Most Americans miss one joke from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The character of Ford Prefect is actually named for a British car model.
Before he became Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger served as the prefect of the Roman Catholic Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The short pontificate and arguably suspicious death of Pope John Paul I are fictionalized in Francis Ford Coppola’s movie The Godfather, Part III.
Nic Cage, born Nicolas Kim Coppola, is the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola and Talia Shire. and the cousin of directors Roman Coppola and Sofia Coppola, film producer Gian-Carlo Coppola, and actors Robert Carmine and Jason Schwartzman. Cage’s two brothers are New York radio personality Marc “The Cope” Coppola and director Christopher Coppola. He attended Beverly Hills High School.
Nicolas Cage’s first cousins Sofia Coppola and Jason Schwartzman worked together on the film Marie Antoinette; Sofia directed and Jason played the sexually hesitant and not-particularly-bright King Louis XVI.
“The Cage” was the original pilot episode of Star Trek. NBC rejected it, calling it “too intellectual,” but asked for a second (extremely rare). The second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” recast the captain with William Shatner instead of Jeffrey Hunter. Footage from “The Cage” was recycled and used in the two-part episode, “The Menagerie.”
Stage actor Hunter Foster once put his arm around my shoulders and sang in my ear “Mehr will ich nicht von dir,” the beginning to the German cast Phantom song “All I Ask of You.”
Jodie Foster and Julianne Moore both played FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling onscreen, squaring off against Anthony Hopkins’s Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
Keyboardist Nicky Hopkins was one of the busiest session men in the 1960s and 70s, playing with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Who, Jeff Beck, Steve Miller, Jeffersion Airplane, Jerry Garcia, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and all four of the Beatles’ solo efforts. He rarely toured due to suffering from Crohn’s Disease, which led to his eventual death at age 50 in 1994.
Jeff Beck has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame both as one of the Yardbirds (1992) and as a solo artist (2009).
President Barack Obama was sworn into office on Jan. 20, 2009 at the U.S. Capitol, and again the next day at the White House, both times by Chief Justice John Roberts, as they’d slightly flubbed the wording of the oath the first time 'round.
The Blue House, or Cheongwadae, complex in Seoul is the official home and office of the President of the Republic of Korea. It was built on the site of a royal garden of the Joseon Dynasty.
Lotte World, located in Seoul, is the world’s largest indoor amusement park.
Lotte Lenya was the wife of German composer Kurt Weill and became a star singing songs from his musicals, starting with The Threepenny Opera. She is mentioned in Bobby Darin’s version of “Mack the Knife,” but is probably best known today as the villainous Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love.
The name Rosa Klebb is a pun on the Russian “Khleb i rozi”, “Bread and roses”, a labor-movement slogan which originated in the demands of the textile factory strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912.
Archibald Butts, President William Howard Taft’s military aide, died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic in April 1912. Taft would lose his campaign for reelection that fall to Woodrow Wilson, Democrat of New Jersey (although born in Virginia).
Where’s the link there?
And are there any US elections that haven’t been used in this thread yet?
The year 1912.
For play: Archibald Willard’s painting originally titled Yankee Doodle is now known as The Spirit of '76. The work is mentioned in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse Five.
Yakky Doodle was a Hanna Barbera cartoon character roughly equivalent to Tweety Pie. The difference was that while Tweety Pie was able to deal with Sylvester by himself, Yakky Doodle had a big bulldog named Chopper (probably influenced by Marc Antony in “Feed the Kitty”), who did the dirty work for him, usually after saying, “Now close your eyes, Yakky. You shouldn’t oughta see what I’m going to do to this fox.”
Sam Moore, Keb’ Mo’ & Angie Stone did a marvelous cover of the Willie Dixon classic Wang Dang Doodle.