Actor Harrison Ford is a helicopter pilot. He piloted his own helicopter when he rescued a distressed hiker in Wyoming in 2000. The hiker got sick and vomited in Ford’s hat during the flight.
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I got details wrong and messed up my own trivia bit. Should read as follows:
Actor Harrison Ford is a helicopter pilot. He piloted his own helicopter when he rescued a distressed hiker in Idaho in 2000. The hiker got sick and vomited in an EMT’s hat during the flight.
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For the record, Ford lives in Wyoming but the rescue was over the border in Idaho. Ford was wearing a hat but his was not the unlucky receptacle of the hiker’s vomitus.
John Travolta is a certified private pilot and owns five aircraft, including an ex-Qantas Boeing 707–138 airliner.
Qantas was originally styled QANTAS, as the name is an acronym for Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services.
In the Oscar-winning film ***Rain Man, *** Charlie Babbitt must drive his autistic brother Raymond to Los Angeles, because Qantas is the only airline he’s willing to fly on.
The word “babbitt” was coined from the title of Sinclair Lewis’s novel of the same name, and came to mean a boringly conventional middle class man. The main character is that sort of character – at first. In the course of the novel, he develops a realization of the emptiness of that life, but, sadly, learns he is unable to escape it, but manages to urge his son to follow his own path.
J. Robert Lennon’s 2001 novel On the Night Plain takes place mostly on a hardscrabble sheep farm in the American West soon after World War II. Lennon never specifically says in what state the farm is situated.
“Night Moves” is a song written and performed by Bob Seger, and released as a single in December 1976. It eventually reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart and almost singlehandedly changed Seger from being a popular regional favorite into a national star.
The Tom Cruise dance sequence done to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll” in Risky Business was parodied on Saturday Night Live be then-President Regan’s son Ronnie, done on a set simulating the White House.
President Gerald Ford presided over the U.S. Bicentennial celebrations in 1976, including a tall ships gathering and huge fireworks display in New York City. Ford, Republican of Michigan, beat Ronald Reagan (note spelling) in a primary challenge but was defeated in his election campaign that fall by Jimmy Carter, Democrat of Georgia.
Jane Flory’s children’s book The Liberation of Clementine Tipton centers around the celebration of America’s Centennial in 1876.
Colorado is called the Centennial State, because it entered the Union in 1876.
George Washington, James Madison and Abraham Lincoln all believed that the Union of the states was permanent and indissoluble; many Southerners such as John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis believed otherwise.
Nine US presidents never attended college: Washington, Jackson, Van Buren, Taylor, Fillmore, Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Cleveland and Truman.
The Sweathogs, on ***Welcome Back, Kotter, *** consisted of Vinny Barbarino, Juan Epstein, Arnold Horshack and Freddie “Boom Boom” Washington.
My Cousin Vinny (1992) was Fred “Herman Munster” Wynne’s final feature-film appearance.
All three major-party candidates for President in 1992 were left-handed: George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot.
Ellen DeGeneres’ brother Vance played Mr Hands, tormentor of Mr Bill on SNL sketches in the 1970s.
The US two-dollar bill was last issued in 2003.
In Canada, two dollar bills were in regular circulation in British Columbia, Ontario and the eastern provinces, but not in the three prairie provinces, where they were unpopular and not used by individuals or merchants.