“The Argentine” is the name of the first part of the film Che, starring Benicio del Toro. The second part is called “Guerrilla”. Del Toro won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for his role in the film.
The highest mountain in the world outside of Asia is in Argentina: Aconcagua (22,834 ft, 6,960 m).
The highest mountain in Australia is Mt Kosciuszko (2,228 m).
The walk to the summit is not particularly taxing. Until the mid 1970s it was possible to drive to the summit.
Mount Kilimanjaro, with its three volcanic cones, Kibo, Mawenzi, and Shira, is a dormant volcanic mountain in Tanzania. It is the highest mountain in Africa and the highest free-standing mountain in the world at 5,895 metres or 19,341 feet above sea level (the Uhuru Peak/Kibo Peak).
Nichelle Nichols, who played Lt. Uhura on the original Star Trek TV show and subsequent movie franchise, considering quitting after the show’s first season – however, she was convinced to remain on the show by Martin Luther King, Jr. himself, because at the time (1967) she was the ONLY person of color on TV who portrayed someone of authority. (How times change, eh?)
Martin Luther King, Jr. was born Michael King, but his father changed his name in honor of German reformer Martin Luther. When he was nineteen he graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta with a BA degree in Sociology. When he was 22, he graduated from the Crozer Theological Seminary with a BA of Divinity, which qualified him to become a pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. King received his Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from Boston University at the age of 26.
Boston University President John Silber won the 1990 Democratic primary to be Governor of Massachusetts, but an extraordinarily poorly judged on-air blowup at newscaster Natalie Jacobson of WCVB-TV, a Boston icon along with her then-husband and co-anchor Chet Curtis, led many voters to switch to the moderate Republican candidate [sic], Bill Weld, a veteran of the Watergate HJC hearings where he was a colleague of Hillary Rodham. Three more Republican governors followed Weld, none of them able to get Big Dig cost overruns under control.
Boston’s “Big Dig” was the most expensive highway project in the U.S. and was plagued by escalating costs, scheduling overruns, leaks, design flaws, charges of poor execution and use of substandard materials, criminal arrests, and one death. Ground was first broken in 1991, and the project was originally scheduled to be completed in 1998 at an estimated cost of $2.8 billion (in 1982 dollars, US$6.0 billion adjusted for inflation as of 2006). However, the project was completed only in December 2007, at a cost of over $14.6 billion ($8.08 billion in 1982 dollars, meaning a cost overrun of about 190%) as of 2006.
Big Dig, Before and After photo, and this 1997 and 2007 before/after photo.
The theme song to “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” entitled “(I Can’t) Breakaway” was performed by the group Big Pig.
The Central Artery/Tunnel Project (CA/T), known unofficially as the Big Dig, was a megaproject in Boston that rerouted the Central Artery (Interstate 93), the chief highway through the heart of the city, into a 3.5-mile (5.6 km) tunnel. The project also included the construction of:
— the Ted Williams Tunnel (map photo) extending Interstate 90 to Logan International Airport),
— the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge over the Charles River (image; nicknamed “the Bill Buckner Bridge”), and
— the Rose Kennedy Greenway in the space vacated by the previous I-93 elevated roadway (image, “the Greenway”).
(I just wanted to add more about the Big Dig here.)
In play:
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) starred Keanu Reaves as Ted, Alex Winter as Bill, and George Carlin as Rufus. With a budget of approximately $10M, the film grossed over $40M.
Ringo Starr narrated “Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends” in Season 1, before handing the role over to George Carlin for Seasons 2 and 3. Alec Baldwin, Michael Brandon, and Pierce Brosnan narrated later seasons, although only Starr, Carlin, and Baldwin played Mr. Conductor in the US version, “Shining Time Station”.
Even though Alec Baldwin is hailed for his role in “Glengarry Glen Ross”, he is only on screen for roughly 7 and a half minutes.
Judi Dench won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for roughly eight minutes of screen time in Shakespeare in Love.
The three finalists for the role of Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs were Anthony Hopkins, Derek Jacobi, and Daniel Day Lewis. Hopkins’s performance is still the record holder for the shortest amount of screen time for a Lead Actor Oscar win: just over 16 minutes.
Scipione l’africonao was an Italian movie produced in 1937 about the defeat of the Carthaginians under Hannibal by the Roman hero Scipio. Approved by Mussolini himself, the film was a notorious flop – expensive, badly acted, and as ponderous as the hundred elephants that were part of the script. The film was exceedingly expensive due to the large battle scenes (using Italian army divisions) and sloppy continuity (power lines can be clearly seen in the background of the battle scenes).
“Elmer Elephant” was the first Disney short that was storyboarded by a female artist.
Someday I’d really like to see a cite for this – not its accuracy, but the implication that his screen time was significantly less than the average leading actor.
In play:
Jumbo the Elephant, the largest African elephant recorded in captivity, stood four meters (13 ft 1 in) tall, although that fact is often disputed. Jumbo was killed by a runaway locomotive on Sept. 15, 1885.
Jumbolair is a fly-in community (where houses have hangars and taxiway access) near Ocala, Florida, best known as the home of John Travolta’s Boeing 707, formerly operated by Qantas. The land was previously a retirement ranch for old circus animals (the lair of Jumbo, get it? Har har har).
Kermit Weeks’ personal collection of airplanes at Fantasy of Flight in Polk City, FL (roughly equidistant between Tampa and Orlando) is the world’s largest private collection of vintage aircraft.
Or so they claim: http://www.fantasyofflight.com/aircraft/