Following the Everly Brothers’ angry breakup in the 1970s, Don Everly toured as a solo artist. Future Fleetwood Mac leader Lindsay Buckingham was the lead guitarist in his band and sang Phil Everly’s high harmony parts in concert for a few years.
Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were in a band called Fritz prior to both Buckingham Nicks and Fleetwood Mac. They opened for Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix in the San Francisco Bay area.
Fritz the Cat, released in 1972, was the first animated feature film to receive an X rating in the United States.
Robert Crumb, Fritz the Cat’s creator, was so upset with the movie version that he killed off Fritz in the next comic.
According to director Fritz Lang himself, on March 25, 1933, two days after The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) had been banned, he was summoned to the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda to meet with Josef Goebbels himself. Goebbels explained the reason for the ban (the Nazi party slogans are fed into the mouth of the villain at the film’s conclusion) and apologized to Lang. He then shocked Lang by offering him the position of production supervisor at the UFA studios, where his first film would be a biography of Wilhelm Tell. Lang claims he suspected a trap and attempted to throw off Goebbels by telling him, “My mother had Jewish parents,” to which Goebbels responded, “We’ll decide who’s Jewish!” Lang then expressed interest in the position and said he needed some time to think it over. He describes how he looked at a clock and how during the entire meeting all he could think about was leaving as soon as possible so he could get to the bank and flee with all of his money. Lang says he didn’t get there in time so he sold his wife’s jewelry, boarded a train to Paris that same evening, leaving most of his money and personal possessions behind, along with his wife, Thea von Harbou, who divorced him later that year and went on to write and direct films for the Nazi propaganda machine. This story is possibly exaggerated by Lang for dramatic effect, because there is evidence he left weeks after that.
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Chicago native Laurence Tureaud, a former bar bouncer and bodyguard later known as Mr. T, achieved his breakthrough acting success as boxer Clubber Lang in Rocky III. He later hosted a reality show titled “I Pity the Fool”, taken from one of his lines as Lang. He copied his trademark hairstyle from an old National Geographic photo of a Mandinka warrior.
National Geographic’s first full-color photograph, “A Flower Garden in Ghent,” was published in the July 1914 issue.
Prince John of Gaunt, founder of the Lancastrian line of Plantagenets, was born in Ghent, which the English pronounced as “gaunt.” There is no evidence that Prince John was particularly skinny or malnourished.
The first instrument John Lennon learned to play was the harmonica.
Ralph Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold, Darius Milhaud and Arthur Benjamin all composed works for harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler. During the later stage of his career, Adler was known for his collaborations with popular musicians Sting, Elton John, Kate Bush, and Cerys Matthews.
European harmonica player Philip Achille, who performs Irish, Classical, Jazz, Qawali and Sufi music, has won jazz competitions and his classical performances have led to appearances on the BBC.
John Adams’ minimalist opera The Death of Klinghoffer is set aboard the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, which had been hijacked in the Mediterranean by the Palestine Liberation Front (not the PLO, those splitters).
Achille Poirot, reputed to be Hercule Poirot’s twin brother, made a brief, never repeated appearance in The Big Four.
A spoiler for Murder on the Orient Express occurs in Agatha Christie’s novel Cards on the Table.
British actor David Suchet, renowned for playing Agatha Christie’s famous Belgian (not French!) detective Hercule Poirot, recently took a trip in the Orient Express, and even had a turn at the engine’s controls, which left him giddy as a schoolboy.
For the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair, construction on the Belgian pavilion was not ready in time for the opening day. It was finally completed on the final day of the first year of the fair.
The first King of independent Belgium was Leopold I. He was originally going to be the prince consort of the future Queen Charlotte of the United Kingdom, but that plan foundered when she died in childbirth, her new-born child with her.
Charlotte, NC is the largest city in North Carolina and the 23rd largest in the US.
Charlotte is named for Queen Charlotte, who was Princess Charlotte’s grandmother.