Yankee Doodle Dandy was the very first black and white movie to be colorized using a controversial computer-applied process.
During concerts with the band Damn Yankees, former Styx guitarist Tommy Shaw would play the opening notes to the treacly ballad “Babe,” at which point, bandmate Ted Nugent would proceed to smash Shaw’s guitar to bits.
Jerry Ross won Best Musical and Best Composer Tony Awards for his first two musicals written with Richard Adler, The Pajama Game in 1955 Damn Yankees in 1956. Sadly, he died at the age of 29, from complications related to the lung disease bronchiectasis.
Richard J. Ross is a Massachusetts state senator.
Chillicothe, Ohio’s first capital city, is the seat of the Buckeye State’s present-day Ross County.
Seven United States presidents were born in Ohio: Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William H. Taft, and Warren G. Harding.
Weird Al Yankovic’s “Headline News,” sung to the tune of “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” by the Crash Test Dummies, retold the salacious stories of Lorena Bobbitt, Tonya Harding, and Michael Fay (an American teen who was “caned” in Singapore as a punishment for vandalism).
Singapore has more than 40,000 legal offenses on the books. Among things that can get you into trouble are dropping litter, leaving still water lying around in your house or workplace and failing to lock your bicycle when not in use.
The Tanya Harding scandal in 1994 was a rocked the foundation of its sport – women’s collegiate softball. Harding was a pitcher for the UCLA team who was granted an illegal scholarship. Harding only attended the school during the softball season and quit after the championship, but before the offense was discovered.
UCLA had to forfeit its championship, and the title is now officially listed as vacant. Harding later played for the Australian women’s softball team in four Olympic games, sharing in three bronzes and a silver.
Founded in 1919, UCLA is the second-oldest general public research university in the United States.
Though the French made a gift of the Statue of Liberty, fundraisers were held in the United States to pay for the foundation and pedestal upon which the statue, formally named Liberty Enlightening the World, stands.
“The Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, was first sung in Strasbourg, not Marseille.
Sung Yu-chi won an bronze medal in taekwondo while competing for the Republic of China (Taiwan) at the 2008 Beijing summer Olympic games.
Marseille has 13 twinned cities, including Shanghai, China and Marrakesh, Morocco*. Lame trivia, but I wanted to stop the branching by having a China and a Marseille post and bring the thread back together.
*Which is weird, cause the populations are 851,420 (Marseille), 23,019148 (Shanghai), and 909,000 (Marrakesh), suggesting you could drop Marrakesh or Marseille into Shanghai and not notice anything but a few more ethnic restaurants. Also, Shanghai is twinned with Casablanca, suggesting that there is no transitive property of city twinning.
Some “twin cities” share the same name across an international border. There are several examples of this, and one is Niagara Falls, NY and Niagara Falla, ON.
“Niagara Falls! Slowly I turn . . . .” was a well-known vaudeville routine, done on film by the Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello, and others.
Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry’s two largest warships in the 1813 Battle of Lake Erie were the USS Lawrence and the USS Niagara. A replica of the Niagara is now homeported in Erie, Penna.
English writer DH Lawrence died of pleurisy and tuberculosis at the age of 44 in France in 1930. His last words were: “I am better now.”
At the age of 16, Canadian singer France Joli recorded the disco hit “Come To Me.”
In the legendarium of J.R.R. Tolkien, the Fourth Age began with the final defeat of the Dark Lord Sauron and the restoration of the monarchy of Gondor and Arnor, with Aragorn,as king, taking the regnal name Elessar.