Yes, Casablanca (1942) was a TV series twice. In the 1955-56 season, “Casablanca” (ABC) was a short-lived thirty-minute series starring Charles McGraw as Rick Jason (changed from Rick Blaine). In 1983-84, ABC attempted another “Casablanca.” Rick Blaine was played by David Soul.
Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) was the first woman in the U.S. to receive an M.D. degree. She received her degree in 1849 from Geneva Medical College in New York.
There have been sixteen chief justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Beginning with John Jay and running through William H. Rehnquist, who joined the court as an associate in 1972 and became chief justice in 1986.
Tracy Keenan Wynn wrote the screenplay, based on Ernest J. Gaines’s novel, and John Korty directed the TV movie “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” (CBS, 1974). The film, starring Cicely Tyson as a 110-year-old former slave, won nine Emmys, including Emmys for Tyson, Korty, and Wynn.
An attempt to revive the Roman Empire of the West, the Holy Roman Empire was founded by Charlemagne in A.D. 800. Surviving for more than a thousand years, this entity was not formally abolished until 1806, when it dissolved under pressure from Napoleon.
Country singers Roy Clark and Buck Owens were the original hosts of “Hee Haw” (CBS, synd., 1969).
The 1929 Western In Old Arizona, for which Warner Baxter won the Best Actor Oscar, was billed as “the first 100% all-talking drama filmed outdoors”.
Movie acting in silent movies was well-paying, even then. For example, in 1913, when Mary Pickford was starting out, she made $500 per week. In 1916, after she had become “America’s Sweetheart,” she commanded $10,000 per week, plus bonuses.
In 1940, when producer Sam Katzman brought some of the kids to Monogram Pictures. The kids (who eventually included Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, Billy Halop, and others) had started out as the “Dead End Kids” in Dead End (1937, Samuel Goldwyn). They had gone on to work for Warner Brothers and Universal. Their … Read more
There have been two “Banks of the United States”, both chartered by Congress and both allowed to expire after 20 years. The First Bank of the United States lasted from 1791 to 1811, the second from 1816 to 1836. Each served as the federal government’s fiscal agents and repositories of federal funds. The banks were … Read more
After hitting an undersea reef, the oil tanker the Exxon Valdez spilled over 10 million gallons into the Alaskan waters on March 24, 1989, in the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
Raymond Massey played Abraham Lincoln twice. In Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940) and in How the West Was Won (1962).
The line “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” is a fabrication of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, found in his poem “The Courtship of Miles Standish” (1858). Alden, Mullins, and Standish were all passengers on the Mayflower but were not known to be involved in a love triangle.
The first Academy Awards ceremony was held in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on May 16, 1929. All awards were presented by Douglas Fairbanks, then president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. There were no surprises because the winners’ names had already been made public in February. Since April … Read more
The Dow Jones fell 508 points, or 22.6 percent, on Monday, October 19, 1987.
The name “Alaska” comes from an Aleutian word meaning “mainland,” distinguishing it from the islands on which the Aleutian people lived.
There are rare instances of elephants living 70 years and killer whales to 90. But humans, with their outside limit of about 120 years, have the longest overall life span.
It is not New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles. It is Juneau, Alaska, which covers 3,108 square miles. Los Angeles, in contrast, covers only 458.2 square miles.
Yes. There was no double when Paul Newman rode the bicycle himself in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).
Carol Merrill’s daughter Hillary Saffire became the hostess on the new TV game show “Truth or Consequences” (syndicated) in 1987. Merrill herself was the hostess on “Let’s Make a Deal” (NBC, 1963-68; ABC, 1968-76).
A gamete is a mature, functional sex cell (i.e., an egg or sperm) that can unite with a gamete of the opposite sex. A zygote is what results when the two gametes fuse.
Previous handguns before the Colt revolver could fire only once before they had to be reloaded. Samuel Colt’s invention, patented in 1835, had a six-chambered cylinder that rotated with each shot, automatically readying another bullet for firing. The Colt revolver became standard equipment on America’s western frontier.
The subtitle of Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo is A Tale of the Seaboard.
Yes, Jews can be excommunicated. The Hebrew word for excommunication is herem. it involves the cutting of all religious, social, and business ties with someone considered dangerous to the community. One of the most famous cases of herem involved the seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher Spinoza.
The club where Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz) played on “I Love Lucy” was in New York, he played at the Tropicana. When the family moved to Connecticut, he started his own club, the Ricky Ricardo Babaloo Club.
Edith Bunker died after “All in the Family” (CBS, 1971-79) had become “Archie Bunker’s Place” (CBS, 1979-83). The 1980-81 season opened with Archie grieving over her death, which was not portrayed directly.
Charles Dickens wrote two historical novels: A Tale of Two Cities (1859), set in London and Paris during the French Revolution, and Barnaby Rudge (1841), set during the anti-Catholic riots sparked by Lord George Gordon in 1780.
Character actor Norman Lloyd, falls from the Statue of Liberty in the climax of Saboteur (1942).
Gerald R. Ford was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr., in 1913. His parents divorced when he was an infant; his mother then married Gerald R. Ford, Sr., who adopted the future president and gave him his name.
The original Diet Coke, made with saccharin, debuted in July 1982. An updated version of Diet Coke, made with NutraSweet, first appeared in August 1983.
Krakatoa the volcano, located in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, erupted on August 27, 1883. Four hours later, the sound of the eruption could be heard nearly 3,000 miles away; 10 days later, volcanic dust fell at points more than 3,000 miles away.
“Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour” was on TV for twelve years, from 1948 to 1960 on the DuMont network, ABC, NBC, and CBS. During that time, Pat Boone and Gladys Knight made their national television debuts.
According to scholars, the Trojan War took place during the thirteenth century B.C. The Iliad, Homer’s epic account of the war, is thought to have been written in the ninth century B.C.
The annual prize for poetry, the Bollingen Prize, was first awarded in 1949 to Ezra Pound for his Pisan Cantos (1948).
The Greek Adonis, the Babylonian Tammuz, the Sumerian Dumuzi, and the Egyptian Osiris are all forms of the same god. After being carried off to the underworld, Tammuz, god of crops and vegetation, was rescued by his lover Ishtar. All life on earth withered between his dying (in winter) and his rising (in spring).
Sergeant Joe Friday’s badge number on “Dragnet” was number 714.
Yes, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym (1838) is based upon actual events. The adventures of J. N. Reynolds is about a stowaway who survived a mutiny, cannibalism, and other adventures.
Wilhelm Carl (1786-1859; Jacob, 1785-1863) was the younger brother. Their book Children’s and Household Tales, now known as Grimm’s Fairy-Tales, first appeared in 1812.
Quaid’s (Arnold Schwarzenegger) wife Lori (Sharon Stone), upon killing her said, “Consider that a divorce” in Total Recall (1990).
Yes. Originated by the Constitution, the Court has been regulated in size by Congress. The number of justices varied, from six to ten, until 1869, when Congress voted to set the membership at nine.
The four “Middle Colonies”, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, were all initially colonized by countries other than England. New York and New Jersey were settled by the Dutch, Delaware and Pennsylvania by the Swedes. New Sweden, founded in 1638 with its base at what is now Wilmington, Delaware, was conquered by the Dutch in … Read more
Hans Christian Andersen’s first novel The Improvisatore was published in 1835. Later the same year, Andersen published Tales Told for Children, which included well-known tales as well as an original story, “Little Ida’s Flowers.”
Dorothy Parker collaborated on several screenplays, including A Star Is Born (1937), The Little Foxes (1941), Saboteur (1942), and The Fan (1949).
Both Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus were fathered by Zeus, king of the gods. Apollo’s mother was the goddess Leto; Dionysus’s mother was a mortal named Semele. Apollo was the god of light, healing, music, and archery. Dionysus, a darker figure, was the god of wine and fertility.
Richard Wright took the title Native Son from Nelson Algren, after the title was rejected for Algren’s novel Somebody in Boots (1935).
Pockets did not come into fashion until the end of the sixteenth century. Before that time, men carried their keys and money in pieces of cloth attached to their clothing. The first pocket was an open-side seam in which men placed their pouch of personal items. Eventually the pocket became a permanent part of the … Read more
The undersized Miles Standish was given the nickname “Captain Shrimp” by fellow colonist Thomas Morton. Standish (c. 1584-1656) was the military leader of the Plymouth Colony, founded in Massachusetts in 1620. Morton (c. 1590c. 1647), leader of the rival colony of Merrymount, ridiculed the austere habits and strict religious beliefs of his Pilgrim neighbors.
The first movie mentioned by name in Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer is Stagecoach (1939), directed by John Ford.
Composer, Rod McKuen sang the hit song “Jean” over the credits of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). But the single that reached Billboard magazine’s “Hot 100 Chart” in 1969 was sung by folk singer Oliver.
The oldest confirmed site of human habitation in the continental United States is an archeological site at Clovis, New Mexico. It is a site that dates back 11,500 years, to a time when mammoths were still alive. The site was discovered in 1952.
Limited Test Ban Treaty—August 1963 Antiballistic Missile Treaty—May 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT)—June 1979 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) I—July 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) II January 1993
Robinson J. Peepers taught biology on the TV series “Mr. Peepers” (NBC, 1952-55).
President Reagan’s supply-side tax cuts lowered the top tax rate from 70 percent to 30 percent during the Reagan years.
Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple is comprised of letters from a black Southern woman named Celie to God, her sister, Nettie, and a missionary in Africa, and of Nettie’s letters to Celie.
The series of seven children’s books by C. S. Lewis started in 1950 with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and continued with Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, The Magician’s Nephew, The Horse and His Boy, and The Last Battle.
Hailstones begin as frozen raindrops or pellets of snow in a thunderstorm cloud. These “hail embryos” are carried by updrafts to a part of the storm where droplets of water exist in a supercooled state (that is, in liquid form at temperatures below freezing). These supercooled droplets freeze into ice when they strike the surface … Read more
Molly Pitcher was Mary McCauley Hays, (1754-1832), heroine of the American Revolution. She earned her nickname during the Battle of Monmouth in 1778, when she fetched water for her husband and his gun crew. After her husband suffered a wound, she took over for him, helping the gun crew do its job. After the war, … Read more
Yogi Bear was smarter than the average bear on The Yogi Bear Show (“The Yogi Bear Show”; synd., 1961-63).
Playwright Arthur Miller wrote the teleplay for the CBS TV movie “Playing for Time” (1980). Vanessa Redgrave played Auschwitz prisoner Fania Fenelon.
Sylvester Stallone appeared in eight movies before Rocky (1976): A Party at Kitty and Stud’s (The Italian Stallion) (1970); Bananas (1971); The Lords of Flatbush (1973); Capone (1973); The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975); Death Race 2000 (1975); Farewell My Lovely (1975); Carquake (1975).
The author/illustrator Maurice Sendak was a designer of window displays in a toy store when he was commissioned to illustrate The Wonderful Farm by Marcel Ayme in 1951. Sendak wrote and illustrated his first children’s book, Kenny’s Window, in 1956.
Alistair Cooke was born in Manchester, England, on November 20, 1908, but has been an American citizen since 1941. Cooke has hosted the PBS TV series “Masterpiece Theatre” since its inception in 1971.
Charlton Heston’s number as a galley slave in Ben-Hur was forty-one.
There are six elements necessary to a play according to Aristotle: plot, thought, character, diction, music, and spectacle.
Mexico’s best-known author Carlos Fuentes (The Death of Artemio Cruz, 1962; The Old Gringo, 1985) first began writing in English, but has since switched to his native language, Spanish.
The royal governor of New York Henry Sloughter with the murderous name was responsible for hanging Jacob Leisler in 1691. Leisler was a New York City wine merchant who led a rebellion against royal rule in 1689. As acting governor, Leisler set up an assembly and reformed tax laws until the new governor, Sloughter, stopped … Read more
The rubber-like compound Silly Putty is composed, in part, of boric acid and silicone oil. Silly Putty was invented at the General Electric laboratories in the 1940s as an inexpensive synthetic rubber for use during World War II. It gained its greatest popularity when New Haven, Connecticut, store owner Paul Hodgson bought a large quantity … Read more
Said’s real name was H. H. Munro (1870-1916). The Scottish fiction writer and playwright was born in Burma and killed by a sniper in France during World War I.
The largest earthquake in American history was the Great Alaskan Earthquake of 1964. The quake, on March 28, 1964, had its epicenter near Anchorage and measured a 9.2 on the Richter scale. This is the second highest magnitude ever recorded, behind a 9.5 earthquake in Chile.
The name of the man who played El Exigente in Savarin Coffee commercials in the 1960s and 1970s was Carlos Montalban, brother of actor Ricardo Montalban. Born in 1904, he died in 1991.
Montgomery Clift was to play Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard, the young screenwriter eventually played by William Holden.
Elvis Presley did not make his TV debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show” (CBS, 1948-71), but on “The Jackie Gleason Show” (CBS, 1952-55, 1956-57, 1962-70). Elvis first appeared there in January 1956.
Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert Kennedy, was a Jordanian-born American. He shot Kennedy, then a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, on June 5, 1968.
Over 60,000 British settlers emigrated to New England, Bermuda, and the Caribbean islands, for economic, religious, or political reasons during the Great Migration of the 1630s.
The last legal bacchanalia was in the second century B.C. before the Roman senate banned this festival honoring Bacchus, the Roman god of wine. Originally a religious rite celebrated only by women, it eventually included men and became an excuse for drunken orgies.
Robbo, the character “inspired” by Robin Hood, was played by Frank Sinatra. Among the hoods were Dean Martin as Little John and Sammy Davis, Jr., as Will.
Like many top officers in the Civil War, both commanders of the opposing forces at Fort Sumter had fought on the same side in the Mexican War (1846-48). P.G.T. Beauregard was the Confederate general who gave the order to fire on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, at 4:30 A.M., in the first battle of … Read more
Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner had the lead parts in The King and I (1956). Brynner won an Oscar.
Woody Allen claimed is the only cultural advantage offered by Los Angeles is that you can make a right turn on a red light.
Larry Hagman was offered “The Waverly Wonders” (NBC, 1978), a sitcom about a high school basketball coach (starring Joe Namath) the same year he was offered “Dallas” (CBS, 1978-91). Hagman favored this series, which lasted one month; but his wife advised him to take “Dallas.”
No, some species sing on the ground. Shorebirds such as turnstones sing from mounds called hummocks. Some species of American field sparrows, such as the savanna sparrow of the eastern United States, sing from the ground, as does the wood thrush.
Ezra Mannon, a New England general returning from the Civil War represents Agamemnon in Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra. His wife Christine represents Clytemnestra.
Dracula (1930) was advertised as “the strangest love story of our time”.
Lately, about five years is how often a new Stanley Kubrick movie is released. In Kubrick’s early period, from Fear and Desire (1953) to Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), an average of 1.8 years passed between release of Kubrick’s films. From Dr. Strangelove to Full Metal … Read more
The name of Dr. No’s island in the movie was Crab Key.
On March 12, 1969, James Earl Ray was sentenced to 99 years in prison for killing Martin Luther King, Jr.
In 1959, Glen Raven Mills of North Carolina brought out PantiLegs, the first pantyhose. Allen Grant, president of Glen Raven, got the idea when his wife Ethel complained about the discomfort of nylon stockings and garter belts.
State chemists are the executioners who kill condemned prisoners by lethal injection. State electricians perform executions by means of the electric chair.
Though born into slavery, Sojourner Truth was born not in the South but in Ulster County, New York, before slavery was abolished in that state in 1827. After being sold to a master who set her free, she worked as a domestic. She later became a preacher of Christianity, abolitionism, and women’s rights.
