The name “Floyd” is derived from the Welsh name, “Lloyd.”
In Welsh, double “l l” is pronounced “thl” (roughly), which is difficult for native English speakers to pronounce, leading to some variations.
Edward Elgar wrote “The Enigma Variations” a series of 14 variations on a theme. The basis of each variation he refused to uncover during his lifetime.
His Majesty King Edward VII was a lover of Lady Randolph Churchill, mother of Winston Churchill. The young Winston supposedly realized something was up when he noticed that his mother came back from lunch with the King with her stockings on different legs than before (he had noticed that the fabric on one stocking leg was slightly torn). She was considered quite a beauty in her day: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Jennie_Jerome,_Lady_Randolph_Churchill.jpg
In Gone With the Wind, Scarlett refers to Melanie as a “bluestocking.” The word refers to the Blue Stockings Society, an informal women’s social and educational movement in England in the mid-18th century.
Cole Porter’s last musical, Silk Stockings, was based on the the Melchior Lengyel story *Ninotchka *and the 1939 film adaptation it inspired. The musical involves special envoy Nina Yaschenko, who is dispatched from the Soviet Union to rescue three foolish commissars from the pleasures of Paris, but who succumbs to them herself.
Gary Cole provided the voice of a hardass FBI agent in the season premiere of the FX animated spy comedy Archer earlier this week.
Gary Coleman is parodied in the musical Avenue Q, as he is presented working as the superintendent of the apartment complex where the musical takes place. In the song “It Sucks to Be Me”, he laments his fate, and everyone agrees he is the winner, having the suckiest life:
BRIAN
Yo, GARY!
GARY COLEMAN
I’m comin’! I’m comin’!
PRINCETON
Oh my God! It’s Gary Coleman!
GARY COLEMAN
Yes I am!
(sung)
I’m Gary Coleman
from TV’s Diff’rent Strokes
I made a lotta money
that got stolen by my folks!
Now I’m broke and
I’m the butt of everyone’s jokes,
but I’m here –
the superintendent!
On Avenue Q –
ALL
It sucks to be you.
KATE MONSTER
You win!
ALL
It sucks to be you.
BRIAN
I feel better now!
GARY COLEMAN
Try having people stopping you to ask you
“What you talkin’ 'bout, Willis?”
It gets old.
Singer-songwriter-producer Lenny Kravitz is the son of Roxie Roker, who played the sophisticated Helen Willis on The Jeffersons, and was named for his paternal uncle who was a posthumously much honored hero killed in the Korean War.
Jesse Brown was the first African-American aviator in the United States Navy, a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the first African-American naval officer killed in the Korean War. After he was shot down at the Chosin Reservoir, he was trapped in his Corsair and died of his injuries despite the Medal of Honor efforts to free him of his white wingman, Thomas Hudner, who landed next to him.
The Victoria Cross has been cast from two cascables from cannon captured at the Siege of Sevastopol. There is enough metal left to make about 80 more VCs.
USS Chosin, a guided-missile cruiser named after the arduous Korean War campaign, was commissioned in 1991 and is still on active duty with the United States Navy.
Ninja’d!
There is some controversy as to whether the Victoria Cross is still being made from metal from captured Russian cannon.
Once when actress Victoria Principal was on an airplane, the pilot came on over the loudspeaker and threatened not to land the plane unless Victoria told him “Who Shot J.R.?” during the summer before the third season of Dallas.
Victoria Principal was the first female lover of Anthony Perkins, who became involved with her on the set of The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean in his late 30s after therapy to change from homosexual to heterosexual.
Lucky guy.
In play: the Alamo fell to Santa Ana one year before Queen Victoria began her reign in 1837.
Henry VIII’s will designated who would become ruler after his death, setting up the reign of Queen Mary I as the UK’s first undisputed ruling queen. Henry prevented any changes to the line of descent as set down by declaring any discussion of changes to be treason.
RMS Queen Mary 2, the largest ocean liner (not cruise ship) ever built, is the only ship in regular transatlantic service between Southampton and New York. Despite being a British symbol, she was built in STX Europe Chantiers de l’Atlantique, in Saint-Nazaire, France, and her owner, Cunard Lines, is owned by Miami’s Carnival Corporation.
Mary J. Blige’s job before she became a singer was directory-assistance operator. Thus the title of her debut album “What’s the 411?”
The most recent Queen Mary, formerly Mary of Teck, was grandmother to the current British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.
“The entomological discovery of the 20th century”, by Fred and Norah Urquhart, Kenneth Brugger, and Catalina Trail, over 38 years of work, established the migration route of the monarch butterfly from the US and Canada into Mexico.
Francis Urquhart, played by Ian Richardson in the British version and Kevin Spacey (the character is renamed “Underwood”) in the American version, is the villain of the political thriller House of Cards.