The skylight in the Great Hallof the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress was made by Tiffany & Company.
American character actor John McGiver appeared in countless movies and television shows (frequently as an Englishman, almost always as a pompous, imperious authority figure) over a long career, and was constantly recognized in public by people who could rarely remember his name.
That’s why he was the first “celebrity” hired to do one of American Express’ popular “Do You Know Me?” television commercials.
In 2009, Congress investigated the role of American Express and other credit card companies in assisting a scam by Webloyalty, Vertrue, and Affinion that cheated 30 million Americans. The investigation was led by Jay Rockefeller, Senator from West Virginia.
(It looks like Sampiro and astorian cross-posted. To avoid a break in the domino chain, I use words – Congress and American Express – from each of their posts.)
Walmart is the largest private employer in the state of West Virginia.
Virginia Dare, the first English child born in what’s now the United States of America, disappeared without a trace, along with her family and all the other settlers of the Roanoke colony.
The Virginia Board of Bar Examiners holds all of its tests for fledgling lawyers in the Roanoke Civic Center. The city of Roanoke is nowhere near the site of the Roanoke Colony.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? won both the 1963 Tony Award for Best Play and the 1962–‘63 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play. It is frequently revived on the modern stage. The film adaptation was released in 1966, written by Ernest Lehman, directed by Mike Nichols, and starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, George Segal and Sandy Dennis.
John George Diefenbaker was the only Prime Minister of Canada from Saskatchewan, representing the riding of Prince Albert and serving as Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963.
The Prince Albert (PA) is one of the more common male genital piercings.The PA is a ring-style piercing that extends along the underside of the glans from the urethral opening to where the glans meets the shaft of the penis.
Male seahorses are the only species males who experience pregnancy and give birth (at least I’ve never heard of any others).
Never-never Land was the home of Peter Pan, the Lost Boys, and Captain Hook and his crew.
According to Vincent Price, when he and Peter Lorre went to view Bela Lugosi’s body during Bela’s funeral, Lorre, upon seeing Lugosi dressed in his famous Dracula cape, quipped, “Do you think we should drive a stake through his heart just in case?”
As it happens, he died earlier this year: http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/03/us/etch-a-sketch-creator-death
That’s a smart business practice. Customers can find the store more easily when it doesn’t move around.
In play:
Martin Landau won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing Bela Lugosi in the heavily fictionalized Ed Wood.
At the time of his death of heart failure at age 54 – December 10, 1978 – the industry newspaper Variety failed to run Ed Wood’s obituary.
The Statute of Westminster, which came into force on December 11, 1931, established the modern Commonwealth by recognizing that the Dominions had full constitutional autonomy, and were equals to the United Kingdom itself.
Rita Moreno, winner of an Emmy, Tony, Oscar and Grammy, was born on December 11, 1931.
Gen. George Washington and the tattered Continental Army crossed the Delaware River on Christmas night and attacked the Hessian outpost of Trenton, N.J. on the morning of December 26, 1776, winning a badly-needed victory.
The Great Continental Divide of the Americas starts in the north in Alaska, at Cape Prince of Wales, which is also the westernmost point on the mainland of the Americas. Although it is a hydrological divide and represents the height of land between watersheds, it does not always follow the highest ranges/peaks within each state or province.
Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest was a British Law Lord. He took his title from the town of Borth-y-Gest in north Wales.
The Morris Mini-Minor, first sold in 1959, is the precursor to today’s Mini automobile.