Halfback Billy Vessels was the first player for the Oklahoma Sooners to win the Heisman Trophy. After graduation, he chose to play for the Edmonton Eskimos, rather than in the NFL.
Heisman winner Billy Cannon of LSU, later an orthodontist who gambled and made spectacularly bad investments, spent 30 months in a federal prison in Texarkana for counterfeiting. He is now employed as the dentist at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.
Angola, which is about twice the size of Texas, is the world’s 23rd largest country after Niger.
The Caprivi Strip is a protrusion of the territory of Namibia, extending their northern border from Angola to border Zambia and Botswana (and comes pretty damn close to Zimbabwe). It’s a leftover from colonial days, when the Germans insisted on adding the territory as an outlet to the Zambezi River. The plan was to use that to ship goods to eastern Africa, but they hadn’t counted on a slight obstacle: Victoria Falls.
Queen Victoria’s German husband, Prince Albert, was also her first cousin.
Albert II, Prince of Monaco, represented his country in the bobsled events at every Winter Olympics from Calgary to Salt Lake City. His grandfather and uncle, John B. Kelly Sr. and Jr., both won Olympic medals in rowing events.
Jim Kelly of the Buffalo Bills had a lifetime 2/3 winning proportion in his head-to-head match-ups with each of these three NFL quarterbacks: Dan Marino, John Elway, Joe Montana.
Buffalo Bob Smith, host of The Howdy Doody Show, appeared as himself on an episode of Happy Days. In that episode, Bob talks Richie Cunningham out of publishing photograpns of Clarabell the clown without his makeup.
The Tin Pan Alley song “Happy Days Are Here Again” has been the unofficial campaign song of the Democratic Party since 1932, and is also associated with the end of Prohibition.
The 1959-60 NBC sitcom Love and Marriage was based at Tin Pan Alley’s fictitious William Harris Music Publishing Company. Harris was played by William Demarest, who later gained greater fame as Uncle Charley on My Three Sons.
Brig. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman was blamed by some for the U.S. Army’s tactical surprise at the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862. He had been told by his skirmishers that there was a large Confederate force out in the woods, approaching his camp, but downplayed the warnings.
Before the Civil War, William Tecumseh Sherman was superintendent of a military college that eventually evolved into Louisiana State University.
Sherman converted to Catholicism to please his future wife; his son Thomas became a Catholic priest, and eventually said his father’s funeral Mass.
The Sherman House, where the future general and his U.S. senator brother were born, is still maintained by the historical society in Lancaster, Ohio. Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan held a joint campaign rally in the town this fall.
John C. Fremont, once known as The Pathfinder, was the first Republican candidate for President, in 1856.
John C. Frémont was awarded the civilian version of the Blue Max (formally, “Pour le Mérite”) by the King of Prussia, Frederick William IV.
The Philadelphia suburb King of Prussia, PA took its name in the 18th century from a local tavern named the King of Prussia Inn, which was named after Frederick II, King of Prussia. The inn may have been named to entice German soldiers to settle in the area.
NFL Quarterback Roman Gabriel finished his playing career with the Philadelphia Eagles in 1977. He played with the Eagles from 1973 after being traded by the (then Los Angeles) Rams, where he played from 1962 to 1972. Roman Gabriel was the NFL MVP in 1969 and is the first Asian-American to start as an NFL QB.
Roman Polanski’s film The Tenant that very cleverly plays upon the assumption that the audience was familiar with Polanski’s earlier horror film Rosemary’s Baby. There are certain superficial similarities, though the horror is quite deeper and more disturbing.
The exterior shots of Rosemary’s Baby (1968) were of The Dakota, outside of which John Lennon was shot in 1980 and where Yoko Ono still lives.
The Sioux Nation is composed of three large sub-tribes: the Lakota, the Dakota, and the Nakota.