SSS Puzzle
Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2018 7:54 am
The following are clues to 100 people. To solve the puzzle, you must first identify each person from the clue and then combine them to form 50 pairs according to a Tangredi, or principle which you must discover for yourself. A number of alternate pairs are possible in this puzzle, but there is (hopefully) only one solution that will enable you to match up all 100 people correctly. Once you discover exactly how the Tangredi works, many of the pairs will fall into place fairly quickly, and the rest of the puzzle should be solvable reasonably easily by process of elimination.
1. If I had posted this game a month or so earlier, I’d have provoked the Curse of the Tangredi by including this 1960’s and 70’s character actor.
2. He did not miss a single game during his NFL career, and his consecutive games played streak is second only to Jim Marshall among defensive players.
3. He was the first true freshman walk-on to start a season opener at quarterback for a BCS school, but he became better known for his exploits at the school to which he later transferred.
4. He had planned to direct a biography of Howard Hughes starring Jim Carrey when Martin Scorsese beat him to the punch and the project was shelved; ironically, the next film he actually directed was far more successful commercially than The Aviator was.
5. Her relationship wasn’t so good for Goody’s; a year after she agreed to design a namesake clothing line for the retailer, the company filed for Chapter 11.
6. Although his recording career only lasted about four years, a number of his songs have been covered numerous times since then, including Black Snake Moan and Matchbox Blues.
7. His support of an already convicted Alger Hiss led Joe McCarthy to call him “this pompous diplomat in striped pants, with a phony British accent.”
8. He was the winning pitcher in the only game the Big Red Machine won in its first World Series and in the seventh game of the Machine’s first winning World Series.
9. Although this author claimed that the characters in his best-selling first novel were completely fictional, many people felt that significant events in the book were based on the suicide of Senator Lester Hunt.
10. In 1972, this former music professor met Bonnie Nettles, who became his lifelong partner and helped him develop much of his religious philosophy.
11. She was runner-up in last year’s U.S. Women’s Open Tennis Championship.
12. Talk about a mess of porridge, two weeks after the founding of their high tech company, he sold his share back to his two partners for $800; today that stake would be worth over $60 billion.
13. His most famous painting was never finished and was in his possession at his death, but he and his daughters used it as a model to paint dozens of reproductions that they later sold.
14. In 1966, he threw a party at New York’s Plaza Hotel in honor of Katharine Graham that he called the Black and White Ball, but which has become famous as the Party of the Century.
15. Not quite as memorable as Wally Pipp’s headache, he got his break when Bobby Thomson broke his ankle in a 1954 spring training game.
16. He got his break in a more gruesome fashion, when his predecessor as lead driver for their team was killed in a race; two years later, he became the youngest World Driver’s Champion in Formula One history at that time.
17. In one of his more acclaimed films, this Danish director’s wife played the mother of a better known Swedish director.
18. He was the first actor to play a supernatural character on an episode of the original Twilight Zone.
19. Her final best-selling book begins with a chapter called “A Fable for Tomorrow,” a parable about the effects of the dangers warned about in the book.
20. During his career, he played well known detectives created by Erle Stanley Gardner, Dashiell Hammett, S.S. Van Dine, and Louis Joseph Vance.
21. One of the few Saturday Night Live hosts not to use cue cards, a highlight of his appearance was a sketch opposite a musical group called the Young Caucasians.
22. Her offscreen affair with Bob Hope, with whom she once sang a classic Christmas song onscreen, was so well known that she was often referred to derisively as “Mrs. Bob Hope.”
23. Speaking of affairs, at the time of her death, she was living with Dick Van Dyke, with whom she had a lengthy affair, but she is far better known for another actor she lived with and whose last name she took.
24. This former bandleader played in a series of 40’s and 50’s “Mountie” movies in which he was regularly upstaged by his dog, but is best known for playing a modern day Western hero in a popular children’s TV series.
25. In 1958, he created the Carte Blanche credit card, which originally bore his family name, and, along with his son, helped popularize the idea of using credit cards.
26. This politician’s assassination, two days before the end of the World’s Columbian Exposition, led to the cancellation of the planned closing ceremonies, which were replaced by a memorial service for him.
27. Despite his starring role on a popular TV series, he attended classes at Etowah High School in Woodstock, GA, graduating with honors last spring.
28. He has been a regular contributor on Fox Sports Network for several years, where he has often commented on the exploits of his two far-better-known younger brothers.
29. This country singer won a Grammy for his rendition of a song first made popular by actor Richard Harris.
30. Nicknamed “The Sweetest Girl in Pictures” in the silent film era, she played W.C. Fields’s daughter in both a silent and a sound film.
31. His best-known poem is based on an actual dispute between Arabella Fermor and Lord Petre.
32. On March 19, 2017, he returned as a panelist on Meet the Press for the first time in 36 years to discuss what he called Donald Trump’s “dangerous disability.”
33. This author’s first book was the best selling non-fiction book of the 1970’s; in it, he predicted a coming apocalypse and that the world would end by December 31, 1988.
34. This former Emmy-winning broadcaster now heads up Facebook’s news partnership team.
35. The first computer that bore his name was sold to the National Center for Atmospheric Research for $8.8 million in 1976.
36. This scientist, who described himself as “100% Democrat,” is perhaps the most prominent scientific opponent of the Paris Climate Accords and has stated that the environmental movement had been “hijacked by a bunch of climate fanatics.”
37. Her first marriage at age 16 to a well-known painter three decades her senior lasted less than a year but led to her meeting and later posing for a number of her husband’s artist friends, including photographer Julia Cameron, who took a famous photograph of her on her honeymoon at the home of Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
38. He used the alias A.J. Hidell on occasion, although a number of people believe Hidell was actually a real person.
39. This actor has a knack for survival in monster movies; he was still alive at the end of both The Thing and Pitch Black.
40. He is widely credited as being the first TV wrestling announcer, and his popularity in that role led to his becoming the host of numerous game shows.
41. During his lifetime, this Victorian was best known as a mountaineer who was the first to ascend several peaks in the Alps and wrote a number of popular books and articles about his adventures; he is best remembered today as the son-in-law of a very famous writer and the father of another very famous writer.
42. Although many felt that his dramatic role in a recent major film warranted an Oscar nomination, his application to join the Motion Picture Academy in 1995 was rejected because he did not have “enough of the kinds of roles that allow a performer to demonstrate the mastery of his craft.”
43. In college, he guided Georgia Tech to a runner-up finish in the Final Four, but his pro career has been considerably less successful, playing for eight different NBA teams.
44. His most recent notable TV appearance was playing the director of the fictional Central Security Agency in a series of TV movies, but he is best remembered for playing a PI on an earlier series opposite a rather large actor.
45. A mountain range in Utah was named in honor of this scientist in 1872, the last range to be added to the map of the contiguous United States.
46. This actor’s career went downhill after a well-received debut as Frank Sinatra’s brother in a popular comedy, but he had better luck as a producer, co-producing one Best Picture winner and another movie on AFI’s top 100 list within a five-year period.
47. His second wife, who predeceased him by a year, was the sister of Tom Petty’s bassist; his third wife was considerably more famous.
48. His first significant role was as one of the title characters on a TV series opposite Richard Ruccolo and Traylor Howard; his subsequent career has fared much better than either of theirs.
49. Although a non-gambler himself, this former Representative was probably the leading Congressional proponent of legalizing online gambling while he was in office; in fact, a number of the country’s most prominent poker players held fundraisers for him.
50. One of his early directorial efforts involved a teenage boy’s fascination with a Nazi war criminal; more recently, his own relationship with a teenage boy came under media scrutiny.
51. “And Sudden Death,” an article he published in his magazine in 1935, was one of the first to describe the aftermath of auto accidents in (for the time) rather graphic fashion and is credited with first raising public consciousness about auto safety issues.
52. He composed perhaps his most famous song with Donald “Duck” Cropper at the Lorraine Motel, about three years before Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated there.
53. Before becoming an actor, he was the lead guitarist for the Blinking Underdogs, which experience may have been helpful for his role in a Coen Brothers film.
54. This actress won an Emmy as James Earl Jones’s girlfriend, but is better known for playing his wife in two very popular movies.
55. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the same time as the Eagles, for whom he had written a number of songs; in fact, Bruce Springsteen, who introduced him, said that he wrote the songs the Eagles wished they had written.
56. James Brown dubbed him the “Godson of Soul” after the two performed a duet at the 2005 Grammy Awards.
57. He was the oldest player to win a PGA tournament since the advent of the Senior PGA Tour (now PGA Champions Tour).
58. This painter, who was loosely associated with the Harlem Renaissance, is best known for a series of twelve paintings commemorating the exploits of John Henry, which are on permanent display at the Museum of African American Art in Los Angeles.
59. This suffragette, a cousin of Emma Lazarus, helped found the National Consumers League, an organization dedicated to improving wages and conditions for retail working women at the turn of the century, and was President of the New York chapter for 20 years; during this same time period, her younger sister was one of the leading anti-suffragettes of the era.
60. This white Pittsburgh businessman is best remembered today for a historically black university in Charlotte, NC, that bears his name.
61. He won an Emmy for playing a politician and a second Emmy for playing a crossdresser (no, they weren’t the same character).
62. Knowing this politician’s most infamous quote won me $32,000 on a certain game show.
63. This actor is best known for his role on The Wire, but has been seen recently in series on BET and VH1, as well as a guest-starring stint on Justified with his better known younger brother as a pair of Shakespeare-quoting goons.
64. This politician coined the phrase “Tory democracy,” of which he was a leading proponent.
65. On St. Patrick’s Day, 1955, hometown fans of this hockey player started a major riot in a shopping district near the arena, resulting in three dozen injuries and over 60 arrests, following the announcement of his suspension for the remainder of the season as a result of a fight in an earlier game.
66. Although authors are only eligible to win the Prix Goncourte once, he won it a second time under a pseudonym and had a relative pose as the author; the subterfuge was not discovered until the publication of his posthumous memoir on the matter.
67. In the 1960’s, he attracted attention by dropping dollar bills on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as a protest; by the 1980’s, he had joined a Wall Street brokerage firm.
68. As a young man, this future politician was kidnapped by pirates and suggested they ask for a larger ransom than their initial demand because he was worth it; he later raised an army and captured and executed the pirates, as he promised he would do while he was still their captive.
69. This member of the Adult Video News Hall of Fame made news of a different sort in 2015 when TMZ aired film of her passed out on the sidewalk on the Las Vegas Strip; she later claimed she had been roofied.
70. He hosted the first television news broadcast in 1939 and, a year later, anchored the first live TV coverage of the Republican Nation Convention in Philadelphia, even though he was in a New York studio at the time.
71. Supposedly, he decided to drop out of law school and become a monk when he survived a lightning bolt striking near a tree that he was sheltering under during a rainstorm.
72. On the subject of dropouts, he dropped out of Baylor, where he was a member of a secret society called the NoZe Brotherhood, but was then admitted to Duke Medical School where he graduated and was subsequently licensed to practice medicine.
73. His books were subsequently made into movies starring Glenn Ford, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, Roy Scheider, and Randolph Scott.
74. This 19th century artist was renowned for her popular paintings of flowers, which illustrated books of poetry, the best known of which was commonly called The Wild Flowers of America.
75. Nicknamed “The Spider,” this fighter’s legacy has been tarnished recently by failed drug tests.
76. He delivered the speech containing the phrase for which he is famous to the convention of the National Association of Broadcasters on May 9, 1961.
77. He went directly from Southwest Atlanta Christian Academy to being the first player selected in the NBA draft.
78. One of his best-known roles was played earlier by Dennis Farina and later by Harvey Keitel.
79. This actress is best known for her role as the stepmother and high school principal of the title character on a popular sitcom and later appeared as the mother of the title character on another sitcom and the mistress of the title character’s father on a show that was far from a sitcom. Got that?
80. One of the minor characters in Gone with the Wind is named after this real life Confederate general who became a significant political figure after the Civil War.
81. This author’s best-known novel is the story of a celebrity whose affair with a much younger man ends poorly; she had some expertise in this area since she had a lengthy affair with a considerably older and much better-known writer.
82. At the peak of his career, this athlete went nine years, nine months, and nine days between losses.
83. She performed with The Wind in the Willow, the Stilettos, and Angel and the Snake before helping form the group that made her famous.
84. Although not generally thought of as a dancer, one of this actor’s best film scenes was his spirited routine performed to “31 Flavors” by the Shirelles.
85. This actor is best known for his role as the younger version of a character who is very likely going to win an Oscar for another actor this year.
86. His change in tactics from high-level bombing to low-level bombing, and removing the guns from the B-29 bombers to accommodate more bombs led to the deadliest air raid in world history, the March 9, 1945, firebombing of Tokyo.
87. In 1974, Philip K. Dick sent a letter to the FBI claiming that this foreign science fiction writer was actually a Communist committee created to foment Communist propaganda in the guise of science fiction; ironically, although this writer had previously been publicly critical of American science fiction in general, he specifically exempted Dick’s work from criticism, hailing Dick as a visionary.
88. Four months after his arrest in Minnesota that effectively ended his political career, he was inducted into his home state’s Hall of Fame; ironically, one of his fellow inductees that year wound up succeeding him in office.
89. The musical group with which he is most associated became the first group to have all its members inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice when he was inducted for the second time in 2010 as a member of a group with which he had sung previously. Got that (I couldn’t resist saying it a second time)?
90. Her engagement to Charlie Sheen ended badly when he shot her in the arm; she married her equally famous current husband a year later.
91. In 1971, he wrote a memo to an executive at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce suggesting that, in order to counter the influence of activists like Ralph Nader, businesses should establish scholarly groups to promulgate and promote their own messages, a memo which has been credited as the inspiration for the creation of various conservative and libertarian think tanks.
92. This Nixon cabinet member from Maryland often joked that his middle initials stood for “Chesapeake Bay.”
93. He played Professor Harold Hill over 2,000 times in touring productions of The Music Man; later, Robert Preston would recreate one of his best-known film roles.
94. This British scientist is best remembered for a spherical bomb/torpedo he developed in World War II, the successful use of which against a seemingly indestructible German target was dramatized in a 1955 movie in which he was portrayed by Michael Redgrave.
95. He holds the major league record for home runs by a second baseman, but he started one game at shortstop, to allow Willie Randolph to finish his career at second base.
96. This musician’s appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964 is credited for popularizing Cajun music beyond Louisiana, and he remained one of its leading proponents for the next three decades, including his appearance as a fiddler in the final scene of the movie Southern Comfort.
97. The only movie this actor ever directed featured the first nude scene by a mainstream star in a U.S. movie since the adoption of the Production Code; somewhat fittingly, bodies featured rather prominently in his best-known film role as well.
98. In 1998, only a few months before his death, he and his law partner agreed to forfeit $5 million in company stock to settle charges stemming from their involvement in the B.C.C.I. scandal.
99. She reprised a well-known Susan Sarandon role; soon, Dakota Johnson will reprise one of her best-known roles.
100. Her appearances in 32 independent films in the 1990’s earned her the nickname, “Queen of the Indies.”
1. If I had posted this game a month or so earlier, I’d have provoked the Curse of the Tangredi by including this 1960’s and 70’s character actor.
2. He did not miss a single game during his NFL career, and his consecutive games played streak is second only to Jim Marshall among defensive players.
3. He was the first true freshman walk-on to start a season opener at quarterback for a BCS school, but he became better known for his exploits at the school to which he later transferred.
4. He had planned to direct a biography of Howard Hughes starring Jim Carrey when Martin Scorsese beat him to the punch and the project was shelved; ironically, the next film he actually directed was far more successful commercially than The Aviator was.
5. Her relationship wasn’t so good for Goody’s; a year after she agreed to design a namesake clothing line for the retailer, the company filed for Chapter 11.
6. Although his recording career only lasted about four years, a number of his songs have been covered numerous times since then, including Black Snake Moan and Matchbox Blues.
7. His support of an already convicted Alger Hiss led Joe McCarthy to call him “this pompous diplomat in striped pants, with a phony British accent.”
8. He was the winning pitcher in the only game the Big Red Machine won in its first World Series and in the seventh game of the Machine’s first winning World Series.
9. Although this author claimed that the characters in his best-selling first novel were completely fictional, many people felt that significant events in the book were based on the suicide of Senator Lester Hunt.
10. In 1972, this former music professor met Bonnie Nettles, who became his lifelong partner and helped him develop much of his religious philosophy.
11. She was runner-up in last year’s U.S. Women’s Open Tennis Championship.
12. Talk about a mess of porridge, two weeks after the founding of their high tech company, he sold his share back to his two partners for $800; today that stake would be worth over $60 billion.
13. His most famous painting was never finished and was in his possession at his death, but he and his daughters used it as a model to paint dozens of reproductions that they later sold.
14. In 1966, he threw a party at New York’s Plaza Hotel in honor of Katharine Graham that he called the Black and White Ball, but which has become famous as the Party of the Century.
15. Not quite as memorable as Wally Pipp’s headache, he got his break when Bobby Thomson broke his ankle in a 1954 spring training game.
16. He got his break in a more gruesome fashion, when his predecessor as lead driver for their team was killed in a race; two years later, he became the youngest World Driver’s Champion in Formula One history at that time.
17. In one of his more acclaimed films, this Danish director’s wife played the mother of a better known Swedish director.
18. He was the first actor to play a supernatural character on an episode of the original Twilight Zone.
19. Her final best-selling book begins with a chapter called “A Fable for Tomorrow,” a parable about the effects of the dangers warned about in the book.
20. During his career, he played well known detectives created by Erle Stanley Gardner, Dashiell Hammett, S.S. Van Dine, and Louis Joseph Vance.
21. One of the few Saturday Night Live hosts not to use cue cards, a highlight of his appearance was a sketch opposite a musical group called the Young Caucasians.
22. Her offscreen affair with Bob Hope, with whom she once sang a classic Christmas song onscreen, was so well known that she was often referred to derisively as “Mrs. Bob Hope.”
23. Speaking of affairs, at the time of her death, she was living with Dick Van Dyke, with whom she had a lengthy affair, but she is far better known for another actor she lived with and whose last name she took.
24. This former bandleader played in a series of 40’s and 50’s “Mountie” movies in which he was regularly upstaged by his dog, but is best known for playing a modern day Western hero in a popular children’s TV series.
25. In 1958, he created the Carte Blanche credit card, which originally bore his family name, and, along with his son, helped popularize the idea of using credit cards.
26. This politician’s assassination, two days before the end of the World’s Columbian Exposition, led to the cancellation of the planned closing ceremonies, which were replaced by a memorial service for him.
27. Despite his starring role on a popular TV series, he attended classes at Etowah High School in Woodstock, GA, graduating with honors last spring.
28. He has been a regular contributor on Fox Sports Network for several years, where he has often commented on the exploits of his two far-better-known younger brothers.
29. This country singer won a Grammy for his rendition of a song first made popular by actor Richard Harris.
30. Nicknamed “The Sweetest Girl in Pictures” in the silent film era, she played W.C. Fields’s daughter in both a silent and a sound film.
31. His best-known poem is based on an actual dispute between Arabella Fermor and Lord Petre.
32. On March 19, 2017, he returned as a panelist on Meet the Press for the first time in 36 years to discuss what he called Donald Trump’s “dangerous disability.”
33. This author’s first book was the best selling non-fiction book of the 1970’s; in it, he predicted a coming apocalypse and that the world would end by December 31, 1988.
34. This former Emmy-winning broadcaster now heads up Facebook’s news partnership team.
35. The first computer that bore his name was sold to the National Center for Atmospheric Research for $8.8 million in 1976.
36. This scientist, who described himself as “100% Democrat,” is perhaps the most prominent scientific opponent of the Paris Climate Accords and has stated that the environmental movement had been “hijacked by a bunch of climate fanatics.”
37. Her first marriage at age 16 to a well-known painter three decades her senior lasted less than a year but led to her meeting and later posing for a number of her husband’s artist friends, including photographer Julia Cameron, who took a famous photograph of her on her honeymoon at the home of Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
38. He used the alias A.J. Hidell on occasion, although a number of people believe Hidell was actually a real person.
39. This actor has a knack for survival in monster movies; he was still alive at the end of both The Thing and Pitch Black.
40. He is widely credited as being the first TV wrestling announcer, and his popularity in that role led to his becoming the host of numerous game shows.
41. During his lifetime, this Victorian was best known as a mountaineer who was the first to ascend several peaks in the Alps and wrote a number of popular books and articles about his adventures; he is best remembered today as the son-in-law of a very famous writer and the father of another very famous writer.
42. Although many felt that his dramatic role in a recent major film warranted an Oscar nomination, his application to join the Motion Picture Academy in 1995 was rejected because he did not have “enough of the kinds of roles that allow a performer to demonstrate the mastery of his craft.”
43. In college, he guided Georgia Tech to a runner-up finish in the Final Four, but his pro career has been considerably less successful, playing for eight different NBA teams.
44. His most recent notable TV appearance was playing the director of the fictional Central Security Agency in a series of TV movies, but he is best remembered for playing a PI on an earlier series opposite a rather large actor.
45. A mountain range in Utah was named in honor of this scientist in 1872, the last range to be added to the map of the contiguous United States.
46. This actor’s career went downhill after a well-received debut as Frank Sinatra’s brother in a popular comedy, but he had better luck as a producer, co-producing one Best Picture winner and another movie on AFI’s top 100 list within a five-year period.
47. His second wife, who predeceased him by a year, was the sister of Tom Petty’s bassist; his third wife was considerably more famous.
48. His first significant role was as one of the title characters on a TV series opposite Richard Ruccolo and Traylor Howard; his subsequent career has fared much better than either of theirs.
49. Although a non-gambler himself, this former Representative was probably the leading Congressional proponent of legalizing online gambling while he was in office; in fact, a number of the country’s most prominent poker players held fundraisers for him.
50. One of his early directorial efforts involved a teenage boy’s fascination with a Nazi war criminal; more recently, his own relationship with a teenage boy came under media scrutiny.
51. “And Sudden Death,” an article he published in his magazine in 1935, was one of the first to describe the aftermath of auto accidents in (for the time) rather graphic fashion and is credited with first raising public consciousness about auto safety issues.
52. He composed perhaps his most famous song with Donald “Duck” Cropper at the Lorraine Motel, about three years before Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated there.
53. Before becoming an actor, he was the lead guitarist for the Blinking Underdogs, which experience may have been helpful for his role in a Coen Brothers film.
54. This actress won an Emmy as James Earl Jones’s girlfriend, but is better known for playing his wife in two very popular movies.
55. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the same time as the Eagles, for whom he had written a number of songs; in fact, Bruce Springsteen, who introduced him, said that he wrote the songs the Eagles wished they had written.
56. James Brown dubbed him the “Godson of Soul” after the two performed a duet at the 2005 Grammy Awards.
57. He was the oldest player to win a PGA tournament since the advent of the Senior PGA Tour (now PGA Champions Tour).
58. This painter, who was loosely associated with the Harlem Renaissance, is best known for a series of twelve paintings commemorating the exploits of John Henry, which are on permanent display at the Museum of African American Art in Los Angeles.
59. This suffragette, a cousin of Emma Lazarus, helped found the National Consumers League, an organization dedicated to improving wages and conditions for retail working women at the turn of the century, and was President of the New York chapter for 20 years; during this same time period, her younger sister was one of the leading anti-suffragettes of the era.
60. This white Pittsburgh businessman is best remembered today for a historically black university in Charlotte, NC, that bears his name.
61. He won an Emmy for playing a politician and a second Emmy for playing a crossdresser (no, they weren’t the same character).
62. Knowing this politician’s most infamous quote won me $32,000 on a certain game show.
63. This actor is best known for his role on The Wire, but has been seen recently in series on BET and VH1, as well as a guest-starring stint on Justified with his better known younger brother as a pair of Shakespeare-quoting goons.
64. This politician coined the phrase “Tory democracy,” of which he was a leading proponent.
65. On St. Patrick’s Day, 1955, hometown fans of this hockey player started a major riot in a shopping district near the arena, resulting in three dozen injuries and over 60 arrests, following the announcement of his suspension for the remainder of the season as a result of a fight in an earlier game.
66. Although authors are only eligible to win the Prix Goncourte once, he won it a second time under a pseudonym and had a relative pose as the author; the subterfuge was not discovered until the publication of his posthumous memoir on the matter.
67. In the 1960’s, he attracted attention by dropping dollar bills on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as a protest; by the 1980’s, he had joined a Wall Street brokerage firm.
68. As a young man, this future politician was kidnapped by pirates and suggested they ask for a larger ransom than their initial demand because he was worth it; he later raised an army and captured and executed the pirates, as he promised he would do while he was still their captive.
69. This member of the Adult Video News Hall of Fame made news of a different sort in 2015 when TMZ aired film of her passed out on the sidewalk on the Las Vegas Strip; she later claimed she had been roofied.
70. He hosted the first television news broadcast in 1939 and, a year later, anchored the first live TV coverage of the Republican Nation Convention in Philadelphia, even though he was in a New York studio at the time.
71. Supposedly, he decided to drop out of law school and become a monk when he survived a lightning bolt striking near a tree that he was sheltering under during a rainstorm.
72. On the subject of dropouts, he dropped out of Baylor, where he was a member of a secret society called the NoZe Brotherhood, but was then admitted to Duke Medical School where he graduated and was subsequently licensed to practice medicine.
73. His books were subsequently made into movies starring Glenn Ford, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, Roy Scheider, and Randolph Scott.
74. This 19th century artist was renowned for her popular paintings of flowers, which illustrated books of poetry, the best known of which was commonly called The Wild Flowers of America.
75. Nicknamed “The Spider,” this fighter’s legacy has been tarnished recently by failed drug tests.
76. He delivered the speech containing the phrase for which he is famous to the convention of the National Association of Broadcasters on May 9, 1961.
77. He went directly from Southwest Atlanta Christian Academy to being the first player selected in the NBA draft.
78. One of his best-known roles was played earlier by Dennis Farina and later by Harvey Keitel.
79. This actress is best known for her role as the stepmother and high school principal of the title character on a popular sitcom and later appeared as the mother of the title character on another sitcom and the mistress of the title character’s father on a show that was far from a sitcom. Got that?
80. One of the minor characters in Gone with the Wind is named after this real life Confederate general who became a significant political figure after the Civil War.
81. This author’s best-known novel is the story of a celebrity whose affair with a much younger man ends poorly; she had some expertise in this area since she had a lengthy affair with a considerably older and much better-known writer.
82. At the peak of his career, this athlete went nine years, nine months, and nine days between losses.
83. She performed with The Wind in the Willow, the Stilettos, and Angel and the Snake before helping form the group that made her famous.
84. Although not generally thought of as a dancer, one of this actor’s best film scenes was his spirited routine performed to “31 Flavors” by the Shirelles.
85. This actor is best known for his role as the younger version of a character who is very likely going to win an Oscar for another actor this year.
86. His change in tactics from high-level bombing to low-level bombing, and removing the guns from the B-29 bombers to accommodate more bombs led to the deadliest air raid in world history, the March 9, 1945, firebombing of Tokyo.
87. In 1974, Philip K. Dick sent a letter to the FBI claiming that this foreign science fiction writer was actually a Communist committee created to foment Communist propaganda in the guise of science fiction; ironically, although this writer had previously been publicly critical of American science fiction in general, he specifically exempted Dick’s work from criticism, hailing Dick as a visionary.
88. Four months after his arrest in Minnesota that effectively ended his political career, he was inducted into his home state’s Hall of Fame; ironically, one of his fellow inductees that year wound up succeeding him in office.
89. The musical group with which he is most associated became the first group to have all its members inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice when he was inducted for the second time in 2010 as a member of a group with which he had sung previously. Got that (I couldn’t resist saying it a second time)?
90. Her engagement to Charlie Sheen ended badly when he shot her in the arm; she married her equally famous current husband a year later.
91. In 1971, he wrote a memo to an executive at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce suggesting that, in order to counter the influence of activists like Ralph Nader, businesses should establish scholarly groups to promulgate and promote their own messages, a memo which has been credited as the inspiration for the creation of various conservative and libertarian think tanks.
92. This Nixon cabinet member from Maryland often joked that his middle initials stood for “Chesapeake Bay.”
93. He played Professor Harold Hill over 2,000 times in touring productions of The Music Man; later, Robert Preston would recreate one of his best-known film roles.
94. This British scientist is best remembered for a spherical bomb/torpedo he developed in World War II, the successful use of which against a seemingly indestructible German target was dramatized in a 1955 movie in which he was portrayed by Michael Redgrave.
95. He holds the major league record for home runs by a second baseman, but he started one game at shortstop, to allow Willie Randolph to finish his career at second base.
96. This musician’s appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964 is credited for popularizing Cajun music beyond Louisiana, and he remained one of its leading proponents for the next three decades, including his appearance as a fiddler in the final scene of the movie Southern Comfort.
97. The only movie this actor ever directed featured the first nude scene by a mainstream star in a U.S. movie since the adoption of the Production Code; somewhat fittingly, bodies featured rather prominently in his best-known film role as well.
98. In 1998, only a few months before his death, he and his law partner agreed to forfeit $5 million in company stock to settle charges stemming from their involvement in the B.C.C.I. scandal.
99. She reprised a well-known Susan Sarandon role; soon, Dakota Johnson will reprise one of her best-known roles.
100. Her appearances in 32 independent films in the 1990’s earned her the nickname, “Queen of the Indies.”