The modern, rear-wheel-driven bicycle was a Scottish invention, brought to us in 1839 by Kirkpatrick Macmillan, a blacksmith in Keir, Dumfries-shire.
Keir Hardie was the first Labour MP elected to the British House of Commons.
General William Hardee wrote a standard textbook on rifle tactics and rifle drills that was used by both sides during the U.S. Civil War; Hardee himself fought for the Confederacy. He later wrote a history of the Irish in America.
The Hardee’s fast food chain began in 1960 in Greenville, North Carolina.
Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, carried North Carolina’s Electoral College votes in the 2008 election but lost them in 2012, despite the Democratic National Convention being held in Charlotte, N.C.
Charlotte, NC, and Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, are both named for Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III.
Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte was originally supposed to star Bette Davis and Joan Crawford to capitalize on the success of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, but Crawford left the production less than a week into filming and was replaced with fellow '30s star who had turned to thrillers, (the still living and fabulous) Olivia DeHavilland.
In 1989, the year she died, a very old Bette Davis was one of the first celebrity guests of a very young David Letterman, and crossly told him to sit down when he was trying to help her into her seat.
Bette Midler made her Broadway debut in the cast of the original run of Fiddler on the Roof, joining as one of the villagers. She was later given the role of Tzeitel, Tevye’s oldest daughter, and sang a solo in “Matchmaker, Matchmaker.”
Sholem Aleichem (real name Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich), whose short stories were the basis for Fiddler on the Roof, was sometimes called “The Jewish Mark Twain”; Twain was actually a fan and helped Rabinovich meet English language publishers and others who could help him when he refugeed to NYC to escape the same pogroms that force Tevye and his family to leave Russia.
Mark Wahlberg and some friends were booked to fly on one of the planes that crashed into the twin towers on September 11, 2001. Originally planning on flying from Boston to Los Angeles, at the last minute they decided to charter a plane to Toronto, Canada for a film festival and then go from there to Los Angeles.
During the War of 1812, Toronto, then known as York, was the capital of the new colony of Upper Canada and was burned by the Americans. York became incorporated in 1834 and named Toronto to distinguish it from New York City.
The Constitution of Canada provides that any legal document which uses the term “Upper Canada” instead of “Ontario” is nonetheless valid.
The Los Angeles suburb of Ontario takes its name from the Ontario Model Colony development established in 1882 by the Canadian engineer George Chaffey and his brothers William and Charles. They named the settlement after their home province of Ontario, Canada.
Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, house of Windsor, is the longest-serving heir apparent in British history.
The name of the Man With Three Buttocks, in the famed Monty Python sketch, was Arthur Frampton.
Is that a verb now?
In play:
American novelist Thomas Berger wrote Arthur Rex, a funny, occasionally crude 1978 retelling of Arthurian legend. His chapter on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was originally excerpted in Playboy magazine.
John Belushi’s last film, Neighbors, where he played a homeowner whose life was turned upside down when some new neighbors moved in. The film got bad reviews, most complaining that Belushi was miscast and should have been cast in the role given to his friend Dan Aykroyd. But the two had decided to switch roles, with Aykroyd playing the wild and outrageous Captain Vic and Belushi playing the more mundane Earl. Aykroyd, however, looked much more like the character of Vic in the Thomas Berger novel.
Perhaps Thomas Berger’s best-known work is the revisionist Western novel Little Big Man, later made into an acclaimed movie with Dustin Hoffman in the lead role.
The Little Bighorn River, site of the battle most commonly known as “Custer’s Last Stand,” is the tributary of The Bighorn River, which was named by trader François Larocque for the Bighorn Sheep he saw along its banks.