Dmitri Shostakovich’s best-known opera was*** Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk***, which told the story of an unfaithful wife who murdered her husband and father-in-law.
Despite its popularity, the opera was banned in the Soviet Union for nearly 30 years.
Curtis K. Hughes’ Kickstarter-funded opera “Say It Ain’t So, Joe”, setting the Sarah Palin vs. Joe Biden debate in the 2008 vice-presidential campaign to music, premiered with Boston’s Guerrilla Opera in 2009.
Joe Howe was the leader of the fight for responsible government in Nova Scotia, leading to Nova Scotia becoming the first British colony to achieve self-government in 1849, a few months before the Province of Canada did.
ETA: my post about D-Day Dodgers was supposed to respond to ** St Cad**‘s post about the Mets’ cap, but trivia is moving quickly this morning!
Jimmy Carter, asked what he thought of the Oscar-winning movie Argo, said it didn’t give enough credit to Canada for helping the U.S. diplomats escape from Tehran.
Demigods among the crew of the Argo (according to various sources) included Zeus’s sons Heracles, Castor and Pollux; Poseidon’s boys Erginus and Neleus; Hephaestus’s kid Palaimonius; Dionysus’s bastards Eurymedon and Phlias, Helios’s offspring Thersanon; and Boreas’s lads Calais and Zetes. Jason’s folks were only human.
Popeye’s girlfriend, Olive Oyl, was the daughter of Cole Oyl and Nana Oyl and the sister of Castor Oyl. Castor’s estranged wife, Cylinda Oyl, Olive’s nieces Diesel Oyl and Violet Oyl, and her two uncles, Otto Oyl and intrepid explorer Lubry Kent Oyl, have also appeared in the comics.
Kent McCord of Adam-12 fame appeared in over 40 episodes of The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet as one of Ricky Nelson’s fraternity brothers. He got his start on that show because he was one of Ricky’s bodyguards.
Kent McCord’s Adam 12 co-star Martin Milner played Philip Kent in The Seekers, a TV miniseries based on book 3 of the bestselling ‘Kent Family Chronicles’ by John Jakes; the role had been played in the first two movies, The Bastard and The Rebels, by ubiquitous '70s/'80s heart throb Andrew Stevens.
An old Boston-area slang term for firefighters, “Jakes”, remains in occasional use by headline writers. The name may originate with “J-key”, part of a now-obsolete system for telegraphing the firehouse with streetside boxes. A “good Jake” could remain calm under pressure when communicating from the scene back to HQ.
Actor Jake Gyllenhaal received his first driving lesson from his godfather, Paul Newman.
From 1996-1998 Wayne Knight had reoccuring roles as a government employee both on Seinfeld as lettter carrier Newman and 3rd Rock From the Sun as police officer Don Orville.
The Atomic Knight first appeared in a science fiction comic book about the adventures of a group of soldiers in a post-nuclear-war America. Their leader, Gardner Grayle, discovered some ancient armor that protected them from radiation and fought to help rebuild society.
Gardner Grayle was named after Gardner Fox, one of the main writers who helped usher in the Silver Age of comics.
In the coinage of George R.R. Martin’s Westeros, a Stag is a very small silver coin worth 56 pennies; a Moon is a large silver coin worth 7 stags, and a Dragon is a gold coin worth 30 moons (or 210 Stags or 11,760 pennies).
According to a report filed in the Marine Observer in April 1934, several people aboard the SS Transylvania in the North Atlantic in May 1933 observed a strange orange ray projecting upward from the moon. The ray lasted nearly 15 minutes before disappearing. This incident has never been explained.
15 minutes of fame is short-lived media publicity or celebrity of an individual or phenomenon. The expression was coined by Andy Warhol, who said in 1968 that “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”
During the height of his Taxi fame, Andy Kaufman worked part-time at The World Famous Jerry’s Deli on Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles as a busboy just to stay grounded.
Ben and Jerry’s main ice cream plant is in Waterbury, Vt. Factory tours are the most popular Vermont tourist attraction, and employees are permitted to take a pint of ice cream home for free every day, if they wish.
Ben Stiller holds a distinct Razzie Award record – nominated for the most titles in one year. He was nominated in 2004 for Worst Actor in five of the six films in which he appeared in 2004: Along Came Polly; Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy; Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (which we loved); Envy; and Starsky & Hutch (which we also liked). The only film he was not nominated in for that year was Meet the Fockers.
Starsky and Hutch actor David Soul’s brother is Pastor Dan Solberg of San Francisco’s St.Paulus Lutheran Church.