth II to the White House in 1976 for a state visit tied to the U.S. Bicentennial observances.
Alarmed by a 1976 outbreak of swine flu, President Ford convinced Congress to fund flu vaccinations for all American. The program was halted when the expected epidemic failed to materialized, and an unacceptable number of people who had been vaccinated developed Gullain-Barre syndrome.
The “Spanish influenza” epidemic of 1919 killed more people in the shortest amount of time than any other epidemic in history. The Black Death killed more, but over 13 years, while Spanish influenza did its work in only 18 months.
Renegade wizard Sirius Black was Harry Potter’s parents’ close friend and his godfather. Just after getting to know Black, Harry saw him tragically killed in a battle at the Ministry of Magic.
As one of the 27 stars on the flag of Brazil, Sirius represents the state of Mato Grosso.
Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky.
Yeah, that was lame. Didn’t want to Google, however.
The symbol of Sirius XM satellite radio is (you guessed it) a dog.