MOVIE FAVORITES:BEN-HURThe story of Ben-Hur has been a popular one since the 19th century. “Ben-Hur” was first published in the United States in 1880 by Lew Wallace, a Civil War Union General and Governor of the New Mexico Territory, and became the number one best-selling work of fiction of that century. The first movie adaptation […]
Mehran Karimi Nasseri was born in 1942 in Iran. His father was an Iranian doctor and his mother was a Scottish nurse working at the same hospital. In 1973, Nasseri went to Britain where he spent three years studying at the University of Bradford. Then he returned to Iran, where he got into trouble for […]
Memorable MoviesSAVING PRIVATE RYAN The movie “Saving Private Ryan” is based on the real-life Niland brothers, four siblings who all served during World War II. Three of the brothers were supposedly killed in action, which caused their remaining brother to be shipped back to America so that the Niland family wouldn’t lose all of their […]
Memorable MoviesSKYFALL • Skyfall was the most financially successful of any James Bond movie in history. It had the biggest opening weekend of any previous James Bond film, and pulled in over $1 billion worldwide over the course of its run.• The opening scene, involving a motorcycle chase across rooftops, took place in Turkey. It […]
MOVIE FAVORITES:SISTER ACT “Sister Act” wasn’t about female siblings, but rather a story of gangsters and nuns. Follow along as Tidbits delves into the particulars about this 1992 film.• Whoopi Goldberg plays the role of a lounge singer with a gangster boyfriend named Vince. When her character, Deloris Van Cartier, witnesses Vince killing an informant, […]
June 22 is Worldwide VW Beetle Day, and Tidbits joins the world in honoring everyone’s favorite bug!• For more than 80 years, the Volkswagen Beetle transported people here and there, the longest-produced vehicle in history. In the early 1930s, only one in 50 Germans owned a car, and an idea for a cheap, simple car […]
Since June 22 is Worldwide VW Beetle Day, it’s a great time to look into the making of “The Love Bug,” released in March of 1969. • In 1961, Gordon Buford published a short story called “Car, Boy, Girl” and shortly afterward, Walt Disney purchased the rights to it. Seven years later, “The Love Bug” […]
It’s been over 50 years since this blockbuster was released, and it still remains on the list of the greatest movies of all time. Tidbits visits the Old West with the facts on “Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid.” • American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter William Goldman did research for eight years before penning his […]
• James Baldwin was a soldier during World War I and saw how effectively the German army used dogs. Dogs had been used to carry first aid to wounded soldiers, to run messages, and to help lay landlines. When World War II started, Baldwin petitioned Parliament to set up a program to use dogs for […]
• Alphonse Bertillon was born in France in 1853. His father was a noted physician and statistician who taught him methodology. • As a young adult, he went to work as a records clerk in the police department in Paris. One of his duties was to tediously copy down the physical descriptions of everyone who […]
