In the early-to-mid 1970s, students at Indiana University in Bloomington published an underground satirical newspaper called The Bulletin of the Society for Higher Intellectual Thought. The Bull.-S.H.I.T. didn’t survive the Disco age.
The founder of the Jesuits, aka the Society of Jesus, was Ignatius of Loyola, a former soldier of Basque descent.
Pablo Picasso’s painting “Guernica” was a reaction to the German bombing of the Basque market town of that name during the Spanish Civil War. This was a terror bombing – the attack was planned on a market day when the town square would be filled with people.
David Jenkins and Cory Lenos are the leaders of the soft rock group Pablo Cruise, whose biggest hit was “Whatcha Gonna Do?” in 1977.
The Steve McQueen film The Sand Pebbles gets its title from the nickname the sailors aboard the fictional USS San Pablo, the “Sand Pebble”, gave themselves. McQueen played a rebellious (of course) enlisted man on her during her service with the Asiatic Fleet on the Yangtze River in the 1920’s.
McQueen was offered the lead role in Breakfast at Tiffany’s but was unable to accept due to his Wanted: Dead or Alive contract (the role went to George Peppard). He also turned down parts in Ocean’s Eleven, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Driver, Apocalypse Now, California Split, Dirty Harry, A Bridge Too Far, and The French Connection (he did not want to do another cop film).
At the end of the original Ocean’s Eleven, all of the money Frank Sinatra’s gang stole was burned up, as it had been stashed in the coffin of a deceased comrade whose body was cremated.
Norman Fell, who later gained greater fame as Stanley Roper in Three’s Company, played Peter Rheimer, one of Ocean’s 11.
On Norman Rockwell’s birthday, February 3, 2010, Google featured Rockwell’s iconic image of young love “Boy and Girl Gazing at the Moon”, which is also known as “Puppy Love”, on its home page. The response was so great that day that the Norman Rockwell museum’s servers went down under the onslaught.
Puppy love is an old term or phrase referring to two young people newly in love. It is also referred to as ‘new love’ or being ‘in love’. There is even an old famous song called Puppy Love by Donny Osmond of the famous Donny & Marie Osmond duo.
Donny Osmond is mentioned in the songs “Life Is a Rock but the Radio Rolled Me” by Reunion and “Department of Youth” by Alice Cooper.
When playwright Charlie MacArthur first met his future wife Helen Hayes at a party he tenderly grasped her hand, held it palm up, and poured some peanuts into it, saying “I wish these were emeralds.” (Now that was a great pick-up line)
Word got around, and for some time the couple could not go to a bar or restaurant without being deluged with food-colored green peanuts.
Later during WWII MacArthur, already a veteran of the Pershing expedition in Mexico and of WWI, reupped and found himself in the exotic China-Burma-India war theater, a part of the world famous for precious gem production.
Sure enough, when the war was over the first thing MacArthur did upon reunion with his wife was grasp her hand, hold it palm up, and pour a bag full of emeralds into it. Only this time his comment was: “I wish these were peanuts.”
Northwestern University awarded Charlie McCarthy the honorary degree of Master of Innuendo and Snappy Comeback. (Edgar Bergen was an alumnus of the university.)
Baldwin Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, changed its name to Baldwin Wallace University in July 2012.
Before entering Shrewsbury monastery, Cadfael participated in the First Crusade, staying on in the Holy Land after the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem was established under Baldwin I.
The term “crusade” is derived from the French term for taking up the cross.
Odo de Conteville, Bishop of Bayeux, helped his half-brother William the Bastard conquer England, became Earl of Kent, Regent of England, and one of the richest men. He hoped to become King on his half-brother’s death, and also pursued a campaign to become Pope. Disgraced and disinherited, in old age he joined his half-nephew, Robert of Normandy, on the First Crusade but died en route in Sicily.
The Overlord Embroidery, on display at the D-Day Museum in Portsmouth, England, was commissioned by Lord Dulverton of Batsford as a tribute to the sacrifice and heroism of those who took part. Inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, which commemorates the only previous successful invasion across the English Channel, it traces in stunning visual form the progress of Overlord, from its origins in the dark days of 1940 to victory in Normandy in 1944.
If you’re staying at the Hotel de Brunville in Bayeux, ask for room 503; it has a nice balcony (the only room so designed) where you can sit out and enjoy a glass of wine.
In the Bayeux Tapestry, Bishop Odo is seen “encouraging” some of the the Normans by waving a club at them: HIC ODO EPS [EPISCOPUS] BACULUM TENENS CONFORTAT PUEROS (“Here Bishop Odo, holding a staff, encourages the young men”).