Jacques Who was a thoroughbred horse that raced on the New York circuit (Aqueduct, Belmont, and Saratoga) and developed a reputation in the early 70s of finishing second but never winning. He eventually was able to win a race, but his jockey, Angel Cordero, agreed that he didn’t seem to like being in the lead. Jacques Who (named for his owner, Jacques Wimpfheimer for reasons that should be obvious), was quite striking on the track, since he was a very pale gray, looking white from a distance.
French president Jacques Chirac spent a summer in the US in the 1950s taking classes at Harvard and working for Anheuser-Busch.
Barack Obama is the only US President other than Franklin Roosevelt to have been sworn into office four times. 
Benjamin Franklin belongs to 14 different Halls of Fame. The first 13 are the CIA Hall of Fame, the International Swimming Hall of Fame, the Pennsylvania Swimming Hall of Fame, Health Care Hall of Fame, Boston Latin School Hall of Fame, Electrostatics Hall of Fame, the American Mensa Hall of Fame, the World Chess Hall of Fame, United States Swim Schools Association Hall of Fame, Cooperative Hall of Fame, Self-Publishing Hall of Fame, the Hall of Fame for Great Americans and the Insurance Hall of Fame.
No. 14 is the Direct Marketing Association Hall of Fame, where he was inducted in 2004 for producing the first catalog, which sold scientific and academic books. Moreover, the catalog came with the first mail order guarantee: “Those persons who live remote, by sending their orders and money to B. Franklin may depend on the same justice as if present.”
Good one!
In play: In the Bill Murray/Laura Linney movie Hyde Park on Hudson, now playing at an art house movie theatre near you, a portrait of Revolutionary War naval hero John Paul Jones can be seen on the bookshelf behind President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s desk.
Bill Murray was bitten by the groundhog twice on the Groundhog Day set in 1992.
At 7:25 AM ET on Saturday, February 2, 2013 the world will discover if Punxsutawney Phil seeshis shadow - predicting six more weeks of winter.
On February 3rd, the feast day of St. Blaise, it was long customary for Catholics to go to church, where a priest would use a pair of candles to bless their throats.
The technique of throat singing, in which the singer manipulates the resonances (or formants) created as air travels from the lungs, past the vocal folds, and out the lips to produce a melody. The partials (fundamental and overtones) of a sound wave made by the human voice can be selectively amplified by changing the shape of the resonant cavities of the mouth, larynx and pharynx. This resonant tuning allows the singer to create apparently more than one pitch at the same time (the fundamental and a selected overtone), while in effect still generating a single fundamental frequency with his/her vocal folds. It is most often associated with Mongolia and the Tuva region of Siberia.
On Sunday February 3, the San Francisco 49ers “host” the Baltimore Ravens in Super Bowl XLVII. The 49ers have (so far) the best Super Bowl record - undefeated, at 5-0. Of Super Bowl winning teams, the 49ers are the only undefeated team that has won more than one Super Bowl.
ETA: ELVIS!!! Ninja’d again! Play off of Elvis, please. (But, GO NINERS!!!) 
Alright, I have a play.
My maternal grandfather escaped from a Siberian jail during the Russian revolution of 1917. He wasn’t royalty, but did work in the Kremlin. He was jailed in Siberia, and his girlfriend baked a loaf of bread with a file in it. He sawed through the bars at night, a little at a time, with his plan being to break away during New Year’s Eve (what year? don’t know; I’ll have to ask my Mom!). He did that, and the drunken guards tried to shoot him as he ran zig-zags through the snow.
He escaped on foot across Siberia and caught a ship out of China. His plan was to come to the US. The ship stopped in Manila, the Philippines, and he thought he’d found an “island paradise”. He never boarded the ship as it left Manila, met my grandmother, and the rest is history. He never made it to the States. He died in 1969 in the Philippines.
I was born in 1961 in the Philippines and our family moved to the USA in 1963. I only have extremely vague recollections of that grandfather.
Cite: My mother’s stories, told to her by her father.
Actor Lou Diamond Phillips, who was born in the Philippines, was named after Leland “Lou” Diamond, a U.S. Marine who served heroically in both World War 1 and World War 2.
The U.S. Marine Band, “the President’s Own,” played at President Obama’s second inauguration. Members of the Band are not required to go through boot camp or qualify as riflemen, unlike every other member of the Marine Corps.
The Hohner Marine Band harmonica, still their most popular model, was introduced in 1896 is probably the best selling harmonica in hisotyr.
The gunfighter played by Charles Bronson in Once Upon a Time in the West is never given a name- the credits (and other characters in the movie) never call him anything but “Harmonica.”
Charles Bronson’s beautiful blonde wife Jill Ireland appeared in the original series Star Trek episode “This Side of Paradise.” Bronson visited the set and was rather jealous of her, ST staff recall.
In 1990, Jill Ireland died of breast cancer. The next year, she was played by Jill Clayburgh in a made-for-TV movie. In 2010, Clayburgh died of cancer (not of the breast, but leukemia).
Jill Monroe was Farrah Fawcett’s character on the original run of “Charlie’s Angels”.
James Monroe and Alexander Hamilton both served as military aides to George Washington during the American Revolution.
Jason Alexander is the name of both the comic actor who played George Costanza on “Seinfeld”, and the childhood friend of Britney Spears whom she drunkenly married one weekend in Las Vegas.