In pre-decimal days, some British bank cashiers used the term “Nelson” for an amount of one pound, one shilling and one penny. Possible explanations that have been put forward: An erroneous notion that Admiral Nelson had one eye, one arm and one leg, although in reality Nelson lost an arm and an eye but retained the use of both legs; and that it refers to three of his great naval victories – Copenhagen, the Nile and Trafalgar – thus giving won-won-won.
The real life Christopher Robin Milne, for whom Winnie the Pooh was written, was completely estranged from his mother who disapproved of his marriage to his 1st cousin. He never visited her during the last 15 years of her life.
Crap. Ninja’d by Siam Sam.
Ahem Still in play. 
Paul McCartney’s “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” was his first #1 song after the Beatles broke up.
“Yesterday” by the Beatles has been covered by more than 2,200 artists and is the highest-covered (most-covered?) in history.
The Saskatchewan Arts Board, established by the provincial government in 1948, was the first public board in North America designed to provide support for artists and encourage artistic endeavours.
H.M. Bark Endeavour (which was originally launched as a merchant collier named Earl of Pembroke) made a famous around-the-world voyage during 1768-1771. It landed at Tahiti in time to observe a transit of Venus, discovered several new islands, charted New Zealand, and became the first European ship to reach the continent of Australia.
The Venus of Willendorf is a small statuette of a female form, discovered in 1908 and dated back to 22,000-24,000 B.C.E. The large breasts of the form have led scientists to believe it a fertility symbol, though there is a countertheory that it was a keepsake by a worker who had traveled some distance to the site (the stone it’s carved from is not local to the area where it was found), as a reminder of his wife or girlfriend.
Theodore Roosevelt’s hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, Republican of Ohio, was elected President in 1908. The two later had a falling-out and Roosevelt ran against him in 1912, outpolling him, but both lost to Woodrow Wilson, Democrat of New Jersey.
William Howard Taft was one of three Unitarians to serve as President of the USA- John and John Quincy Adams were the others.
Howard Wolowitz is the only one of the four main male characters on “The Big Bang Theory” who lacks a PhD, although he is the only one who has traveled into outer space and the only one who has married (although Leonard and Penny are getting pretty close to it).
Irish playwright Hugh Leonard made a brief appearance as a pallbearer in the unsuccessful movie version of his Tony-winning comedy Da.
Leonard Slye was billed at “Roy Rogers, King of the Cowboys.”
The duck-billed platypus was first encountered by Europeans in 1798. Drawings and descriptions of the animal sent back to Great Britain were believed to be a hoax.
In his famous song “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport”, Rolf Harris asked the dying stockman’s friend “Mind me platypus duck, Bill, mind me platypus duck. Don’t let him go runnin’ amuck, Bill, mind me platypus duck. All together now …”
Harris in Barney Miller sent away to a genealogical service for his ancestry, only to be told that he was of Scottish descent.
About a quarter of all US citizens claim at least partial German ancestry.
There are 119 ridges (properly termed reeds) on the edge of a US quarter.
Although U2 as a band are Irish, guitarist The Edge is of Welsh decendancy, his parents hailing from the South Wales town of Llanelli. The family moved to Ireland when The Edge was one year old.
Nellie “Irish” McCalla, a former “Varga Girl” and pinup model, starred in the Fifties TV series Sheena, Queen of the Jungle."