Before becoming a lawyer, Roger Sherman worked as a shoemaker.
Jockey Willie Shoemaker won the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Bemont Stakes multiple times, but never all three in the same year.
Jockey Robyn Smith met her eventual husband, Fred Astaire, who was older than her by 46 years, before a race at Santa Anita where she beat Willie Shoemaker’s mount by a nose, winning Fred a nice return. Fred got her to leave racing out of fear for her safety, but after his death, she became a professional helicopter pilot and is now a corporate jet pilot.
The entire halftime show for Super Bowl 5 in Miami was Anita Bryant singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Anita Bryant’s top hit was “Paper Roses”, which reached #5 on the Hot 100 in 1960. Thirteen years later, the song was covered by Marie Osmond, who took it to #1 on the country and Easy Listening charts.
Marie Osmond turned down the lead role in Grease (1978) on moral grounds. The role went to Olivia Newton-John.
Ken Osmond, best known for playing Eddie Haskell on Leave it to Beaver, joined the Los Angeles Police Department in 1972. On September 20, 1980, he was hit by three bullets while in a foot chase with a suspected car thief. He was protected from two of the bullets by his bulletproof vest, with the third bullet ricocheting off of his belt buckleOsmond was placed on disability and eventually retired from the force in 1988.
The LAPD station building where the show Adam-12 was based is actually the Rampart Division, northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
ETA: it is now the Rampart Community Police Station
1401 West 6th Street, Los Angeles, CA
In the Dan Aykroyd/Tom Hanks big-screen comedy Dragnet, the LAPD is shown to have, among its many other assets, an F-5 Tiger fighter jet with the Department’s insignia emblazoned on its side.
The Los Angeles Angels were orginally owned by Gene Autry and played their home games in LA’s Wrigley Field.
ETA: Autry was in many western themed movies.
[Off game] Apparently, Elendil’s Heir doesn’t want anyone to know about his/her vast Xanadu knowledge.
(using both the last 2)
Gene Kelly’s last film appearance was in Xanadu.
Gene Kelly danced with Fred Astaire on screen only once, in “The Babbit and the Bromide” for the film Ziegfield Follies
What can I say? I got ninja’d and had to change it. But now…
Gene Kelly’s last screen appearance was in Xanadu, a roller disco/Greek mythos love story that was panned at the time - one critic’s single-word review was “Xanadon’t” - but has since become a cult classic and inspired a hit Broadway musical.
I think we somehow ninja’d each other.
Xanadu was Kublai Khan’s summer capital. Marco Polo was the first westerner to visit it.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
Coleridge: Kubla Khan (l1-5)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote that poem in 1797 and it was published in 1816.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was a British composer whose father was a Creole from Sierra Leone. Samuel’s influences included Edward Elgar of Pomp and Circumstance fame, and the poet Alfred Noyes was a friend and wrote part of the inscription on Coleridge-Taylor’s headstone.
The “unwritten British Constitution” isn’t actually unwritten; it’s just not all gathered in one place in a single document. Numerous papers, including Magna Carta and various Acts of Parliament, are collectively considered to be the Constitution.
The USS Constitution, launched in 1797, is the world’s oldest commissioned naval vessel afloat.