Nor is it limited to Hollywood.
"The casting call for Tegan (an airline stewardess) in Doctor Who had a minimum height requirement of 5' 4" as British Airways had that requirement. In her audition with producer John Nathan-Turner, [Janet] Fielding claimed that her height (5'2") was the minimum for Australian Airways, so she should be considered for the role. She eventually got the role and was very successful in it, and only later did in come out that she had completely made up the bit about being minimum height." - https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0276148/trivia/

$1,000 just to apply? The Lunar Hilton reservations were free.

I grew up in Miami. I remember in elementary school following the line of latitude on the map and the surprise in learning we were level with the Sahara. A couple of years later I was startled to learn we were slightly west of Quito.

At some point I made a deliberate effort to remember that zero degrees latitude and zero degrees longitude was well off the bendy curve of Africa, since my head placed it somewhere on the Nile south of Cairo. I think that's because Egypt would be the bottom right of a map of European-centered geography, so (0,0) would be the corner.

Going to college in Tallahassee and driving to New Orleans gave me a visceral understanding of how long the panhandle it. The Central Time Zone starts shortly west of Tallahassee, but there's still a lot of Florida remaining before Alabama and Mississippi fly by.

For a Sweden quirk, it's about 1000 km from the south of Sweden to the north of Italy, while it's over 1500 km to the north of Sweden.

FWIW, the 180th meridian goes through Alaska. The International Date Line dodges around the state.

We've been watching old Square One episodes. Last night we finished off the MathNet storyline the Mystery of the Maltese Pigeon, based on (of course) the Maltese Falcon. It made me want to see the film, so I was excited to read here that it's now in the public domain.
Alas, while Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel is in the public domain, the 1941 film is not.

It was a hit in our household. The kids definitely saw it. :)

This requires a lot more finesse than my g'pa story of wrapping a potato in foil and leaving it on the exhaust manifold while driving!

The definition of "centralist tyranny" of course includes Texian objections to Mexico's abolition of slavery, aligned with Audubon own interests as a slave owner.

I suppose it's unlikely that there were a lot of Chiam Potok fans as new parents? My first thought, seeing boy #9, was his book titled "My Name is Asher Lev".

As a kid we would go to Duff’s Smorgasbord, a buffet chain where the food came by you so you could just stand there and pick out what you wanted. The loop went back to the kitchen for reloading or changing. I understand they didn't do well after the owner died, but there's still a Duff's Buffet in Clearwater, FL. https://duffsbuffet.com/ Doesn't have the moving food though.

I'm glad Jacksonville had an honorable mention as I thought (wrongly) it would be in the top 4. Though to note, its shape is not exactly the same as Duval county. I mean, I thought it was, but then I had a roommate from Jacksonville Beach, and learned there were a few other small cities in the county which were not part of consolidation.

Back in the halcyon days of fall 1988 I was in my first semester of college, in Tallahassee, far north of the Miami where I was born and raised.
In October or so I visited Rome, Georgia - the farthest north I had ever been in fall.
That was the first time in my 18 years of life when I saw massive numbers of trees changing color. It was much better than the pictures I had seen.
(About two years later there was a hard freeze. The overnight temps would get below freezing! Those of us in the dorm from south Florida stayed up late, excitedly calling time&temp - it was the olden days - so we could go outside and experience 32℉ and colder. We even made left water outside to see if it would freeze.)

I kinda like the janky rythm of a hand-cranked hurdy-gurdy.