Arthur Blank is the co-founder of Home Depot and owns the Atlanta Falcons.
“The ancient art of Falconry is commonly defined as the hunting of wild quarry using trained birds of prey. Strictly speaking, Falconry involves only the long-winged hawks, the Falcon family, and only a person who flies a falcon at wild quarry is entitled to call themselves a Falconer.”
George Sanders starred in a series of low-budget mysteries about the Falcon, a hard-boiled and womanizing detective (ironically, the first film in the series was The Gay Falcon, “Gay” being the Falcon’s first name). When Sanders tired of the series, he bowed out with The Falcon’s Brother, where Tom Conway was introduced as the title character and took on the role. Conway actually was Sanders’s brother.
The Maltese Falcon (1941) was Sydney Greenstreet’s film debut, at age 62.
Sydney Greenstreet made only 23 movies, however, he appeared in nine with Peter Lorre, including The Maltese Falcon.
According to Vincent Price, when he and Peter Lorre went to view Bela Lugosi’s body during Bela’s funeral, Lorre, upon seeing Lugosi dressed in his famous Dracula cape, quipped: “Do you think we should drive a stake through his heart just in case?”
I’ve read there’s some doubt about that story though, so here’s an extra piece of trivia that is undoubtedly real: Peter Lorre’s image from M (1931) was unwittingly used on the German poster for the anti-semitic propaganda film, The Eternal Jew (1940), as an example of a typical Jew.
Someone, somewhere, has done it. That’s just how humanity gets bizzay.
Stephen King’s novella Apt Pupil is about an American boy who becomes morbidly fascinated by, and eventually blackmails, an elderly German immigrant with a dark past.
As in Frederick Forsyth’s novel The ODESSA File, there really were organizations that helped Nazis flee Europe after the Second World War, usually to South America and often with the connivance of anti-Semitic Catholic Church officials.
The 1974 film adaptaion of the ODESSA File is credited with raising the profile of Eduard Roschman, the real “Butcher of Riga” and forcing extradition proceedings in Agentina. Roschman fled to Paraguay where he died in 1977.
Derek Jacobi, perhaps most famous for starring in the BBC’s version of I, Claudius, appeared in The ODESSA File and in Day of the Jackal, both of which were based on novels written by Frederick Forsyth.
Sir Derek Jacobi is the first knight of the realm to appear in a Doctor Who episode.
Abdullah II is the first Jordanian king to appear in Star Trek, in the “Investigations” episode of Star Trek: Voyager. Photo here.
George VI was the first King of Canada to set foot in Canada.
George VI was the last British monarch to claim the title Emperor of India. His daughter, Elizabeth II, was never Empress of India, as India gained independence before her reign began in 1952.
“The Electric Horseman” was filmed in Las Vegas and in and around St. George, Utah 120 miles away.
Bob Dunn, a musician from Beggs, Oklahoma, invented the first electric guitar, in 1935.
The first solid body electric guitar was invented by Les Paul.
Up until 1961, the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul each had minor league teams – the Minneapolis Millers and the St. Paul Saints. The two cities had a strong rivalry that extended beyond just the competition between the two clubs. Because of this, when the Washington Senators moved to Minneapolis in 1961, they named the team the Minnesota Twins so as not to drive away fans from St. Paul.
George Washington was a lieutenant colonel of the Virginia militia by the age of 22.
Virginia Dare was the first child born in the Americas to English parents, in 1587. She was born into the short-lived Roanoke Colony of North Carolina. Her fate is unknown, as the entire colony disappeared by 1590.