In the TV series My Little Margie, Margie’s father was Vernon Albright, played by former silent film star Charles Farrell. Farrell was business partners with actor Ralph Bellamy, and would be elected mayor of Palm Springs, California.
Somchai Khunpluem is called the Mayor of Bangsaen, Cholburi. He acquired this position after 1981, when a large team killed Sia Jiew on the Sukhumwit Highway. Jiew’s Mercedes was armored but his foes used grenade launchers. “Passing motorists thought they were watching a film shoot.” Jiew’s son was killed 3 years later and Somchai, who’d started as a small-time smuggler working for Jiew, became undisputed Godfather of Cholburi. Two of his sons are Ministers in the latest Thai government.
Bob Woodward argued in Veil that Ronald Reagan’s handlers downplayed both the severity of his wounds and the duration of his convalescence period after the March 1981 assassination attempt against the President.
Hinckley was trying to impress Jodie Foster, with whom he was obsessed. The shooting took place the afternoon of the NCAA men’s hoops title game.
Foster Brooks created a comedy career portraying “The Loveable Lush,” an archetypal “funny drunk” act. Brooks himself gave up drinking in 1964, several years before the character became popular.
President Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 defeat of U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) was one of the most lopsided election wins in American political history up to that time.
On August 9, 1964, Lyndon Johnson took time out of his presidential schedule to call Joe Haggar, co-owner of Haggar pants. Between belches he ordered several pairs of pants customized to his explicit specifications in the pockets, the “nuts” and the “bunghole” (his words). The call was recorded and survives.
In their album The Turtles Present the Battle of the Bands, the Turtles pretended to be 11 different music groups using different musical styles. Some of the fake bands included The U.S. Teens featuring Raoul, The Atomic Enchilada, Howie, Mark, Johny, Jim & Al (for their hit “Eleanor”), the Quad City Ramblers, The Fabulous Dawgs, The Cross Fires, and (pun alert!) Chief Kamanawanalea and his Royal Macadamia Nuts.
The 1982 dark comedy Eating Raoul costarred Robert Beltran, later to go on to somewhat greater fame as Cmdr. Chakotay in Star Trek: Voyager.
Batting for the Kansas City Royals, Carlos Beltrán made the last out at Tiger Stadium in 1999. Detroit’s baseball team would move to Comerica Park the next year.
Mel Harder of the Cleveland Indians threw the first official pitch at Cleveland Municipal Stadium in 1931, as well as the ceremonial *last *pitch there in 1995. There is no truth to the legend that it was built in hopes of getting the 1932 Olympic Games that were awarded to Los Angeles instead.
The City of Cleveland, Ohio was originally spelled Cleaveland after its founder, Moses Cleaveland. Accounts vary on how it lost the first a but the most common story is it had to do with typesetting limitations.
“Cleave” is believed to be a unique word in the English language in that it is its own antonym.
The word quiver has two completely unrelated meanings: it can mean to tremble or shake or it can refer to an oblong container for arrows. The first meaning is from an Old English word, the second from medieval French.
The word “fast” also has two unrelated and contradictory meanings: “rapid” (as in “the boat is fast”) and unmovable (as in “the boat is fast to the dock.”) There are at least fifty words like this in the English language, including “bolt,” “clip,” “custom,” “handicap,” “transparent,” and “oversight.” The general term for this type of word is a contronym.
Recent mutations in the English language include the increasingly frequent use of the noun gift as a verb and the verb fail as a noun.
Like “sanction” and “inflammable”? Or the homonyms “raise” and “raze”?
Isaac Asimov mused that the English language is not evolving as fast as it did before Shakespeare’s time so that we, as a society, may still enjoy his works without too many footnotes.
The English words ‘captain,’ ‘chief,’ and ‘chef’ all derive from the same ancient French root meaning head/leader, but the borrowings were timed differently with respect to sound changes. Meanwhile, French replaced its word for head (and later leader) with ‘tête,’ a borrowing via Italian from an ancient Latin word for bowl.
The word capo (the clampy thing you use on a guitar to alter the pitch of open notes), is short for capo tasto, and in Italian, means “head stop.”
A pair of argumentative French and Italian officers appear several times as a minor running gag in the movie classic Casablanca.