In 2006, former American Idol contestant and celebrity aberration William Hung was crowned Artichoke King.
William Hurt is a fluent French speaker.
Frank “The Big Hurt” Thomas and Jeff Bagwell, the AL and NL Most Valuable Players of 1994, were both born on the same date: May 27, 1968.
On May 27, 1968, The National League awared major league franchises to both Montreal & SD.
Major General George Henry Thomas, a native of Virginia who remained loyal to the United States during the Civil War, earned the nickname “The Rock of Chickamauga” for his stalwart stand on Snodgrass Hill.
New York Giants outfielder Fred Snodgrass was given much of the blame personally for losing the 1912 World Series to the Boston Red Sox. In the 10th inning of the deciding Game 8 (the WS was then best five out of nine), he dropped a routine fly ball by Clyde Engel, pinch hitting for pitcher Smokey Joe Wood, that eventually allowed the tying and winning runs to score. The error was nicknamed “the $30,000 muff” for the difference between winning and losing shares for the players.
In the wardrobe accounts of Henry Prince of VVales for 1608 the prices of two muffs are set down. The most expensive cost £7-a very big sum in those days.
Whenever Katherine of Aragon received correspondence or documents from Henry VIII after he annulled their marriage she was always addressed as “Katherine, Dowager Princess of Wales” (or some synonym or spelling thereof, either in English or in Latin), the only English title Henry conceded she was entitled to as widow of his brother, Prince Arthur. Katherine consistently marked through every use of “Dowager Princess of Wales” and wrote in “the Queen” and signed herself as such in all return documents and correspondence, over which Henry or one of his secretaries would scratch out and write “Dowager Princess of Wales”.
Empress Dowarger Cixi, widow of Emperor Guangxu, was the penultimate ruler of China under the Qing dynasty, before abdicating in favor of his child nephew Puyi, the last officlal Emperor. His story was told in Bernardo Bertolucci’s film * Last Emperor*.
Both Bernardo Bertolucci and horror director Dario Argento received credit for devising the storyline of Sergio Leone’s “Spaghetti Western” Once Upon a Time in the West.
The 1960s Spaghetti Western Django and Tarantino’s 2012 Django Unchained share the same theme song and both feature Franco Nero, who starred in the first and has a cameo in the second. Nero does not play the same character, but in interviews has said that in his own envisioned non-canonical backstory his character is Django’s biological father.
Django Reinhardt, a pioneering French Romani jazz guitarist who often played with violinist Stephane Grappelli, was unable to use two fingers on his left hand due to injuries in a fire in his family’s caravan outside Paris. Despite staying in France during the Nazi occupation, he survived the Porajmos, the roundup and ethnic cleansing of most of occupied Europe’s Roma.
Queen’s 1978 ***Jazz ***album came with a photo of an all-female nude bicycle race staged at Wembley Stadium.
Though the album sold well, reviews were largely negative, with Rolling Stone going so far as to call Queen a “truly fascist” band.
Roderick Spode, 7th Earl of Sidcup, is the leader of the Black Shorts, a fascist group, in Wodehouse’s stories about Jeeves and Wooster.
Jeeves explains to Bertie that they wear black shorts in their marches (a play on Mussolini’s Black Shirts).
“Footer bags, you mean?” says Bertie. “How perfectly foul.”
The 1973 song “The Cover of the Rolling Stone”, recorded by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show, was parodied by Buck Owens as “On the Cover of the Music City News”.
ETA: Ninja’d!
In play: Spode is a pottery company based in the English city of Stoke-on-Trent.
A Bank of Korea report published on May 14, 2008 investigating 41 countries showed there were 5,586 companies older than 200 years. From these, 3,146 were located in Japan, 837 in Germany, 222 in the Netherlands and 196 in France. 89.4% of the companies with more than 100 years of history were businesses employing fewer than 300 people. A nationwide Japanese survey counted more than 21,000 companies older than 100 years as of September 30, 2009, with the construction company Kongo Gumi the oldest in the world, having been established in AD 578 (and wholly independent until falling on hard times and being absorbed as a subsidiary of Takamatsu Corporation seven years ago).
Willem-Alexander is the first King of the Netherlands in 123 years. The last king was his great-great-grandfather, William III, who died in 1890. Since Willem-Alexander does not have a son, but three daughters, it is likely that the next monarch of the Netherlands will be another Queen.
Freddie Mercury, best known as the lead singer of the British rock band Queen, was born in Zanizibar. His birth name was Farrokh Bulsara.
In 1964, Zanzibar and Tanganyika merged to become the new African nation of Tanzania.
The Second Congo War, which began in 1998 and involved eight African nations, is the largest war in African history. An estimated 5.4 million people died as a result of the war and its aftermath, making it the deadliest worldwide conflict since World War II. The war officially ended in 2006, but hostilities still continue today.