In March of 2010, American architect Bryan Berg completed the world’s largest house of cards, using 218,792 of them to build a replica of the Venetian Macau.
Bryan Smith, driver of the van that nearly killed Stephen King, was kind enough to die on September 21, 2000, King’s 53rd Birthday.
Australian actor Bryan Brown, who played Lt. Peter Handcock in the court-martial drama Breaker Morant, is married to actress Rachel Ward, perhaps best known for her roles in Sharky’s Machine and The Thorn Birds. One of their daughters is now also an actress.
Bryan “Walter white” Cranston has an associate’s degree in police science from Los Angeles Valley College. At one point, he considered becoming a police officer.
Robert Aldrich, director of The Dirty Dozen was born in Cranston, RI.
The state bird of Rhode Island is the Rhode Island Red Chicken.
In an alternative future, Harry Kim - long the juniormost officer aboard the starship USS Voyager - has been promoted to captain of the USS Rhode Island.
Actress Kim Novak hails from Chicago and is of Czech ancestry. She attended David Glasgow Farragut High School in Chicago’s south west side, and then she attended Wilbur Wright College (formerly Wright Junior College).
Kim Novak had a relationship in the late 1950s with Sammy Davis Jr. but studio head Harry Cohn, her agent, and others were desperate to keep it quiet and break it up. Per an oft told tale (one which Novak herself has said she does not doubt) Cohn had a mobster friend abduct Davis and threaten his life if he did not end the affair, which he did.
Daniel Dae Kim, the Korean guy on Lost, was born in Pusan, South Korea but grew up in Easton, Pennsylvania.
Multi-Oscared actor Daniel Day-Lewis is the son of former British Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis.
The departure of the Lewis and Clark expedition from the Mississippi River in St. Louis (actually, closer to present-day Wood River, IL) was not “complete” until they picked up Meriwether Lewis on the Missouri River in St. Charles, MO.
It is still unclear as to whether Meriwether Lewis died by suicide (the cause most accepted by historians) or was murdered. He was last seen alive going to sleep while stopping at an inn; witnesses heard gunshots and found him shot three times. Inconsistencies in the story have led some to believe that suicide could not be the cause.
In My Theodosia, a novel by Anya Seton, Meriwether Lewis is involved in a tragic romance with the title character, the married daughter of Aaron Burr. Burr violently opposes the affair not for moral reasons but because Theodosia’s marriage to the wealthy governor of South Carolina is vital to his ambitions.
President Bill Clinton posthumously promoted William Clark of the Lewis & Clark expedition to the rank of captain of the U.S. Army in a White House ceremony in January 2001. Lewis had treated Clark as his co-equal leader throughout the Corps of Discovery’s long trek, but technically outranked him at the time, as the Senate refused to approve his promotion from lieutenant.
In his final days as president, Bill Clinton gave a presidential pardon to his half-brother Roger, whose Secret Service code name was ‘Headache’, for his 1985 cocaine conviction.
Roger Staubach of the US Naval Academy won the Heisman Trophy in 1963 on Tuesday, November 26, just four days after JFK’s assassination.
JFK’s Secret Service codeword in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963 was “Lancer.” Conspiracy theorists still regularly meet around the anniversary of the assassination in what is called the Lancer Conference.
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) features the only signature gun-barrel sequence of all Bond films in which Bond drops down on one knee while shooting at the audience. It’s also the only version of the sequence where the descending blood completely erases Bond’s image, leaving only the red circle.
The famous Army-Navy football game that year was scheduled for Saturday, November 30th, but with the tragic assassination, was delayed. With encouragement from Jacqueline Kennedy, the game was played on December 7th. Roger Staubach QB’d for Navy in their 21-15 victory.
ETA: ninja’d by Sam, but this entry still works.