Gene Stratton Porter’s The Girl of the Limberlost is a novel about a teenager in Michigan who collected and sold butterflies and moths to pay for her education.
John Fowles’s novel The Collector is about Frederick Clegg, a man who starts collecting butterflies, wins a lotto, becomes obsessed with a young woman, kidnaps her and holds her until she dies of pneumonia.
Blacklisted during the McCarthy “Red Scare” era in the early 1950s for his left-wing political beliefs, the actor John Garfiield adamantly refused to “name names” in testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in April 1951. He was found dead of a heart attack in the apartment of a former showgirl, Iris Whitney, at age 39 on May 21, 1952, the day after Clifford Odets, testifying before HUAC, reaffirmed that Garfield had never been a member of the Communist Party. His funeral in New York was mobbed by thousands of fans.
Many patients died under the care of nurse Charlie Cullen. Although by November 2004 he pled guilty to killing 22 patients he likely killed about 400 patients between 1988 and 2004.
Daisuke Mori is a Japanese nurse, who was convicted for giving lethal doses of the muscle relaxant drug Vecuronium to his patients in a clinic in Izumi-ku, Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture. He was suspected as a medical serial killer, though he was convicted of only one murder.
Japan has the highest life expectancy in the world (as of 2011), nominally surpassed by tiny city-states like Andorra and Macau but by no other proper nation. Japanese live on average 4 years longer than US citizens, 3 years longer than the Germans, the Belgians or the Brits, 2 years more than the Italians and 1 year longer than the French.
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Charlie Cullen also used vecuronium, and also insulin and digoxin and other meds to commit his murders.
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Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not “Every man for himself.” And the London Underground is not a political movement.
in A Fish Called Wanda (quoted above), John Cleese’s character is Archie Leach, which was Cary Grant’s real name.
Archie Leach had decided to call himself Cary Lockwood, but Paramount Studios gave their new actor a list of surnames to choose from because although they liked Cary, Lockwood sounded too similar to other actors’ names. Leach selected “Grant” because the initials C and G had already proved lucky for Clark Gable and Gary Cooper, two of Hollywood’s biggest film stars.
2001: A Space Odyssey costars Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood have remained friends over the years, still keep in touch socially, and regularly see each other at science fiction conventions.
The Honda Odyssey is a minivan sold internationally since 1994. It is built in Guangzhou, China, and Lincoln, Alabama, and Sayama, Saitama, Japan.
Lincoln green was the traditional colour worn by Robin Hood and his Merry Men.
Burt Ward, who played Robin in the 1966-1968 TV series, originally spelled his name Bert, but changed it to Burt because he thought it had more “punch.”
The destroyer USS Ward fired the first American shots of World War II, when she sank a Japanese midget submarine attempting to slip into Pearl Harbor several hours before the Japanese airstrike began on Dec. 7, 1941.
The USS Ward was built at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo CA. Mare Island was the first Navy Base in the CONUS built along the Pacific Ocean and is 25 miles from San Francisco.
Mare Winningham and Kevin Spacey played the leads, Maria and Captain von Trapp, in the production by Chatsworth High School (Northridge, CA) of The Sound of Music, in their senior year there. Her real breakthrough role was in St. Elmo’s Fire, opposite Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, and Ally Sheedy.
The Northridge Earthquake of 17 Jan 1994 struck at 0431hrs PST. Its epicenter was in Reseda, CA, about 20 miles NW of downtown LA and very close to the intersection of Reseda Blvd. and Strathern Street (although 10 miles underground of this intersection). The quake lasted 10-20 seconds and was felt as far away as Las Vegas, 220 miles away. The quake’s ground acceleration was one of the highest ever recorded for an urban area and measured 1.8g.
The Reseda Country Club, of Boogie Nights fame, was a well-known concert venue during the Los Angeles punk rock and New Wave scenes of the 1980s. Located at the intersection of Canby Avenue and Sherman Way, the Country Club was host to bands, including Oingo Boingo, U2, Culture Club, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, and Roxy Music, from 1980 to 198. The building is currently being used as a Spanish-speaking Christian church.
The Surf Ballroom (the Surf) is a Historic Rock and Roll Landmark and concert venue at 460 North Shore Drive, Clear Lake, Iowa where Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and The Big Bopper performed just before The Day The Music Died on the night of February 3, 1959 when their plane crashed in a corn field about 5 miles north of town.