Alphonso Taft, the father of future President Taft, served three months as secretary of war in Grant’s cabinet and then moved over to be Grant’s last attorney general.
Ulysses Grant was the first president to have both parents living at the time of his election. To date, the only other presidents to enter office with both of his parents alive are John F. Kennedy and George W. Bush.
Catharine Lorre was the ill-fated only child of actor Peter Lorre; her mother was his third wife, Anne Marie Brenner. Both of her parents died when she was a minor- her father when she was 11 and her mother 3 years later- and in an odd twist of events Catharine was taken in by Peter’s first wife, Austrian born actress Celia Lovsky, who she called “Mumili” and sometimes referred to as her grandmother. (She was not actually Catharine’s legal guardian, but she provided a part of her house for Catharine and her court appointed guardian to live in rent free and she lived there as well.)
Swiss-born Fritz Brenner was detective Nero Wolfe’s personal chef and housekeeper.
Mrs. Danvers is the creepy housekeeper of Manderley in Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel Rebecca. She was played by Dame Judith Anderson in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film.
The only Alfred Hitchcock movie to win a Best Picture Oscar is Rebecca in 1940.
<too slow>
The painter Claude Monet was called Oscar by his parents. He was baptized Oscar-Claude Monet.
The Palazzio Barberini houses the Italian Institute of Numismatics.
Prior to the election of Poland’s Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, who served as Pope John Paul II, the last Pope who was NOT Italian was the Dutchman Adriaan Boeyens, who kept his own name and served as Pope Adrian VI, from 1522-1523.
Pope Adrian VI and Pope Marcellus II are the only two modern popes to retain their baptismal names after election.
Pope Benedict XVI’s papal coat of arms shows the head of a Moor, a scallop and a bear.
The Touchdown Tavern in Reedsville, Wisconsin includes the Agnes Moorehead Lounge, containing memorabilia from the career of the longtime film actress who was nevertheless best known for playing Endora, Samantha’s mother on “Bewitched”.
Among the many denizens of Okefenokee Swamp in Walt Kelly’s Pogo were three bats, named “Bewitched,” “Bothered,” and “Bemildred.” Readers had a hard time telling the three apart, and bats themselves had problems.
Bewitched co-star Dick Sargent was once married to actress/writer Fannie Flagg. After their divorce, both came out of the closet as gay.
Massachusetts governor Francis Sargent, a liberal environmentalist Republican from the time when that wasn’t inconceivable, had been an MIT Architecture Department classmate of I.M. Pei, and delivered the keynote speech at the school on the first Earth Day in 1970 . His reforms included the prison-furlough program that was highly successful in reducing recidivism, but nevertheless was successfully used politically against a successor of the other party, Mike Dukakis, who had nothing to do with it either way.
In Graham Lord’s*** A Racing Life***, a biography of jockey/writer Dick Francis, it is alleged that Francis’ mystery novels were largely written by his wife Mary, a woman who was afraid of horses.
Thomas Mitchell, who won an Oscar for Stagecoach in 1939 but is most famous for play Scarlett’s horse loving father Gerald in Gone With the Wind that same year, had a near phobia of horses, yet had to be near them in several scenes. (His riding was done by stuntmen, of course.)
They weren’t married, but they did “date” for publicity.
I’ll take your word for it- I’ve never seen their marriage certificate. But back in the Seventies, I definitely saw them claiming to be a married couple on various TV game shows.
I’m quite prepared to believe it was all an act.
Wells Fargo posted these rules of conduct in their stagecoaches:
- Abstinence from liquor is requested, but if you must drink share the bottle. To do otherwise makes you appear selfish and unneighborly.
- If ladies are present, gentlemen are urged to forego smoking cigars and pipes as the odor of same is repugnant to the gentler sex. Chewing tobacco is permitted, but spit with the wind, not against it.
- Gentlemen must refrain from the use of rough language in the presence of ladies and children.
- Buffalo robes are provided for your comfort in cold weather. Hogging robes will not be tolerated and the offender will be made to ride with the driver.
- Don’t snore loudly while sleeping or use your fellow passenger’s shoulder for a pillow; he or she may not understand and friction may result.
- Firearms may be kept on your person for use in emergencies. Do not fire them for pleasure or shoot at wild animals as the sound riles the horses.
- In the event of runaway horses remain calm. Leaping from the coach in panic will leave you injured, at the mercy of the elements, hostile Indians and hungry coyotes.
- Forbidden topics of conversation are: stagecoach robberies and Indian uprisings.
- Gents guilty of unchivalrous behavior toward lady passengers will be put off the stage. It’s a long walk back. A word to the wise is sufficient.
Hmmm. :dubious:
In play:
The plight of the American buffalo, hunted to near-extinction in the late 1800s, is mentioned in the 1966 Star Trek episode “The Man Trap.” Fortunately, buffalo have come roaring back in numbers since then, and there are healthy-sized herds in many Plains states.