In the movie Breaker Morant, British soldiers bedding down in their tents for the night in South Africa during the Boer War give three tired cheers for King Edward VII, “long may he reign!”
Edward VII was 59 years old before he ascnded to the throne of the United Kingdom in 1901. His mother, Queen Victoria, had shut him out of affairs of state, although Edward predicted that war would break out between Germany (led by Edward’s nephew, Wilhelm II) and Great Britain.
Queen Victoria was very fond of her servant John Brown. She was buried with a lock of Brown’s hair, his photograph, several of his letters, and, on the third finger of her right hand, a ring worn by Brown’s mother and given to her by Brown. They were rumored to be lovers; there is even a fifth-hand claim that the Queen’s chaplain confessed to performing a Rite of Matrimony.
Queen Victoria, mother of the future Edward VII, held the British throne for so long that a popular joke late in her rule asked, “Why is the Queen like the weather?” “Because she reigns, and reigns, and reigns… and never gives the poor son a chance.”
With a metropolitan-area population of approximately 25,000, the Seychelles city of Victoria has the fewest residents of any African capital.
Until she took the throne as Queen, Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent was not permitted to walk downstairs without holding the hand of her mother or a servant, to prevent her from falling to her death.
The origin of the Batman villain Two-Face was that he was a crusading DA named Harvey Kent, who became a criminal after half his face was terribly scarred. Later, Harvey’s last name was changed to Dent, possibly to avoid the implication he was related somehow to Clark Kent.
Harvey Korman played Rhett Butler to Carol Burnett’s Scarlett O’Hara in Burnett’s celebrated Seventies TV spoof of Gone with the Wind.
Ben Jonson’s play Every Man Out of His Humour contains a famous spoof wherein Puntarvolo ridicules the motto in Sogliardo’s new coat-of-arms (“On a chief argent, a boar’s head proper, between two ann’lets sables”) with “Let the word be, ‘Not without mustard’: Your crest is very rare, sir.”
The Clue character representative of an aristocratic British military officer and “great white hunter” was originally called Colonel Yellow before his surname was changed to Mustard.
In the UK, Clue is known as Cluedo.
Clue in North America is marketed under the Parker Brothers brandname, while Cluedo in U.K. is marketed under the Waddingtons brand. But both these brands, along with Milton Bradley, Avalon Hill, Tonka, Playskool, Atari, Selchow and Righter, CBS Toys, and at least another dozen famous old toy/game manufacturers are now all owned by Hasbro, Inc. Hasbro’s business methods have disappointed many of its contractors.
Yaphet Kotto played Parker in the Ridley Scott-directed sf/horror classic Alien. His engineering buddy aboard the ragtag interstellar tug USCSS Nostromo was Brett, played by Harry Dean Stanton.
Three different men named Mike Stanton have played Major League Baseball. The first was a right-handed pitcher in the 1970’s and '80s; the second, a lefty hurller active form 1989 to 2007. The current one is an outfielder who has played the last two seasons with the Florida Marlins.
Marlin are rarely table fare, appearing mostly in fine restaurants. Most modern sport fishermen release them after unhooking.
The song “M.T.A.” was originally written as a 1949 campaign song for Boston mayoral candidate Walter O’Brien, who campaigned to roll back a recent fare increase on the Boston subway. The Kingston Trio had a hit with a revised version of the song in 1959, changing O’Brien’s first name to “George.”
Harry Truman of Missouri and Alben Barkley of Kentucky were inaugurated as President and Vice President of the United States on Jan. 20, 1949, Truman having secured an upset win over the heavily favored Tom Dewey, Republican of New York, the previous November.
Tom Dooley, a song about a murderer condemned to die, was a #1 hit for The Kingston Trio.
Dr. Tom Dooley was a U.S. born physician, who began treating Vietnamese and Laotian refugees while he was in the Navy. According to journalist Randy Shilts, Dooley was forced to resign from the Navy for alleged homosexual acts. He then remained in Southeast Asia. After Dooley died of cancer in 1961, he was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal for his humanitarian activities.
Finlay Peter Dunne’s “Mr. Dooley” stories from the 1890s were political satires as we saw the world through the cynical barkeeper who gave them their title. Dooley’s comments on the Spanish-American War and other political issues put the columns among the greatest of American political satires, though they’re hard going these days because Dunne wrote the words in a form of Irish brogue characterized by the misspellings that were standard in written comedy of the era.