***The Muppet Show’s ***house band was Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, which featured Floyd on bass, Rowlf on piano, Janis on guitar, Zoot on sax, Animal on drums, and Dr. Teeth himself on organ and vocals.
Animal was the official mascot of the U.S. Ski Team during the 1998 Winter Olympics. He was also featured in one of eleven commemorative stamps issued by the U.S. Postal Service.
Actor Robert Strauss played Stanislaus “Animal” Kasava in both the original Broadway production of Stalag 17 and in the movie, for which he a won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.
Robert Todd Lincoln’s last public appearance was at the dedication of the Lincoln Monument, built in honor of his late father, in 1922.
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Chingachgook was the title character of James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans.
According to a local saying, Charleston, SC (hometown of Stephen Colbert) is where the Ashley River and the Cooper River join to form the Atlantic Ocean.
During his adolescence, Stephen Colbert briefly fronted a Rolling Stones cover band called A Shot in the Dark.
The second Pink Panther film, A Shot in the Dark, was adapted from a play. In the course of the adaptation, director Blake Edwards (and screen writer William Peter Blatty) decided to rework it to use the character of Clouseau, who was a supporting character in the original Pink Panther, and to spotlight Peter Sellers’s conception of the character. Most of the tropes associated with the character – Inspector Dreyfuss and Cato – were developed for this film.
The man known to history as William the Conqueror was Duke of Normandy before his 1066 invasion of England. He carried a special banner given to him by the Pope as a symbol of Rome’s approval of his claim to the throne.
The first Holy Roman Emperor was Charlemagne, and the last was Napoleon Bonaparte. All were crowned by whoever the Pope was at the time.
Napoleon did not assume title of Holy Roman Emperor, rather he forced its abolition, and the abolition of the synonymous state. Just as well- Voltaire was pretty much on the mark when he said the HRE was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
Napoleon was the first Emperor of the French. His son, Napoleon II, briefly held the title after his father’s abdication, but never actually ruled. Napoleon’s nephew later became Napoleon III.
President Jimmy Carter’s nephew, Willie Carter Spann, served time for armed robbery and shared protective custody inside the prison with cult killer Charles Manson.
Baseball left-handed pitcher Warren Spahn won 363 games in his career, the most in baseball history for a lefty. MLB awards the Warren Spahn Award to that season’s best left handed pitcher.
Spahn once said, “I played for Casey Stengel both before and after he was a genius.” Stengel was Spahn’s first major league manager with the Braves, and Spahn ended up years later with Stengel’s Mets. Neither team was very successful under him.
In 1887, National League star Mike “King” Kelly became famous—arguably the first baseball player to become so overnight—when Boston paid Chicago a record $10,000 for him. He had a personality that fans liked to cheer or jeer. He also is associated with “*Casey at the Bat,” *and a once well-known song and expression for avoiding danger, such as being tagged out: “*Slide, Kelly, Slide!” *
One of the most famous baseball poems, “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon”, commemorates the machine-like precision of the Chicago Cubs double-play from 1902 to 1910:
These are the saddest of possible words:
“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”
Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double –
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”
The above was written by noted columnist Franklin P. Adams. During its long run, “The Conning Tower” featured contributions from such writers as Robert Benchley, Edna Ferber, Moss Hart, George S. Kaufman, Edna St. Vincent Millay, John O’Hara, Dorothy Parker and Deems Taylor. Having one’s work published in “The Conning Tower” was enough to launch a career, as in the case of Dorothy Parker and James Thurber. Parker quipped, “He raised me from a couplet.” Parker dedicated her 1936 publication of collected poems, Not So Deep as a Well, to F.P.A. Many of the poems in that collection were originally published in “The Conning Tower”.
Most of the worthies listed above were participants in the Round Table in the Rose Room at New York’s Algonquin Hotel, noted (perhaps mostly by reputation) for witty repartee.