Dr. Joyce Brothers was a big winner on the game show The $64,000 Question where she proved herself an expert on boxing.
The $64,000 Challenge, a spinoff of The $64,000 Question, featured then-child star Patty Duke among its contestants. She later testified to Congressional investigators that she had been coached for her appearance on the program.
Duke Leto, father of Paul, falls prey to a Harkonnen trap when his noble House of Atreides is given the spice planet of Arrakis to run in Frank Herbert’s visionary 1965 sf novel Dune.
The nicknames of the Spice Girls were Posh Spice, Baby Spice, Scary Spice, Sporty Spice, and Ginger Spice.
Fred Astaire never won an Oscar as an actor*, but was nominated as Best Supporting Actor for his performance as a con man in The Towering Inferno. However, Ginger Rogers won the Oscar as Best Actress for Kitty Foyle.
*Fred did receive an honorary Oscar.
Fred Astaire also played a con man in an episode of the original Battlestar Galatica, a role he took to please his grandchildren.
Much of The Sting is based upon the nonfiction book The Big Con by David W. Maurer; the cons in the movie are all outlined in the book (though the characters and the story were made up for the movie).
James Joyce picked June 16, 1904 for the action in his book Ulysses because it was the date of his and future wife Nora Barnacle’s first date together. (It’s commonly claimed she gave him a handjob on that first date, but other sources swear it was two months later.)
The 18th President of the U.S. was named Hiram Ulysses Grant. A clerical error at West Point renamed him “Ulysses Simpson Grant” (Simpson was his mother’s maiden name). Thereafter, he regularly signed his name “U.S. Grant.” Classmates began joking that “U.S.” stood for “Uncle Sam,” and from then on, he was known as “Sam” to most friends.
Hiram Bingham III, the son and grandson of missionaries to Hawaii, is credited with uncovering the ruins of Macchu Pichu, the former Inca citadel in the mountains of Peru.
Not all sources agree*, but the University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru, is widely considered the oldest college in the Western Hemisphere. It was chartered by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1551.
*The University of Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, was founded earlier, but not officially recognized until later.
Oberlin College had the last Ohio football team to beat Ohio State University, in 1892, under the leadership of coach John Heisman.
The first Heisman Trophy winner, Jay Berwanger, was also the first player selected in the first NFL draft. However, he chose never to play pro football because he wasn’t offered enough money.
A few years later, Berwanger’s alma mater, the University of Chicago, abolished its football program.
New Chicago is a colony world whose rebellion has just been put down by the Second Empire of Man at the beginning of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s sf novel The Mote in God’s Eye.
There is no commonly agreed-to explanation for the origin of the State of New York’s nickname, “The Empire State.”
New York CITY’S nickname, “The Big Apple,” is an old term for “something very large and important” and probably comes from horse racing, as New York was once the biggest horse racing market in America.
In the history of the Beatles’ Apple record label, the most successful single not recorded by the Beatles or its former members was Mary Hopkin’s “Those Were the Days.”
The tune of “Those Were the Days” was copied from the Russian folk song “Dorogoy Dlinnoyu (By the Long Road)”. Although not a translation, the English lyrics express the same sentiments about lost youthful romanticism.
Former University of South Carolina star Alex English led the NBA in scoring in the 1982-83 season.
The University of South Carolina houses the largest collection of Hemingway works and associated materials in the world, as well as the largest collection of Robert Burns materials outside Scotland.
In 1948, South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond ran for President as the candidate of the pro-segregation States Rights Party (better known as the Dixiecrats). He won four states, and earned 39 electoral votes.