President Theodore Roosevelt threatened to ban college football due to the many deaths it was causing. Rules were changed to increase safety.
During the war years, Frankling Roosevelt’s travel plans were kept secret for security reasons. It was during this period that the President’s dog, Fala, won the nickname “the informer.” The Scottish terrier insisted on being taken for a walk at every stop on a train trip, and the sight of him, accompanied by weary Secret Service agents, was a tip-off to reporters that the President was on board.
Franklin Roosevelt was the first President to have a transport aircraft assigned to his use. The first “Air Force One”, a name that was not assigned until later, was a US Army Air Forces C-54 (a DC-4 variant), with an elevator for his wheelchair, nicknamed “Sacred Cow”.
The first electric wheelchair was manufactured in London in 1916.
London is located on the Thames (temz) River. New London, Connecticut is located on the Thames (thaymz) River.
Before last Friday, Newtown, Connecticut’s claim to fame was the Woodchipper Murder, in 1986. The first murder conviction in the state in which a body was never found.
In the film Fargo, Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare) uses a woodchipper to dispose of the body of his partner in crime, Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi), but is caught by Brainerd Police Chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand).
Little Lulu was a long-running comic book created by Majorie Henderson Buell under the pen name of “Marge.” Though Buell created the character and used her in single panels in* The Saturday Evening Post*, the comic in its prime was written and illustrated by John Stanley.
Little Lulu’s friends included Thomas “Tubby” Tompkins, Annie Inch, and Gertie Greenbean. Lulu’s last name was Moppet.
I was a huge Andrew Lloyd Webber fan long before he and Jim Steinman got together to do the musical “Whistle Down The Wind,” which included the number “Annie Christmas.” My last name is Anne, and my Birthday is December 25th.
At at Broadway auction, I won a cloth and leather jacket with the Whistle Down The Wind embroderied on the back, donated by Jim Steinman.
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2011 was divided, one half jointly to Bruce A. Beutler and Jules A. Hoffmann “for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity” and the other half to Ralph M. Steinman “for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity”.
Andre Geim is the only person to be awarded both a Nobel Prize and an Ig Nobel Prize, the former in 2010 for work on graphene, the latter in 2000 for using magnets to levitate a frog.
The geneticists who created dinosaurs for Jurassic Park mixed frog DNA with dinosaur DNA.
The opening track on Weird Al Yankovic’s 1993 album, Alapalooza is “Jurassic Park,” set to the tune of Richard Harris’s “MacArthur Park,” and describes much of the film in the lyrics. The music video is animated in the style of Claymation.
Richard Harris, later to go on to much greater fame as Prof. Albus Dumbledore in the first several Harry Potter movies, had a small part as a feisty Australian pilot early in the 1961 action thriller The Guns of Navarone, set during World War II.
The Guns of Navarone was the only film in which David Niven smoked cigarettes.
The episode “The Soft Weapon” on Star Trek: the Animated Series was adapted by Larry Niven from his story of the same name (Spock took the place of Nessus) and the Niven’s Kzin were introduced into the Star Trek universe, though they were never officially used again (but they have been in fan fiction).
Dr. Benjamin Spock ran for President of the United States on the People’s Party ticket in 1972. His running mate was Julius Hobson. In 1976, Spock took the vice-presidential slot as Margaret Wright topped the ticket.
Organist Rick Wright was fired from Pink Floyd before they began the elaborate, expensive tour in support of The Wall, but accepted an offer from Roger Waters to perform on the tour as a hired musician.
As it turned out, the tour lost millions of dollars, and Wright was much better off not being a member of the band!
Robin Wright (most commonly credited as Robin Wright Penn) made her feature film debut in 1987’s The Princess Bride opposite Cary Elwes; 22 years later, they would appear together again in Disney’s adaptation of A Christmas Carol.
(Which, incidentally, my mother and I saw for the first time today, and quite enjoyed!)