The Melodians’ reggae rendition of “By the Rivers of Babylon” was featured in fellow reggae artist Jimmy Cliff’s film The Harder They Come, about a young Jamaican singer struggling to establish himself as a recording artist. The song is Psalm 137:1-4 set to music:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion… They carried us away in captivity requiring of us a song… Now how shall we sing the lord’s song in a strange land?
Babylon 5 commander John Sheridan said he was a descendant of Civil War cavalry hero Gen. Phil Sheridan, victor of the Battle of Cedar Creek, Va., who got extremely plump in later life.
Some speculate that the Ark of the Covenant disappeared when Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon ransacked the Temple, but there are strong clues in the Bible that it was already gone before the Captivity.
For example, when King Josiah
[QUOTE=2 Chronicles 35:3]
… said unto the Levites …“Put the holy ark in the house which Solomon the son of David king of Israel did build; it shall not be a burden upon your shoulders: serve now the LORD your God, and his people Israel” …
[/QUOTE]
there is no indication that the Levites obeyed, or even could obey, this order.
Shirley Temple was Hollywood’s top box office attraction from 1935 to 1938.
In the Brady Bunch episode “The Snooperstar”, Marcia peppered her diary with fake entries about sister Cindy being considered by talent scouts as “the new Shirley Temple”. The idea was to teach Cindy a lesson about reading other people’s private jottings.
Shirley Temple Black eventually became a diplomat and served as U.S. ambassador to Ghana and later to Czechoslovakia. She also, although a Republican, organized President Jimmy Carter’s inaugural festivities in January 1977.
At one point the Supreme Court of the United States had a Black and White view of the law, having both a Justice Black and a Justice White.
Yang is black; yin is white.
Both the 1998 and 2002 Chinese Winter Olympics teams had a pair of short-track speed skaters named Yang Yang. They were originally given the suffixes L and S in the English transliterations, for large and small, to differentiate them based on size. Yang Yang (L) asked for a change to Yang Yang (A) for August, her birth month, but the name is no longer needed in public since the retirement of Yang Yang (S).
Despite Republicans suffering losses in the off-year 1998 Congressional elections, in part, polling indicated, because of their handling of the “Lewinskygate” Clinton sex scandal, members of the GOP-controlled House of Representatives nevertheless approved articles of impeachment against the President in a lame-duck session. Clinton was acquitted by the Senate in the trial which followed.
The British TV series Lame Ducks featured John Duttine as Brian Drake, who is hit by a truck, rendered unable to work, and decides to become a hermit. He is joined in voluntary social exile by various characters, eventually including the private detective Drake’s wife hires to locate her husband.
William Hopper, an actor best known as Paul Drake on the original Perry Mason was the son of Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. He found the connection a very mixed blessing; his mother wielded tremendous power in Hollywood, but he was reluctant to take advantage of it.
Republican William McKinley, elected in 1896 and reelected in 1900, was the last U.S. President to have served in the Civil War. He was decorated for bringing coffee under fire to his fellow Ohio soldiers during the Battle of Antietam, Md. A small memorial there, on the hill above Burnside’s Bridge, notes his minor role.
Until World War II, most presidents had served in the Army. Since World War II, most have served in the Navy (Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush Sr).
(That is if you leave out Truman, who was president during WWII and so is disqualified. But if you insist on Truman, then that drops the figure to half served in the Navy but still more than in the Army.)
FDR was made Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson in spite of having no military experience; h e wanted a naval uniform but was denied by his superior, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, who also wore no uniform and also had no naval experience.
Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt both served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy (under McKinley and Wilson, respectively) before becoming President. Both are now honored by warships named after them - an aircraft carrier for TR (who didn’t like being called “Teddy”), and a destroyer for FDR.
In the 1830s, the City of New York purchased Manning’s Island, just off Manhattan in the East River, and began using it for a prison. Later a lunatic asylum, smallpox hospital, and a workhouse were put on the island, which changed its name to Welfare Island in 1909. The various institutions were abandoned over the years and the island was renamed “Roosevelt Island” in 1973 to remove the unpleasant connotations of “Welfare Island.” It’s now a desirable residential area, though the ruins of the various prisons and hospitals can be seen.
Theodore Roosevelt, Republican of New York, relinquished the Presidency to his hand-picked successor, former Secretary of War William Howard Taft, Republican of Ohio, on March 4, 1909. Four years later, Roosevelt ran against President Taft and actually got more votes than him, but both lost to Woodrow Wilson, Democrat of New Jersey.
Theodore Roosevelt’s second wife was Edith Kermit Carow. Her middle name was used as the first name of her (and her husband’s) second son. Kermit Roosevelt accompanied his father on an expedition to South America in 1913-14. A river they explored was renamed the Rio Roosevelt, and a branch thereof the Rio Kermit, in honor of the father-son combo.
Kermit the Frog is the only Muppet to be featured prominently on both The Muppet Show and Sesame Street. (Others such as Miss Piggy and Dr Teeth were shown in photographs hung on the walls of skits on Sesame Street, and Rowlf the Dog made a cameo appearance in one skit. A few Sesame Street characters such as Big Bird, and Ernie and Bert made guest appearances on The Muppet Show.)