While Jerry Jeff Walker’s 1968 folk song “Mr. Bojangles” is often thought to be about Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, it was actually inspired by Walker’s encounter with a street performer in the New Orleans first precinct jail.
Jeff Daniels has been married to his high-school sweetheart since 1979. Had he not gone into acting, he would likely be working in his hometown of Chelsea, Michigan with his siblings at the Chelsea Lumber Co, owned by the Daniels’ family.
Before going into acting, in western and romantic-comedy films and his own TV sitcom, Bob “Love That Bob” Cummings was a pilot who was taught to fly by his godfather, Orville Wright. When flying instructors became legally certified, Cummings received License #1 (perhaps with Wright’s help?). He set acting aside during the war to be a USAAF flight instructor.
Bob Newhart insisted there never be any children for his character to be the father of in each of his TV series. “I told the creators I didn’t want any children, because I didn’t want it to be a show about ‘how stupid Daddy is, but we love him so much, let’s get him out of the trouble he’s gotten himself into’.” In the sixth year of Newhart’s CBS series The Bob Newhart Show, the writers wrote a script in which Emily Hartley was pregnant. When Newhart was asked his opinion of the script, he said: “It’s very funny. Who are you going to get to play Bob?”
Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which regulates and limits trade unions, over President Harry Truman’s veto in 1947.
The computer game “Leisure Suit Larry Goes Looking for Love (in Several Wrong Places” (1988) references recently deceased porn star Harry Reems in the name of one of the hair salons: “Hairy Reams.”
Before David Leisure became a familiar face in the “Joe Isuzu” commercials (and later as regular on Empty Nest), he had a bit part in Airplane! as one of the Hare Krishnas
The first-generation VW Scirocco (1974-1982) was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro. The second generation design (1982-1992) was not done by Giugiaro but was an in-house design.
The first-generation Isuzu Impulse (1980-1990) was also designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro.
There is no evidence to support the myth that the design of the Impulse was intended to be the design for the second-generation Scirocco.
Stephen King published Different Seasons, a collection of four novellas, in 1982. The book includes the story “The Breathing Method,” set at an odd New York City gentlemen’s club which has a library with books that may be found nowhere else on Earth.
A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt, set during time of Sir Thomas More contains a paen to the rule of law:
The Greek goddess of law and divine judgment was Dike; her Roman equivalent was Themis or Iustitia, from which we derive the word “justice.”
David Justice married Halle Berry, but their marriage ended after about three years. Halle Berry is the only woman of African-American descent to win an Oscar for a leading role.
U.S. Supreme Court opinions used to refer to “Mr. Justice [Lastname]” but, several years before Sandra Day O’Connor was appointed as the first female member of the Court in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan, the “Mr.” prefix was dropped.
Ronald Reagan attended Eureka College, where he became a member of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and a cheerleader. He was a member of the football team, captain of the swim team and was elected student body president. As student president, Reagan led a student revolt against the college president after he tried to cut back the faculty.
Ronald Wilson Reagan, Republican of California, was the first divorced man elected President of the United States.
Senator Pete Wilson ® defeated Dianne Feinstein (D) for the California governorship in 1990. Gov. Wilson then appointed John Seymour to replace him in the Senate. That seat was won in the 1992 special election by … Dianne Feinstein.
Mickey Mouse’s nemesis in the long running newspaper strip was Pegleg Pete. Over the years, however, Pete’s leg regenerated and he changed his name to Black Pete.
Tap dancer Clayton “Peg Leg” Bates performed on “The Ed Sullivan Show” approximately 58 times, and had two command performances before the King & Queen of England in 1936 and then again in 1938. He owned and operated the Peg Leg Bates Country Club in Kerhonkson, New York, from 1951 to 1987, along with his wife Alice E. Bates. This made Bates the first black resort owner in Ulster County in the Catskill Mountains, the famous Borscht Belt of Jewish resorts, hotels, and bungalow colonies
Washington Irving’s story “Rip van Winkle” is set in the Catskill Mountains.
Washington Irving hosted the author and his wife at Sunnyside during Charles Dickens’s American tour in 1842.