The first decision of the Supreme Court of Canada was that it did not have jurisdiction to hear the appeal before it.
King Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland refused to enter a plea at his trial because he refused to recognize that any court had jurisdiction to try a monarch.
Groucho Marx refused to join any club that would have him as a member.
Frank Sinatra’s fourth (and final) wife Barbara had previously been married to Zeppo Marx.
Comedian Jackie Mason was beaten up by mobsters after Frank Sinatra got mad at jokes he made about Sinatra’s marriage to Mia Farrow. (One joke was that each night before going to bed Mia put in her retainer while Frank took out his teeth.)
Mia’s brother, John Charles Farrow, appeared as an impostor in a To Tell the Truth segment that featured Olympic swimmer Don Schollander.
Anderson Cooper was an impostor on To Tell the Truth when he was 9 (picture) on a segment about a child who was a bear tamer.
One of the oddest stage directions in Shakespeare is “Exit, pursued by a bear.”
The catchphrase of the cartoon character Snagglepuss was “Exit, stage left (or right.)”
Legendary showman and impresario P.T. Barnum is said to have posted signs reading “This way to the Egress” to get people moving through his museum of curiosities faster. “Egress” means exit, but the rubes were supposed to think it was a rare animal.
Despite the usual conceptions, most PT boats in World War II were made of mahogany, not plywood.
When PT-109 starring Cliff Robertson was showing in Mississippi in the summer of 1963, one theater owner is said to have put on his marquee, “See how the Japs almost got JFK.”
The movie “Prick Up Your Ears” is about a relationship between a male British gay couple, one of whom ends up murdering the other. British cinemas reported a bunch of pratical jokers rearranging the letters in the last word to “Arse.”
British Army and Air Force personnel swear an oath of allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen as their commander-in-chief; sailors of the Royal Navy do not.
French Navy personnel traditionally address their officers merely as “Capitain” etc., not the formally correct “Monsieur le Capitain” etc… Institutional folklore has it that Napoleon ordered the practice to shame the Navy for its failure at Trafalgar. That does not explain the seriously-gay-looking poofball berets that French Navy seamen are forced to wear, though.
Horatio, Lord Nelson, commanding the victorious British fleet at Trafalgar, was shot and killed by an enemy sharpshooter while on the deck of his flagship, HMS Victory. The ship was damaged by a Luftwaffe bomb in 1941, but was repaired and is still maintained by the Royal Navy: HMS Victory - Wikipedia
Co-writer Bob Gale says in the DVD documentary for Steven Spielberg’s 1941 (1979) that many of the events in the movie were based on real incidents. The army really put an anti-aircraft gun in the yard of a homeowner on the Maine coast. An air raid false alarm over Los Angeles resulted in Civil Defense and Army weapons firing into the air one night, thinking they were being attacked by the Japanese. A Japanese submarine shelled a refinery on the California coast. The infamous Zoot Suit Riots, between Hispanic youths and servicemen, were in May and June 1943.
In 1945 Lucille Ball reported feeling a rhythmic pattern in her dental work every time she drove through the Coldwater Canyon section of Los Angeles. The FBI investigated and found a secret transmitter nearby broadcasting coded messages to a Japanese submarine off the coast.
Or not: Did Lucille Ball's Fillings Help Capture Japanese Spies? | Snopes.com
FBI Special Agent Melvin Purvis, famous for his role in chasing down Pretty Boy Floyd and John Dillinger, either committed suicide or accidentally shot himself to death.
John Dillinger pronounced his name to rhyme with “finger.”