Diefenbaker was the name of RCMP Constable Benton Fraser’s dog/wolf-hybrid companion on the TV series “Due South”. He was actually played by a purebred Siberian husky named Draco, whose sister Cinder performed most of his stunts.
John Diefenbaker was the only Saskatchewanian to be Prime Minister of Canada. However, two other Prime Ministers, Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Mackenzie King, were elected to the riding of Prince Albert, the same riding Diefenbaker eventually held.
Prince Albert, beloved Prince Consort to Queen Victoria, died during the American Civil War, but not before helping bring a peaceful end to the diplomatic Trent Incident, which might otherwise have resulted in the United Kingdom intervening militarily on the side of the Confederacy.
The Romance of Helen Trent was a radio soap opera about the title character’s search for love at the advanced age of 35. Over 7000 episodes were aired, making it the longest running radio soap. Somehow, she was still 35 when the show went off the air after 27 years.
Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and How to Destroy Angels, was one of several people to lease the “murder house” at 10050 Cielo Drive where the first five “Helter Skelter” murders occurred. He said his stay in the house was anticlimactic, the only spooky occurrences being from the constant tourists taking pictures of the property because of its Manson notoriety. (The house has since been torn down, the address renumbered, and two new houses built on the lot, though it’s still a site on several Hollywood tours.)
Trent was the magician king of Xanth.
Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett and Woody Allen are or were accomplished amateur magicians.
Woody Allen once said that, if he were ever reincarnated, he would want to come back as Warren Beatty’s fingertips.
Warren Beatty’s sister Shirley MacLaine wrote a book entitled Out on a Leash (a play on words of her previous title Out on a Limb) in which she claims (and she is serious) that she and her Rat Terrier, Terry, have lived many lives together including one in ancient Egypt where Terry was worshiped as an avatar of Anubis.
In Tim Powers’s The Anubis Gates, the gates allow people to travel back and forth in time.
In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, English actor and comedian John Cleese played several roles, among them a mighty and fearsome enchanter that some call… Tim?
Although many people pronounce his last name to rhyme with “fleece”, John Cleese has pointed out that it properly rhymes with “Cheese” – which was, in fact, the family surname before John’s father changed it upon joining the British Army during World War I.
King John is one of two English kings who do not have a number after their name, because no other king had that name. The other king with no successor with the same name is Stephen.
King John
put up a notice
“LOST OR STOLEN OR STRAYED
JAMES JAMES MORRISON’S MOTHER
SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN MISLAID.
LAST SEEN WANDERING VAGUELY
QUITE OF HER OWN ACCORD.
SHE TRIED TO GO DOWN TO THE END OF THE TOWN
FORTY SHILLINGS REWARD.”
King John lost his jewels in the wash. He later died in the usual way of eating a surfeit of lampreys.
The codpiece, popular in the 15th and 16th centuries, was commonly made of silk or velvet and richly adorned with lace, ribbons and even jewels, hence the origin of the phrase “family jewels” for testicles.
The German word Schmuck means "jewelry, adornments, but the Yiddish word Schmuck means penis, making another connection to jewelry and male genitalia.
The name of the codpiece, beloved of King Henry VIII of England and meant to fashionably cover but prominently feature the male genitalia, comes from the Middle English word “cod,” meaning scrotum.
Henry of Valois, later to become Henry III of France, was king of Poland prior to gaining the French throne. He had been elected to the post by a group of Polish nobles, but had only been in Poland for six months when he returned to France to rule there after the death of his brother, Charles IX. The throne was declared vacant when he did not return.
Władysław II Jagiełło, who served as King Consort from 1386 to 1399 and sole king of Poland from 1399 to 1434, had the longest reign on the Polish throne.