After husband Charlie died in 1977, Oona Chaplin would often cheer herself up by watching episodes of Fawlty Towers.
Oona Chaplin was the daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neill.
Thomas “Tip” O’Neill, avuncular Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and prominent Democratic politico, held the Congressional seat once occupied by John F. Kennedy.
In 1990, the ABC program 20/20 was hoaxed into believing that Billy “Buckwheat” Thomas was alive and working as a grocery bagger in Tempe, Arizona. (He actually died in 1980 from a heart attack and not in the Vietnam War a la certain Urban Legends.) A segment broadcast October 5 with narrator Hugh Downs featured an impostor.
Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas decided not to bury the dead in the Chattanooga National Military Cemetery separated by state, unlike in most other Civil War-era military cemeteries, because he had had enough of distinctions drawn by state.
Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy’s fast food chain, appeared in over 800 commercials, more than any other company founder, and a poll in the 1990’s showed that over 90% of Americans knew who he was.
(I went to high school with Wendy. True fact.)
The original Wendy’s restaurant, on East Broad Street in Columbus, Ohio, across from Memorial Hall (then the Center of Science and Industry, or COSI), took over the site from Tommy Henrich’s Steakhouse. Henrich was a former Yankees infielder who, like many other deluded former athletes, thought he could make big money in the restaurant business just because he’d eaten in so many of them.
Henrich was the batter when Mickey Owen dropped the third strike in the 1941 World Series, turning a Dodgers win to a Yankee victory.
The 1941 season was the last played with a full set of major league caliber players, before massive wartime signups. The 1942-45 “major” leagues existed only because President Roosevelt asked Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis to keep baseball running to provide a release for a stressed populace (the “Green Light” letter is on display in Cooperstown), but that still meant offering roster spaces to the likes of a one-armed guy (Pete Gray) and a 15-year-old (Joe Nuxhall) while the able-bodied men were otherwise occupied.
FDR’s favorite poem was If by Kipling.
FDR (Franklin Delano Romanowski) was a friend of Cosmo Kramer’s on Seinfeld, and once used a birthday wish against him.
George Jetson’s boss was Cosmo “Mr.” Spacely (voiced by Mel Blanc), president of Spacely Space Sprockets.
The writers of the Jetsons correctly predicted “microbooks” [objects the size of a cigarette lighter that could hold an encyclopedia] and “visaphones” [phone with visual as well as sound]. Still waiting on the flying cars that fold up into suitcases.
While the teleplay of “The City on the Edge of Forever,” one of the most critically acclaimed episodes of the origina Star Trek series, was credited to Harlan Ellison, it was also largely rewritten by several writers before filming.
Harlan Ellison got quite peeved when Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry repeatedly said in public over the years that one of the reasons “City on the Edge of Forever” had to be heavily rewritten was that Ellison had made Chief Engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott a dealer of an exotic alien drug. Ellison noted, correctly, that he had created a new Enterprise crewmember who was a drug dealer; Mr. Scott was no criminal.
ETA: 350 pages - woohoo!
The most (only?) famous thing about the city of Enterprise, Alabama (pop. 26,682) is the Boll Weevil Monument- a statue (actually two statues- a woman and a boll weevil) dedicated to the insect that destroyed the cotton crops of the area but forced them to diversify their agribusiness and plant far more profitable peanut and soybean crops instead of only cotton.
Cotton was originally not only grown in white, but assorted other colors including brown, rust and light purple. When mechanical processing methods (think the Industrial Age) were introduced it was easier to maintain color consistency by using only white-fibered plants.
Before the cotton gin the only type of cotton that was financially profitable to grow was black-seed cotton, whose seeds are together in a pod and easily removed. Black seed cotton is extremely thirsty and only grows well in very moist soil such as that found in swamps, frequently flooded coastal plains, and river deltas, unlike green-seed cotton which grows in many more kinds of soil, but its seeds are scattered throughout the boll and took so long to pick out by hand that it made the crop unprofitable. The very simple gin instantly transformed the southern United States landscape by making green-seed as economically viable as black-seed.
Among the actors who made their film debut in Citizen Kane were Orson Welles, Josephy Cotton, Agnes Moorhead, Ruth Warrick, and Everett Sloane. Alan Ladd also appeared uncredited.
In a segment that probably confused most of its usual target audience, Animaniacs once had an entire cartoon starring Pinky and the Brain parodying Orson Welles’ infamous pea commercial outtakes.