Guest musicians on the 1989-90 Australian weekly comedy/talk show “The Money or the Gun” were required by host Andrew Denton to play their own version of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”, in their own style. Rolf Harris’ version, a sendup of his “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport”, reached #7 on the UK singles charts.
The word “kangaroo” derives from the Guugu Yimithirr word gangurru, referring to grey kangaroos. The name was first recorded as “kangooroo or kanguru” on August 4, 1770, by Lieutenant (later Captain) James Cook on the banks of the Endeavour River at the site of modern Cooktown, when HM Bark Endeavour was beached for almost seven weeks to repair damage sustained on the Great Barrier Reef. Guugu Yimithirr is the language of the people of the area. A common myth about the kangaroo’s English name is that “kangaroo” was a Guugu Yimithirr phrase for “I don’t understand you.” According to this legend, Lieutenant Cook and naturalist Sir Joseph Banks were exploring the area when they happened upon the animal. They asked a nearby local what the creatures were called. The local responded “Kangaroo”, meaning “I don’t understand you”, which Cook took to be the name of the creature. The Kangaroo myth was debunked in the 1970s by linguist John Haviland in his research with the Guugu Yimithirr people.
Joseph of Arimathea is the man, mentioned in all four Gospels, who donated the tomb in which Jesus Christ’s crucified body was said to have first been placed. He is also legendarily the owner of the Holy Grail and brought it to England.
Joseph Stalin’s real name was Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili; he took the name Stalin as a revolutionary in Russia. He was considered by most in the party to be an intellectual lightweight; he only contributed one important article to the pre-revolution party, a manifesto on communism among the nationalities. It was generally believed that the article was actually written by Lenin (or dictated to Stalin by him) because it would have more force if credited to a non-Russian. After Lenin’s death, most party members thought Stalin would lose out to people like Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, but Stalin formed alliances with the latter two to get rid of Trotsky, and later with Bukharin to discredit Zinoviev and Kamenev. Once he turned on Bukarin, he became the sole leader of the party.
Stalin’s son was captured by the Nazis during World War II, and his daughter later defected to the United States (where she died, of cancer at age 85, just last November).
On his way home from the siege of Miletus, Julius Caesar was captured by pirates and held hostage for about 40 days. Caesar insisted his captors double their ransom demand of 12,000 gold pieces – he was, after all, an aristocrat – and promised to return and punish them, which the pirates thought was a joke. True to his word, Caesar returned after his release, hunted the pirates down, and had them crucified. As a sign of leniency, he first had their throats cut.
Gen. George Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau led the combined American-French army which laid siege to Lord Cornwallis’s British army at Yorktown, Va. in late 1781. The very experienced French sappers who advised Washington and Rochambeau correctly estimated that it would take just three weeks to force Cornwallis to surrender.
Though Yorktown was the decisive victory that ended the Revolutionary War, it’s success was primarily due to the Battle of the Chesepeake, where the French and British fleet faced each other. Though the battle was inconclusive, the British withdrew to New York, unwilling to fight further due to damage to their ships. Without the fleet, Yorktown could not be resupplied or the British army withdrawn. The fleet did repair itself and set sale, but not until after Cornwallis surrendered.
There have been at least three starships named the USS Yorktown referred to in various incarnations of Star Trek over the years, the earliest of which was probably a Constitution-class heavy cruiser, NCC-1717.
The frigate U.S.S. Constitution, nicknamed "“Old Ironsides”, is the oldest commissioned ship in the world still afloat.
There was once a plan to decommision her, about which Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote:
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., the 19th century American physician, poet, professor and author was the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., the 20th century American jurist who served 30 years as an associate justice of the Surpreme Court.
Canada did not have a Supreme Court for the first 8 years of Confederation. Even after the Court was created in 1875. it was Supreme in name only, as an appeal lay to the Judicial Committee of the Imperial Privy Council.
Three women have won the grand slam of tennis (Wimbledon, French Open, Australian Open, U.S. Open) in one year: Maureen Connolly Brinker, Margaret Court, and Steffi Graf.
Three women have won three or more acting Oscars – Ingrid Bergman , Katharine Hepburn and Meryl Streep.
Stanley Tucci played Meryl Streep’s gay assistant in The Devil Wears Prada, and her loving husband in Julie & Julia.
According to Marianne Faithfull, Mick Jagger’s song “Sympathy for the Devil” was inspired by Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev recently appeared in ads for Louis Vuitton baggage, with a portion of his fee going to Russian charities.
Louis XV was the last French king of Canada.
The 93-square-mile islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, just off the coast of Newfoundland, are the only portion of Canada still under French control. They currently have a population of less than 6000 people.
Farley Mowat’s book, “THe Boat Who Wouldn’t Float” recounts his travails with a poorly built Newfoundland fishing boat. Part of it is set in St. Pierre, where the boat, normally called “Happy Adventure” was re-christened with a Basque name. Mowat and his companions can’t pronounce the Basque properly, so the boat is known colloquially as “Itchy Ass Sally.”
At one point in his troubles, Mowat invades the office of the local governor and calls him an S.O.B.
[Nitpick: I’m not sure that St Pierre & Miquelon were ever considered part of Canada, which was the French name for the mainland territory along the St. Lawrence - but I could be wrong! 
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