Post a true but little-known fact about someone famous, living or dead -- (Part 2)

[red dog 1]

Last edited Tue Apr 3, 2018, 05:39 PM - Edit history (1)

[red dog 1]

1. Merle Haggard was born in a converted Santa Fe Railroad boxcar

Last edited Sat Mar 17, 2018, 02:39 PM - Edit history (1)

His father, James Francis Haggard, and his mother, Flossie Mae, moved to California from their home in Checotah, Oklahoma, during the Great Depression, after their barn burned in 1934.

They settled in an apartment in Bakersfield, CA., where James Haggard started working for the Santa Fe Railroad.

A woman who owned a boxcar in Oildale, a nearby town, asked Haggard's father about the possibility of converting the boxcar into a house.
James remodeled the boxcar, and soon after moved in, also purchasing the lot, where Merle Ronald Haggard was born on April 6, 1937.
The property was eventually expanded by building a bathroom, a second bedroom, a kitchen, and a breakfast nook in the adjacent lot.

[WhiteTara]

2. Gouveneur Morris created the monetary system

of the US...pennies,nickles, dimes, quarters, dollars, etc. He also laid out the city street system in NYC and designed the canal system in New York.

He graduated from Kings College at the age of 17, worked with the Continental Congress in Philadelphia and was given the task of taking all the parts of the Constitution and turning it into a whole. He alone penned the Preamble.

He loathed slavery and fought against the 3/5 rule that Jefferson wanted. Because he was the same height and build as Washington, he was the stand in for Washington's official portrait until it came to the face.

[TlalocW]

3. Vincent Price met one of his wives in a cemetery

You'd better recognize Jamie Lee Curtis if she's buying groceries from you, or she'll have a shit-fit (Latin-American friend of mine who moved to LA in the 80s got a job at a grocery store in Beverly Hills, checked out Curtis, and when Curtis told her to put the bill on her tab, my friend asked her her name. The shit-fit she threw involved the manager calming her down.

Albert Einstein was fooled by simple magic tricks, much to his annoyance.

Late in his life, Groucho Marx became good friends with Ozzy Osbourne, who would come over late at night to watch movies with Groucho. He also took some of his friends to see Ozzy's act with George Burns commenting that what Ozzy was doing was essentially Vaudeville and reminiscing on a magician he knew back in the day that also cut his head off with a guillotine like Ozzy did during his performances, except doves came out of the basket Burns' friend's head landed in. Oh, and the person playing the executioner that cut off Ozzy's head was famous magician/escape artist/skeptic, James "The Amazing" Randi, who designed the magical effects for Ozzy's show at the time.

TlalocW

[red dog 1]

4. James, "The Amazing" Randi" is a registered Democrat and a "skeptic"

I never knew that Groucho Marx became friends with Ozzy Osbourne, or that Osbourne "would come over late at night to watch movies with Groucho."

[red dog 1]

5. I wonder what The Amazing Randi" thinks of David Blaine?

On television, I watched him levitate off the ground, several times, in front of eyewitnesses, who were totally blown out of their minds.
I wonder how he does that?

Also, I've seen him do card tricks in front of a restaurant, where he asks someone to pick out a card, then put it back, then he threw the entire pack of cards against the restaurant window, where one of the cards stuck to the window, ON THE INSIDE, much to the chagrin of the woman who was eating inside the restaurant at that window.

[mucifer]

44. The Amazing Randi is a magician and is fine with magicians because

the public goes in knowing they are illusionists. They are trying to figure out how it is done. But, they are fully aware the magician doesn't really move things with their minds or really make things disappear. He states that in his videos. It's the people who claim to have special powers or claim to talk with the dead and make a lot of money off that that he goes after.

[TexasBushwhacker]

41. The Osbournes were next door neighbors to Pat Boone

for 3 years. They got along great.

[TlalocW]

42. I understand they were golf buddies

Osbourne is a conservative republican.

TlalocW

[TexasBushwhacker]

43. Well Curtis was an alcoholic and prescription drug addict

My experience with addicts in my family is that they're narcissists, even after they get sober.

[TheSmarterDog]

6. Condoleezza Rice is a concert-trained pianist.

She should have stayed with the music.

[Glorfindel]

7. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, P.M. Winston Churchill, and General Douglas MacArthur

shared a common ancestor: "Still, if bloodlines mean anything, theirs was good stock. It was enhanced in the New World; Sarah Barney Belcher of Taunton, Massachusetts, the boy colonel’s great-grandmother, became a common ancestor of Douglas MacArthur, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt ― Douglas was an eighth cousin of Churchill and a sixth cousin, once removed, of FDR ― and three of WWII’s great leaders were thus linked by American intermarriages.” ― American Caesar, Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, William Manchester, Page16.

[Skittles]

8. in real life, Samantha's mother-in-law on Bewitched was Cloris Leachman's mother-in-law

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabel_Albertson

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

9. Richard Dawson met his second wife...

...Gretchen Johnson (born 22 September 1955), when she was a contestant on Family Feud in May 1981; they married in 1991

[red dog 1]

10. In 1969, Carl Reiner developed a television pilot titled "Head of the Family," based on his own

personal and professional life.
However, the network did not like Reiner in the lead role for unknown reasons.
In 1961, it was recast and retitled "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and became an iconic series, making stars of his lead actors, Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore.
Carl Reiner wrote many of the show's episodes.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

11. Chuck Connors

played professional baseball with the Yankees, Dodgers, and Cubs.

He played pro basketball with the Celtics and is the first player credited with shattering a backboard.

He was drafted by the Chicago Bears but never played.

[red dog 1]

14. Wow!

Professional baseball, basketball and football?

I never would have dreamed that!

(Thanks for sharing that)

[Floyd R. Turbo]

23. ✌🏻

[Thx]

18. Just watching this yesterday

from 1957.

He plays a dangerously irresponsible "pill-popper."

Thx

[Floyd R. Turbo]

24. Wow! 👍🏻

[malthaussen]

29. According to Baseball Reference.com...

... only the Dodgers and Cubs, and only one pitch-hit appearance with Brooklyn. He played in the Yankee minor league organization (among others). He was an unimpressive first baseman.


-- Mal

[Floyd R. Turbo]

32. Thanks for clearing that up!

[Thx]

12. Barbra Streisand

was once married to Elliot Gould.

Thx

[red dog 1]

13. Welcome to DU!

[Thx]

15. Thank you, nice to be here!

Thx

[TexasBushwhacker]

40. Their son is Jason Gould

He used to act and sing a little but hasn't done much in several years. He sure looks like his parents.

%3Fw%3D2000&w=800&q=70

[Thx]

16. The Partridge Family

was based on the real-life rock-n-roll family group, The Cowsills.

Thx

[TexasBushwhacker]

39. Most stayed in the music business

Barry, who is seated in that clip, drowned during Hurricane Katrina. Susan escaped NOLA with her husband but the lost most of ther belongings. She sometimes sings with Vicki Peterson, formerly in The Bangles. Vicki is married to John Cowsill, who plays drums and sings in the Beach Boys touring band.

[Thx]

17. Harold Lloyd

Lost his right thumb and forefinger in an accidental explosion while posing for a publicity shot in 1919, yet he went on later to make his best films and doing many of his own stunts wearing a prosthetic glove.

[url=https://postimages.org/][img][/img][/url]

Thx

[yortsed snacilbuper]

19. Marlon Brando kept Wally Cox's ashes on his mantle!

http://articles.latimes.com/2004/oct/17/entertainment/ca-brando17

[red dog 1]

20. Lindsay Lohan has a reputation of being a "diva" on set, either never showing up or being late,

[Thx]

21. Charles Bickford

Was tried and acquitted of attempted murder charges at age 9 against a trolley man who ran over his dog.

[url=https://postimages.org/][img][/img][/url]

Thx

[Thx]

22. William Shatner

lived in the back of his pickup truck after Star Trek was cancelled.

"‘A pickup truck, actually.’

‘It was the early 1970s and I was recently divorced. I had three kids and was totally broke. I managed to find work back east on the straw-hat circuit – summer stock – but couldn’t afford hotels, so I lived out of the back of my truck, under a hard shell."

Thx

[red dog 1]

25. Thanks for that

I always liked Shatner.

I bought two copies of a book he wrote at "Dollar Tree". (a buck each) as gifts.
I glanced through it briefly, and he's got a pretty good sense of humor.

[Botany]

26. Pat Robertson was a 1st Lt. in the marines and was being shipped to the Korean War and ...

..... called or got in touch w/his dad Sen. Robertson and was then taken off the troop ship
in Japan in order to avoid combat.

[TexasBushwhacker]

37. And his name isn't Pat

His real name is "Marion". His older brother would pat his chubby cheeks and say "pat, pat, pat". He adopted Pat as his name when he was older because he thought "Marion" was effeminate.

[csziggy]

47. Many men named Marion are named after Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox

My uncle was one of those.

Francis Marion (c. 1732 – February 27, 1795)[1] was a military officer who served in the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). Acting with the Continental Army and South Carolina militia commissions, he was a persistent adversary of the British in their occupation of South Carolina and Charleston in 1780 and 1781, even after the Continental Army was driven out of the state in the Battle of Camden.

Marion used irregular methods of warfare and is considered one of the fathers of modern guerrilla warfare and maneuver warfare, and is credited in the lineage of the United States Army Rangers and the other American military Special Forces such as the "Green Berets". He was known as The Swamp Fox.
More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Marion

Disney had a mini-series based on The Swamp Fox which premiered in the 1950s - the series is on YouTube. The Patriot was loosely based on him, but they changed so much the character is unrecognizable.

[dameatball]

27. Contrary to legend, Fidel Castro was not a good baseball player.

[red dog 1]

28. Adam Baldwin, who played Linderman in "My Bodyguard" and "Mother" in Full Metal Jacket,

"boosted" a tweet of a "doctored" photo of Emma Gonzalez allegedly tearing apart the Constitution.
Baldwin sent the re-tweet out to a quarter million followers with the hashtag #Vorwrts!, the German word for "forward" in an apparent reference to the Hitler Youth marching song.
(The real photo from Teen Vogue shows Emma tearing up a gun range target)

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142023646#top

[geardaddy]

30. Don Ho was a fighter pilot in the USAF. n/t

[geardaddy]

31. Robert Clary (LeBeau from Hogan's Heroes) is a survivor of the Holocaust.

In fact, Col. Klink, Sgt. Schultz, and General Burkhalter were all European Jews who escaped from Nazi-occupied Europe. Klemperer (Klink), Banner (Schultz), and Askin (Burkhlater) also served in the US Army during WWII.

[red dog 1]

33. UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek developed the "Encounter Scale" to better catalog UFO reports

in his first book "Close Encounter"

He was a consultant for Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and he made a non-speaking cameo appearance at the end of the film.

[red dog 1]

34. Ted Nugent once paid tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

On April 5, 1968, Nugent, along with a group of musicians paid tribute to Martin Luther King by having a folk, rock & blues jam session.
Joni Mitchell played first, followed by Buddy Guy, Cactus, and Jimi Hendrix.
B.B. King & Al Kooper also participated.

[red dog 1]

35. James Cagney's grandparents came from County Leitrim, in Ireland,

and the family name was Americanized from O'Caigne.

[jmowreader]

36. Lee Marvin served in the Marines in WWII, but never played one on the screen

[Thx]

38. Ed Wynn...

[url=https://postimages.org/][img][/img][/url]

Was the father of Keenan Wynn.

Thx

[red dog 1]

45. Mary Tyler Moore wrote the Forward to Paula Poundstone's 2006 book: "Paula Poundstone:

There's Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say"

[She dedicated the book to her three adopted kids and to Moe, Larry & Curly]

[red dog 1]

46. "Fawlty Towers" lead character, Basil Fawlty, was based on a real British hotel owner named

Donald Sinclair, who ran the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay, England.
The Pythons stayed there while filming on location.

John Cleese was fascinated with the behavior of Sinclair, later describing him as:
"The rudest man I've ever come across in my life."

Sinclair once threw a timetable at a guest who asked when the next bus to town would arrive.
He also placed Eric Idle's suitcase, which had been set down for a few minutes, behind a wall in the back garden on the suspicion that it might contain a bomb.

[red dog 1]

48. Helen Keller wasn't born deaf and blind

At 19 months old, she contracted an unknown illness, which may have been Scarlet Fever or Meningitis...The illness left her both deaf and blind.

Despite her disabilities, she was able to enjoy music by feeling the beat, and she was able to have a strong connection with animals through touch.

After attending several schools for the deaf, she gained admittance, in 1900, to Radcliffe College, Harvard.
Her admirer, Mark Twain, introduced her to Standard Oil magnate Henry Huttleston Rogers, who, with his wife Abbie, paid for her education.

In 1924, at the age of 24, Keller graduated from Radcliffe, becoming the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree

A member of the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World, she campaigned for women's suffrage, labor rights, socialism, anti-militarism and other similar causes.

She died June 1, 1968, only 26 days short of her 88th birthday.