In a 1924 column, H.L. Mencken referred to the American South as “the Bible Belt.” This appears to be the earliest use of the term.
A thinly-disguised version of the acerbic newspaperman H.L. Mencken appears in the play and movie Inherit the Wind, about the Scopes Monkey Trial. He is renamed E.K. Hornbeck.
The first film based on Inherit the Wind (Wikipedia lists four) had Gene Kelly in the aforementioned role of E.K. Hornbeck. The film also starred Spencer Tracy and Dick York.
Gene Kelly graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in economics.
Mike Ditka, the first tight end inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, was a Pre-Dental major at the University of Pittsburgh.
The first newspaper west of the Alleghenies was The Pittsburgh Gazette, established in 1789.
The USA’s oldest newspaper in continuous publication, published since 1764, is The Hartford Courant.
During the Revolutionary War, The Courant had the largest circulation of any newspaper in the colonies and was an influential backer of the rebel cause. The Courant’s existence was considered so important to the war effort that when its paper mill was burned down - probably by Tories - the Connecticut legislature authorized a lottery to raise money to build a new mill. In the meantime, The Courant printed a few issues on wrapping paper.
John Hartford wrote Glen Campbell’s theme song, “Gentle on My Mind.”
Mark Twain wrote “Of all the beautiful towns it has been my fortune to see this is the chief” to describe Hartford Connecticut.
The elaborately-carved headboard in Mark Twain’s bedroom in his beloved (and beautiful restored, and open for tours) home in Hartford, Conn. is at the foot of the bed, rather than the head, so that he and his wife could see and admire it as they lay in bed.
Mark Twain was a friend of Helen Keller’s, and helped raise money for her to go to Radcliffe. She became the first deaf/blind person to graduate from college.
In the Star Trek: The Next Generation two-parter “Time’s Arrow”, Data (and eventually the rest of the crew) travel back in time to 19th century San Francisco to stop an alien threat, and Mark Twain (who insists on being called by his real name, Samuel Clemens) makes a pain in the ass of himself, thinking the Enterprise crew are the real villains.
Leftist Stanford professor Kenneth Arrow was the youngest man ever to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Theodore Roosevelt and Barack Obama have both won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Al Gore won a Nobel Peace Prize but not an Academy Award. The Oscar for An Inconvienent Truth went to producer Davis Guggenheim. The only person to win both an Oscar and Nobel was George Bernard Shaw.
American mathematician John Forbes Nash won the 1994 Nobel prize in Economics together with Reinhart Selten and John Harsanyi. Nash was the subject of the movie, A Beautiful Mind, and the book by the same itle.
The first one-wheeled wheelbarrow was designed by the mathematician Blaise Pascal, made to ease his father’s workload.
Pascal is the name of Rapunzel’s chameleon animal companion in the film Tangled.
Pascal’s Wager asserts that faith in God is justified by the immense reward that comes with faith, and the relatively insignificant cost.
Groucho Marx’s last movie role was in Skidoo, where he played a mobster named “God.”