In addition to his notable career as a performer, Tom Paxton has written many songs that other artists have had success with, including:
The Marvelous Toy – The Chad Mitchell Trio
The Last Thing on My Mind – many, including The Move
Mr. Blue – Clear Light
(P.S. In another lifetime I was a talk show host, and I interviewed Ron Kovic at the time Born on the 4th of July was published. A very powerful and moving conversation, as I recall it.)
Bill Paxton, the actor best known for such films as Aliens, Apollo 13 and Titanic, directed the music video for “Fish Heads”, the Barnes & Barnes novelty song.
Sir Joseph Paxton, an English gardener, architect, and MP, got his knighthood for designing the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. The building was revolutionary for its use of mass-produced glass and iron pieces and the speed of erection they permitted.
Emily Litella once appeared on SNL’s weekend update to rant against a recent news article on presidential erections. She was against having public presidential erections all over the country. It turned out to be a triple entendre: Chevy Chase explained to her that the original news article had been about presidential elections. She had interpreted it to be about presidential statutes being erected all over the country, not … something else.
After SNL, Gilda Radner, who played Emily Litealla, appeared in the Jean Kerr play Lunch Hour on Broadway with Sam Waterston, Max (ALF) Wright, and David (Sledge Hammer) Rasche
Jim Kerr, lead singer of Simple Minds, was married to Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders from 1984 to 1990.
The Platters song “The Great Pretender” reached the number one position on both the R&B and pop charts in 1956.
The Frisbee flying disc got the new name when Wham-O bought the rights to the Pluto Platter from its inventor, Fred Morrison. The name Frisbee comes from the Frisbie Pie Company of Bridgeport, CT, whose pans resembled the Pluto Platters that Yale students were playing with.
Wammo was a founding member of the Austin-based satiric roots-music act The Asylum Street Spankers.
Steve Austin (Lee Majors), hero of the Seventies sf adventure show The Six Million Dollar Man, was a U.S. Air Force colonel and test pilot before the accident which resulted in his severe injury and the surgical implantation of two bionic legs, an eye and an arm.
In today’s dollars, it would cost 28,852,576 to re-build Steve Austin. That does not take into account the considerable advance in IT since the mid-70’s, which may reduce the cost
In today’s dollars, it would cost $28,852,576 to re-build Steve Austin. That does not take into account the considerable advances in IT since the mid-seventies, which may reduce the cost.
The Jeep was originally designed and developed in Butler, PA by American Bantam, which was the resuscitated company that was previously American Austin. The War Department gave production contracts to Willys-Overland instead, since the Austin engine was short on horsepower and the company lacked production capacity. Manufacture has remained in Toledo ever since, although ownership of Jeep has since transferred to Kaiser, AMC, Renault, Chrysler, Daimler-Benz, and now FIAT.
You forgot Chrysler (again) after it was “unmerged” from Daimler.
It would appear that the Jeep brand is some sort of automotive parasite, sucking the life out of its host before moving on to the next one. Where it will go after Fiat remains to be seen.
Jeeps have been produced since 1941, making it the oldest off-road vehicle ever made. The first civilian models were produced in 1945. It inspired a number of other light utility vehicles, such as the Land Rover which is the second oldest 4-wheel-drive brand.
The word jeep, however, was used as early as 1914 by US Army mechanics assigned to test new vehicles. In 1937, tractors which were supplied by Minneapolis Moline to the US Army were called jeeps. A precursor of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was also referred to as the jeep.
The Fortress of Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, was captured from the French by an expeditionary force of colonists from Massachusetts in 1745, in the sole major North American battle of the War of the Austrian Succession. In celebration, Louisbourg Square in Boston’s Beacon Hill was named for the fort, and is today a very tony address - John Kerry owns a house there.
As part of the settlement after the War of the Austrian Succession, the British gave the Fortress of Louisbourg back to the French. That meant that a decade later, they had to re-capture the Fortress in 1758, as a necessary first step to capturing Quebec.
Superman’s Fortress of Solitude has traditionally be located in the arctic; Superman used a giant key to open the door. The door was hidden in plain sight as a airplane guide.
Superman’s creators stole the idea for the Fortress of Solomon from Lester Dent’s Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze series. Doc’s Fortress was also in the arctic.
Boeing plants built a total of 6,981 B-17 Flying Fortresses in various models, and another 5,745 were built under a nationwide collaborative effort by Douglas and Lockheed (Vega). Only a few B-17s survive today; most were scrapped at the end of the war. Some of the last Flying Fortresses met their end as target drones in the 1960s – destroyed by Boeing Bomarc missiles.