In American English, the stuff customarily delivered by the United States Postal Servcie is referred to as “the mail.” But the stuff delivered by the UK’s Royal Mail is generally (though not universally) called “the post.”
In United States v. Nixon, the U.S. Supreme Court held that President Richard Nixon could not shield White House tapes that might contain evidence of a criminal conspiracy from a lawful subpoena under a generalized assertion of executive privilege.
In the 1997 film Conspiracy Theory, Mel Gibson played a New York taxi driver with OCD who obsessively regales his passengers with his theories on government conspiracies. It turns out his character was a subject of the CIA’s MKULTRA mind-control project who went rogue, and is captured and tortured by CIA doctor Patrick Stewart.
British actor Patrick Stewart auditioned for the role of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard in 1987 both with and without his wig, and was gratified when Gene Roddenberry and the Star Trek: The Next Generation production staff decided to have him go wigless.
(Side note: I saw Stewart on the London stage two years earlier, and he was very, very good. Never heard of him before that).
The first TV series created by Gene Roddenberry was The Lieutenant, which ran on NBC stations during the 1963-64 season. The title character was U.S. Marine Second Lieutenant William Tiberius Rice, whose middle name was recycled for a later Roddenberry series.
Gene Wilder’s first film role was that of Eugene Grizzard, a hitchhiker picked up by the title characters in the film Bonnie and Clyde.
Humorist Lewis Grizzard, known mostly for his columns in the Atlanta Constitution about life in his version of the old South, published anthologies of his works with such titles as *Elvis Is Dead and I Don’t Feel So Good Myself, Shoot Low Boys - They’re Riding Shetland Ponies, *and Don’t Bend Over In the Garden, Granny - You Know Them Taters Got Eyes.
Mary Tyler Moore starred opposite Elvis Presley as a nun in the 1969 film Change of Habit. Moore’s future television castmate Ed Asner also appeared in that film as a cop.
Nancy Marchand, Ed Asner’s costar as the old-money publisher of the newspaper he edited in the TV spinoff Lou Grant, also played Frasier Crane’s mom in a single episode of Cheers, and Tony Soprano’s scheming and hateful mom Livia on The Sopranos.
Before joining the WJM-TV newsroom, Lou Grant worked with Charlie Hume at the San Francisco Call-Bulletin. After being fired in a WJM purge, Grant was invited by Hume, now on the Los Angeles Tribune staff, to become the city editor at the paper published by Mrs. Pynchon.
Ulysses S. Grant of Ohio was known as an excellent horseman when he was a cadet at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
While Grant Goodeve played oldest son David Bradford in the TV series Eight is Enough, in the pilot he was played by Mark Hamill
David Keith has appeared onscreen in uniform in The Lords of Discipline (as a military cadet), High Incident (as a police officer) and An Officer and A Gentleman (as a Navy pilot trainee).
Sir Robert Keith commanded the Scottish cavalry at the Battle of Bannockburn (Blàr Allt a’ Bhonnaich) on 24 June 1314.
Robert Bruce (Roibert a Briuis), King of Scots, wore no armor at that battle and achieved fame when Henry de Bohun charged him and King Robert “stood his ground, watched with mounting anxiety by his own army. With the Englishman only feet away, Bruce turned aside, stood in his stirrups and hit the knight so hard with his axe that he split his helmet and head in two… Rebuked by his commanders for the enormous risk he had taken, the king only expressed regret that he had broken the shaft of his axe.”
Robert of House Baratheon is King of Westeros as George R.R. Martin’s massive fantasy book Game of Thrones opens. A popular HBO series was later based on the book; a second season is now in production.
In the 14 years that he played for the New York Giants (his entire pro football career), George Dwight Martin only missed six games
Don Martin, called MAD’s Maddest Artist, drew cartoons for MAD magazine for 32 years before leaving in a dispute over royalty rights for his old work.
Among British royalty, the Queen is addressed as “Her Majesty,” and princes and princesses as
“His [or Her] Royal Highness.”
The Beatles song “Her Majesty” is 23 seconds long and was placed 14 seconds after the apparent end of the Abbey Road album. It was sung by Paul McCartney accompanying himself on acoustic guitar.
Paul Cole, an American tourist who happened to be talking to a policeman who was sitting in a van at the time the photo was taken, is visible on the Abbey Road album cover. Cole realized he had been immortalized about a year after Iain McMillan snapped the iconic shot. As he examined a copy of the record in his family home, Cole recognized the sportcoat and glasses he had been wearing that fateful day.