Prairie dogs – which are actually rodents and not dogs – sometimes touch teeth with each other as a sign of recognition
The name prairie dog was in use at least as early as 1774. The 1804 journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition note that in September 1804, they “discovered a Village of an animal the French Call the Prairie Dog.”
Clark County, Nevada was named for copper magnate William A. Clark.
Mike Smith was the lead singer of the Dave Clark 5- Clark himself was the drummer.
Dave Clark is a TV news anchorman on KTVU channel 2 in Oakland, CA.
At the end of Psycho, a psychiatrist, played by Simon Oakland, explains to everyone the nature of Norman Bates’s psychosis. Alfred Hitchcock never intend this to be taken as a real explanation (and undercuts it in the following scene), but included it in the film for people who needed a neat wrap-up.
The only Alfred Hitchcock movie to win a Best Picture Oscar is Rebecca in 1940.
Alfred, a tall, red-haired footman, is the nephew of the scheming Miss O’Brien in the popular British historic soap opera Downton Abbey, set on the Yorkshire country estate of the Earl of Grantham.
The 1949 Boston mayoral election, in which Walter O’Brien of “Charlie on the MTA” fame was a minor candidate, was also the source material for Edwin O’Connor’s novel “The Last Hurrah”. In real life, longtime machine pol James Michael Curley was defeated by a disaffected former aide turned reformer, John Hynes, and little more than the names were changed for the story about how a big-city machine worked. When Curley was asked what he liked most about the novel, he would gleefully answer “The part where I died”. The fictional mayor’s top aide explained to the narrator that he was actually defeated by Roosevelt and the New Deal, which made ward-heel politics obsolete.
Alben Barkley, Democrat of Kentucky, became, at 71, the oldest Vice President of the United States in history when he was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 1949.
At just under 6’5" (though rosters and scorecards often indicated he was taller), Charles Barkley was the shortest player ever to lead the NBA in rebounding.
Prince Charles has been a fan of Peter Sellers since The Goon Show. After seeing The Return of the Pink Panther in Montreal in 1975, he wrote to Sellars that he’d laughed so hard he had wet the dress of the woman in the next seat.
Peter Sellers was 54 years old when he died in 1980 of a heart attack.
In retaliation for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979, President Jimmy Carter ordered that U.S. athletes not compete in the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow. Sixty-five other countries also did not participate in the games that year.
Afghanistan borders six other countries – Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, China, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
The international border between Afghanistan and China is short and mountainous. The terrain is so rough that there is no road through this area connecting the two countries - there is no border crossing. The Wakhjir Pass, a mountain pass in the Hindu Kush or Pamirs at the eastern end of the Wakhan Corridor, is the only pass between Afghanistan and China. It links Wakhan in Afghanistan with the Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County in Xinjiang, China, at an altitude of 4,923 m, but the pass is not an official border crossing point. The border has the sharpest official change of clocks of any international frontier (UTC+4:30 in Afghanistan to UTC+8, China Standard Time, in China) - change of 3½ hours. There is no road across the pass. On the Afghan side the nearest road is a rough road to Sarhad-e Wakhan (also known as Sarhad-e Broghil), about 100km from the pass by paths. On the Chinese side there is a jeep track about 15km from the pass, which leads through the Taghdumbash Pamir to the Karakoram Highway 80km away. In the summer of 2009 the Chinese Ministry of Defence began construction of a new road to within 10km of the border, for use by border guards. The pass is closed for at least five months a year and is open irregularly for the remainder.
Barack Obama took the oath of office as President for the first of four times on January 20, 2009. He had a do-over with Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts the next day in the Map Room of the White House.
In 2009 Obama and French president Sarkozy were caught in a photo with the backside of a young, 17-year old Brazilian girl.
Baby’s got back!
In an appearance on “The Colbert Report”, Stephen Colbert got historian/announcer David McCullough to recite the phrase “My anaconda don’t want none / Unless you got buns, Hon” from Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back”.
David McCullough won two Pulitzer Prizes for his books, Truman and John Adams.