Crescent City, California is about as far northwest as you can get in the state - pretty much. It’s a temperate place. The highest temperature recorded in Crescent City was 93 °F (34°C), observed on 24 September 1964, 1 June 1970, and 10 October 1991. The lowest temperature on record was 19 °F (−7°C) on 21 December 1990.
Croissants first became popular in Vienna, where they were eaten as a sign of contempt for the Austrian Empire’s greatest enemies, the Ottoman Turks, whose symbol was the crescent moon.
The famous movie director Fritz Lang was born in Vienna.
In 1972, New York Yankee pitchers Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich traded wives.
Kekich didn’t remain with Marilyn Peterson for long, but Peterson is still married to Kekich’s ex, Susanne, today.
The Dukakis presidential campaign had “I Like Mike” buttons made during the 1988 election, but they were never as popular or as widely-distributed as the 1952 and 1956 “I Like Ike” buttons.
Frederick Eikerenkoetter became one of America’s most famous TV and radio evangelists under the nickname “Reverend Ike.”
In addition to the devices that bear his name, Rube Goldberg also wrote and illustrated Boob McNutt, Foolish Questions and Ike and Mike (They Look Alike), from where “Mike and Ike Candy” got its name.
The Goldberg Variations by Johann Sebastian Bach is a set of 30 different variations on a single aria, arranged for harpsichord. The Variations are named after Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who may have been the first performer.
Pizzaria owner and diet book author Larry Goldberg was born and reared in Kansas City. Calvin Trillin, the writer for The New Yorker, was a friend, and often featured him in his work, especially in ‘‘American Stories,’’ a collection of profiles of eccentrics and miscreants.
Comedian, actor and playwright Steve Martin has had several short stories published in The New Yorker.
Steve Martin’s first job was at Disneyland, when at 10 years old he sold guidebooks during school breaks. He learned magic tricks and started doing tricks when he was 15 years old at Disneyland.
On Disneyland’s Main Street there’s a Disney museum that shows the young Martin performing magic.
You can also see Steve Martin here, in a home movie about a family visit to Disneyland, made public years later: DISNEYLAND DREAM STEVE MARTIN - YouTube
The one thing Nikita Khrushchev wanted to do in his 1959 visit to Hollywood was to visit Disneyland, but the police chief refused to guarantee his security. He devoted much of a speech at a luncheon with Hollywood icons, including Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, Bob Hope, Gary Cooper, and Charlton Heston to the slight. At one point, Nina Khrushchev told David Niven that she really was disappointed that she couldn’t see Disneyland. Hearing that, Sinatra, who was sitting next to Mrs. Khrushchev, leaned over and whispered in Niven’s ear: “Screw the cops! Tell the old broad that you and I will take ‘em down there this afternoon.”
A 19-year-old Frank Sinatra Jr was kidnapped on December 9, 1963. He was released two days later after a US$240,000 ransom was paid by his family.
Dr. Elwood Ransom was the protagonist of C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Truth).
The Godfather trilogy was nominated for a total of 28 Oscars – 10 for The Godfather, 11 for The Godfather Part II and seven for The Godfather Part III.
At the conclusion of James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan trilogy, young William “Studs” Lonigan dies of pneumonia.
George Washington died of pneumonia.
When George Washington Carver was a few days old during the Civil War, he and his brother and sister and their mother were stolen from the plantation where they lived, probably by Confederate guerillas from the Arkansas-Missouri border. His older brother escaped, but his mother and sister were never found. George and his brother were raised by their former owners in the house with the owners’ own children; per very longstanding rumor, George was castrated as a young boy as he frequently shared a room and sometimes a bed with their daughter.
A castrato is a man with a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto. The voice is produced by castration of the singer before puberty, or it occurs in one who, because of an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.