La Cucaracha (The Cockroach) is one of the best known tunes in America and is even something of a pop-culture stereotype in cartoons and sitcoms about Mexican Americans, but its origins are debated. It definitely goes back at least to the 19th century, but some sources believe a version of the song and dance existed in Spain before Columbus.
The adventures of archy the cockroach were illustrated by George Herriman, creator of Krazy Kat. Mehitabel, the cat who shares billing with archy (but who appears in only a handful of the essays) is clearly Krazy Kat.
The adventures of Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse, who was constantly throwing bricks at the clueless Krazy’s head, are echoed in “The Simpsons” as the cartoon “The Itchy and Scratchy Show”, although the later cartoons “Tom and Jerry” and “Herman and Katnip” are cited as direct antecedents.
Matt Groening is on record as saying he loves doing “The Itchy and Scratchy Show,” especially since the animation is “more cartoony” than The Simpsons.
Matt Groening named Homer and Marge Simpsons after his parents and Lisa and Maggie after two of his sisters, but the name Bart was chosen because it is an anagram of ‘brat’.
“Brat” is a common nickname for bratwurst, whose name comes from the Old High German Brätwurst, from *brät-, *which is finely chopped meat and Wurst, or sausage. The name has instead come to be associated with the German verb “braten”, which means to pan fry or roast.
Vegetarian “soya sausage” was invented 1916 in Germany. It was first known as Kölner Wurst (“Cologne Sausage”) by later German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967).
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the first woman to hold that office, and the first to have been born in what was then East Germany.
Besides the *Stasi *secret police and their steroid-pioneering Olympic teams, East Germany, the most prosperous of the Soviet-bloc nations, may be most remembered today for the Trabant, an alleged automobile with a lawnmower-sized two-stroke engine and a Duraplast (plastic-impregnated cardboard or cloth) body.
The Stasi had an extensive network of informants and kept voluminous files on the East German citizenry. After the collapse of the Communist state and the unification of East and West Germany, the law was changed to permit citizens to see their own Stasi files. Between 1991 and 2011, around 2.75 million people, mostly former East Germans, asked to do so.
The Pew Charitable Trusts estimates that 2.75 million people in the United States are registered to vote in more than one state, and more than 1.8 million deceased persons are registered as voters.
Mel Blanc voice Pepe le Pew, an amorous skunk who always seemed to find female black cats who somehow ended up with a stripe of paint down their backs.
Mel Blanc was the first voice actor to be credited in the ending credits.
World War Z and Zombie Survival Guide author Max Brooks is the son of Mel Brooks (born Melvin Kaminski) and Anne Bancroft (born Anna-Maria Italiano).
Anne Bancroft won the Best Actress Oscar for her role as Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker.
Captain and Mrs. Keller in the film Miracle Worker were played by Victor Jory, who played the overseer Jonas Wilkerson in Gone With the Wind, and Inga Swenson, who played the German housekeeper Gretchen Krauss on *Benson * and Hoss’s mother in a flashback episode of Bonanza.
The premature death, from complications of gall-bladder surgery, of Dan Blocker led the producers of Bonanza to kill off Hoss Cartwright, rather than re-cast the character or come up with some lame excuse for keeping him off-screen. Hoss was the first male main character to be killed (heroically in his case, drowning while trying to save a woman’s life) in a US series. Female characters had previously been killed on Make Room for Daddy and The Real McCoys.
Launched in 2000, the Hatfield and McCoy Reunion Festival and Marathon are held annually in June on a three-day weekend. The events take place in Pikeville, Kentucky, Matewan, West Virginia and Williamson, West Virgina. The festival commemorates the famed feud and includes a marathon and half-marathon (the motto is “No Feudin’, Just Runnin’”) in addition to an ATV ride in all three towns. There is also a tug-of-war across the Tug Fork tributary near which the feuding families lived, a live reenactment of scenes from their most famous fight, a motorcycle ride, live entertainment, Hatfield-McCoy landmark tours, a cornbread contest, pancake breakfast, arts, crafts and dancing.
The British experimental rock band Hatfield and the North took their name from a road sign on the A1 highway out of London.
In 1920, the world’s first airport opened in the London borough of Croydon, offering flights to Europe and, later, around the Empire.
(The old Don Muang Airport in Bangkok, which now serves low-cost carriers, actually opened earlier, in 1914, but only as a Royal Thai Air Force Base. It did not become a passenger airport until 1924.)