The mother of Bud Abbott, he of Abbott and Costello fame, was a bareback rider for the Ringling Bothers Circus.
Abbott Labs was founded in 1888 by Dr. Wallace Calvin Abbott. Abbott graduated from the University of Michigan three years earlier.
Nitpick: It’s Boston Common: Boston Common - Wikipedia
In play:
The USS Michigan was, by treaty with the British Empire, for many years the only U.S. Navy warship on the Great Lakes.
Oliver Hazard Perry is called “The Hero of Lake Erie” for winning decisive lake battles against the British during the War of 1812. Perry commanded the USS Niagara.
A working salt mine more than 2000 feet deep is located under downtown Cleveland, Ohio and extends more than 4 miles north under Lake Erie.
Thanks. Those damn Yankees are always trying to trip me up. And you’re one of them too! Gah! :eek:
In play: Ermal Fraze invented the pop-top can in Kettering, Ohio.
Cool. That was in 1959.
In play: The first tin cans were so thick they had to be hammered open. As cans became thinner, it became possible to invent dedicated can openers. In 1858, Ezra Warner of Waterbury, Connecticut patented the first can opener. The U.S. military used it during the Civil War.
Tin Can Sailors is the name of The National Association of Destroyer Veterans in the United States. US Navy destroyers are nicknamed “tin cans” for their thin, light hulls that allow high speed.
Originally tin cans were sealed with lead. The 1845 arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin got stuck in the ice and all 129 men died. A 1981 study of the bodies concluded that lead poisoning from the canned food on which the party subsisted for three years was contributing factor to their deaths.
Former President Millard Fillmore ran for President in 1856 as the candidate of the anti-immigrant American (“Know-Nothing”) Party.
Benjamin Franklin served as the Continental Congress’s envoy to the Kingdom of France during the American Revolution, and played a key role in securing French financial, military and naval assistance for the Patriot cause.
Writers from France have won 13 Nobel Prizes for Literature, beginning with the very first one, which went to Sully Prudhomme.
Drag racer Don “The Snake” Prudhomme had an intense rivalry with Tom “The Mongoose” McEwen. Mattel issued Hot Wheels versions of their cars in 1970, both Prudhomme’s Plymouth Barracuda and McEwen’s Plymouth Duster.
There have been four warships named USS Plymouth to serve in the United States Navy, the most recent of which was a patrol gunboat lost to a German U-boat attack in August 1943.
Jim Morrison, George Harrison, Janis Joplin, and Mick Jagger were all born in 1943.
Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ben Bernie, Lorenz Hart and Fats Waller all died in 1943.
Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart wrote Thou Swell, a song recorded by Fats Waller and his Louisiana Sugarbabies.
Jackie Gleason played pool shark Minnesota Fats opposite Paul Newman in The Hustler.
Pool player Ralph Wanderone went by various nicknames like “New York Fats” up until 1961, when The Hustler was released. He then started going by “Minnesota Fats.”
In a commercial for the tabletop game Skittle Pool, Don Adams took on an opponent named “Wisconsin Skinny”, an obvious play on “Minnesota Fats”.