Random, delightful info-collision

[prog]

Bored-surfing the wiki, I read this on the page about Star Trek's Uhura:

Nichelle Nichols planned to leave Star Trek in 1967, after its first season, but Martin Luther King, Jr. persuaded her to stay, stating that she was a role model for the black community. [cite]

One of the United States' federal-holiday namesakes, and therefore a semi-mythical figure AFAIC, played a direct role in shaping popular science fiction as we know it today. Learning this was a spark-throwing info-collision for me! How about that.