The Rev. Jesse Jackson was with Martin Luther King Jr. when he was assassinated in Memphis in 1968. He ran for President unsuccessfully in both 1984 and 1988, and later counseled Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky scandal.
During Bill Clinton’s first campaign, it became fairly well known that he plays the saxophone. There is even a line about it in the theme for the cartoon the Animaniacs.
Moments before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King *(whose widow Coretta would be eulogized at her funeral by Bill Clinton) *had a pillow fight in his motel room with his brother A.D., who would die the next year from a suspicous death by drowning that was officially ruled a suicide.
Whew: okay, it’s stretching it but…
A. D. stands for Anno Domini (with years, anyways, not MLK’s brother), and was invented in the year 525. Before that, well, The Master can explain things better than I.
A.D. also stands for Airworthiness Directive, an order with the force of law from the FAA regarding aircraft maintenance.
When Larry Walterswas fined thousands of dollars for sailing to 15,000 feet in his helium balloons powered lawnchair he said “If the FAA was around when the Wright Brothers were testing their aircraft, they would never have been able to make their first flight at Kitty Hawk.”
Hello Kitty is a fictional character produced by the Japanese company Sanrio. Its first appearance on an item, a vinyl coin purse, was introduced in Japan in 1974 and brought to the United States in 1976.
Miss Kitty Russell, the saloon-keeper in Gunsmoke, was played on radio by Georgia Ellis, and on television by Amanda Blake.
“Georgia on My Mind” was written by Hoagy Carmichael, whom Ian Fleming said he envisioned James Bond as looking like (see http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Hoagy_Carmichael_in_To_Have_and_Have_Not_trailer.jpg). The song later became the official Georgia state song.
Hoagy Carmichael’s character retaught the armless returning veteran character, played by real veteran Harold Russell, to play the piano in “The Best Years of Our Lives”.
Oscar fates:
-Harold Russell sold his Oscar to pay for medical bills (though more recent Oscar winners cannot do this)
-The Oscar won by Hattie McDaniel was stolen from Howard University and has never been found.
-The Oscar won by Orson Welles for CITIZEN KANE was lost, replaced, and then rediscovered, which caused a lawsuit when his daughter tried to sell it.
Daniel Boone was played by Fess Parker, who grew up on a farm outside San Angelo, Texas - my Dad’s birthplace.
In the role of a lifetime, Daniel J. Trevanti played Capt. Frank Furillo, the calm in the midst of the storm of the multiple-Emmy-winning TV police drama Hill Street Blues.
Carl Furillo of the Brooklyn Dodgers was nicknamed “Skoonj,” because
a) He loved scungilli, an Italian dish made from snails, and
b) He was not a very fast runner (snail = slow).
Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks were longtime standup comedians together.
Oops
New York Giant Mel Ott died in a car accident in 1958 at the age of 49.
Mel Ott has the fewest letters in his name of any Baseball Hall of Fame member.
Tommy Lasorda, longtime Dodger baseball manager, was recently honored by the Harlem Globetrotters for his contributions to the community.
Tommy Lasorda drafted Mike Piazza with the final pick of the 1988 amateur draft (62nd round), at least in part as a favor to Piazza’s family, who were (and, presumably, still are) personal friends of Lasorda’s.