In The Big Heat, Lee Marvin cemented his reputation as a memorial movie villain when he toss a pot of boiling coffee in Gloria Grahame’s face.
Bob “Captain Kangaroo” Keeshan spent years trying to dispell the urban legend that he and Lee Marvin had fought heroically together at Iwo Jima (in reality, Keeshan was still in Marine Corps training camp when the Japanese surrendered).
Before he was Captain Kangaroo, Bob Keeshan originated the character of Clarabell hte Clown on The Howdy Doody Show (the children’s program that made Howdy Doody a marionette superstar).
Howdy Doody’s face had 48 freckles, one for each state in the Union at the time of the marionette’s creation.
The U.S. flag has had 50 stars for the longest stretch of any flag in American history (since 1960); before that, the 48-star flag had been in use the longest.
Until 2007, the longest-used version of the US Flag was the 48-star flag. It was used from 1912 (when New Mexico and Arizona were admitted) until 1959 (when Alaska was admitted). The 50-star flag is now the front-runner, in used since 1960.
(What EH said.)
The state flag of Alaska, featuring the Big Dipper and North Star in gold on a field of blue, was the winner of a 1927 design contest. The designer was 13-year-old Benny Benson, an Aleut-Russian/Swedish boy from Seward on the Kenai Peninsula.
Wilt Chamberlain disliked his nickname “Wilt the Stilt,” preferring “The Big Dipper.”
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, hero of Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg, was president of Bowdoin College and governor of Maine after the Civil War. He was played by Jeff Daniels in Gettysburg.
Today the town of Gettysburg is not served by any train, bus or other public-transport links of any kind despite the battlefield being the best preserved of all Civil War sites. You have to get there via your own wheels.
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Actor/director William Putch founded and was director of The Totem Pole Playhouse, located in a state park 15 miles west of Gettysburg, from 1950 until his death in the early 1980s; he met his wife, Jean Stapleton, when she performed there in summer stock in the mid '50s, and her continued performing there after she became famous as Edith Bunker helped the theater survive lean times. (It still exists.) (Stapleton used to own a B&B and other businesses in and near Gettysburg but divested herself of them over the years.)
Gettysburg was the first Civil War battlefield to develop a qualfying and licensing program for battlefield guides. Tony Kellon of Cleveland, Ohio, the first black licensed battlefield guide, died in December 2011.
Other December 2011 deaths included Laugh In star Alan Sues, character actor Harry Morgan, and writer/atheism apologist Christopher Hitchens.
The English battleship, Harry Grâce à Dieu, also k own as Great Harry, was the largest battleship of its time, and one of the first capable of firing a broadside.
Prince Harry of Wales is actually named Henry. He is currently third in line to the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, behind his father Charles, Prince of Wales, and his older brother William, Duke of Cambridge.
Charles Goodyear had nothing to do with Goodyear tire; the company took its name from Charles long after his death, in honor of his inventing vulcanized rubber.
There have been recurring rumors, which have been officially denied, that Prince Charles will take the British throne as King George VII, in honor of his grandfather. His full name is Charles Philip Arthur George.
George VII was king of Georgia from at least 1395 to 1405. Some sources have him assuming the throne in 1393 and/or surviving until 1407.
James Strang was the “King of Michigan” or, more accurately, the King in Michigan - when in 1850 he was coronated as self proclaimed King on Beaver Island. Strang had lost out to Brigham Young as leader of the Mormons and retreated to Michigan to maintain what he felt was the true LDS church.