Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 plays on the weekend. Music from the 70s and 80s pour from the speakers churning up long-forgotten songs and well-known favorites. Along with good music, Casey offers a bit of knowledge about the artists or the songs. These tidbits are just as enjoyable.
One such story of note that I did not know was the link between four-time Grammy winner Dame Olivia Newton-John and Nobel Prize recipient and instrumental in quantum mechanics physicist and mathematician Max Born. Newton-John was Born’s granddaughter.
Born fled Germany to the United Kingdom as the Nazi Party came to power. Newton-John was born in Cambridge, England in 1948.
Not only did she have a notable grandfather but her father, Brinley Newton-John was an MI5 officer at Bletchley Park working on the Enigma project. It is said that he was the officer who took Rudolf Hess into custody. Hess was the Deputy Fuhrer of the Nazi Party and later stood trial at Nuremberg for war crimes.
That is some lineage. Nobel Prize winner, War Hero, to an actress and multiple Grammy winner.
Something else I did not know was Newton-John’s daughter moved to Oregon in 2017 to start a marijuana business. She was also in the movie Sharknado 5: Global Swarming.
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