Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell was the Lone Survivor of his team of four in a June 2005 skirmish in Afghanistan during Operation Red Wings. Luttrell’s book, Lone Survivor, describes the epic and his teammates. In Cupertino, CA there’s a statue and memorial of this team.
Sherlock Holmes’ friend Dr. John Watson served in Afghanistan with the British Army, and kept a revolver from his service days.
The famous quote about “the curious incident of the dog in the night time” is from the Sherlock Holmes story “Silver Blaze”.
It is not entirely true that the Basenji, a breed originating in central Africa, is the only dog breed that does not bark. Due to the shape of its larynx, it howls and produces a yodel-like vocalization called a “barroo”.
The Drake’s Yodel and the Hostess Ho Ho were both variations on the ever popular chocolate Swiss roll.
Jimmie Rodgers is often referred to as “The Father of Country Music,” making his name from his “Blue Yodel” series of 13 songs he recorded in the 1920s and 30s. The songs were in the 12-bar blues form, enhanced by Rodger’s yodeling in the chorus.
Jimmy Rodgers coached the Boston Celtics for two seasons and the Minnesota Timberwolves for a little more than one season. While Rodgers had only modest success as an NBA head coach, he served as an assistant on staffs that won six NBA Championships: 1981, 1984 and 1986 with the Celtics, and 1996, 1997, and 1998 with the Chicago Bulls.
The end of Celtic supremacy is often tied to the capture of Caratacus, King of the Catuvellauni. He was sent to Rome to be displayed and killed in a triumphal parade but was spared after his speech to the Roman Senate:
[QUOTE=Caratacus ap Cunobelinus, 51 AD (transcribed by Tacitus)]
If the degree of my nobility and fortune had been matched by moderation in success, I would have come to this City as a friend rather than a captive, nor would you have disdained to receive with a treaty of peace one sprung from brilliant ancestors and commanding a great many nations. But my present lot, disfiguring as it is for me, is magnificent for you. I had horses, men, arms, and wealth: what wonder if I was unwilling to lose them? If you wish to command everyone, does it really follow that everyone should accept your slavery? If I were now being handed over as one who had surrendered immediately, neither my fortune nor your glory would have achieved brilliance. It is also true that in my case any reprisal will be followed by oblivion. On the other hand, if you preserve me safe and sound, I shall be an eternal example of your clemency.
[/QUOTE]
Caratacus was so impressed by the grandeur of Rome, that he said “And how can you, then, who have got such possessions and so many of them, covet our poor tents?”
Dick Van Dyke took so much abuse for his awful Cockney accent in the movie Mary Poppins that he didn’t even ATTEMPT to sound English when he played Caractacus Potts in the movie version of Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
The thoroughbred racehorse Caractacus won the 1862 Epsom Derby.
In Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, the idealistic American soldier Edgar Derby, a former high school teacher, is shot by the Germans for “stealing” a teapot he’d found in the wreckage of Dresden.
When Kurt Vonnegut’s sister Alice Smith was in the hospital dying of cancer, her husband Jim was on a commuter train going over the Hudson River. The driver had a heart attack and went on an open drawbridge. Jim’s car went into the river and he drowned. Alice died 36 hours later.
Kurt and his wife Jane took in and adopted their four sons (though the youngest one was later giving to a cousin of Jim Smith’s whose wife was infertile). This was before Vonnegut was famous and rich, but a poor struggling writer.
The Tappan Zee (also Tappan Sea) is where the Hudson River is at its widest, about 3 miles across.
Slash, lead guitarist of Guns ‘n’ Roses, was born Saul Hudson, in London.
Rock Hudson tried out for roles in school plays but failed to win any because he could not remember lines.
Rock Hudson’s birth name was Roy Scherer, Jr. His stage name was from the Rock of Gibralter and the Hudson River.
Roy Rogers got his horse Trigger in 1938 and rode him in every one of his films and TV shows after that. Trigger had appeared in one earlier movie, ridden by Olivia de Havilland in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). The horse died in 1965 at age 33.
So far, there has never been a pair of brothers who have both won the Oscar as Best Actor, but there HAS been a pair of sisters who have both won the Oscar as Best Actress: Olivia de Haviland and Joan Fontaine.
The two sisters never much liked each other, and barely spoke over the last 30 years of their lives.
To correct the last post: de Haviland and Fontaine are both still alive, each having vowed not to die before the other. They were born in 1916 & 1917, and their feud started in the 1950’s.
You gotta love a feud that lasts over sixty years.
The youngest person ever to receive an Oscar was 5-year-old Shirley Temple, in 1934. However, that was an honorary Oscar. The youngest actress to win a standard Oscar was Tatum O’Neal, who was 10 years old when she won the Best Supporting Actress award for Paper Moon in 1974.