…when exiting.
When my friend went to the medical centre on the Queensland North Coast, they asked him what his future plans were. ‘Driving to Darwin’ he said (from one coastal city to another). ‘No’, they said to him. “You don’t understand. That line on the map is as far as you can drive in any direction before reaching an altitude of 200 metres. You’re staying in town for another 10 days.”
Have a friend here who’s a long-time recreational diver. About 3 years ago was deep-diving a little beyond his skill level with somebody else who claimed to be a deep expert but turned out to be even less skilled than my pal. Somehow they overstayed their time down around 200 feet (?) versus their (or at least my pal’s) remaining air supply.
That led to a forced too-rapid ascent and 1 week-ish in a decompression chamber. He was a mess on the way in and not much better on the way out. Lots of long term damage. Sucks.
This one, told to me last week, is personal, but historically fascinating in it’s own right. In 1907, two MK&T freight trains collided head-on at Moberly, Missouri; killing the entire crew of both trains. One engineer left a baby niece, the other a baby nephew. Years later, the niece and nephew married each other – my aunt and uncle, and the parents of my cousin, who told me about it…
Today in baseball history:
On June 10, 1944, pitcher Joe Nuxhall debuted for the Cincinnati Reds. He is the youngest player ever to appear in a Major League Baseball game. On the day of his debut, Nuxhall was 15 years, 316 days old
This morning I learned about the Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival. Took place in 1972 in a rural area of SW Indiana (but was technically in Illinois on Bull Island). Was pretty much a disaster.
Tony Burrows was a One Hit Wonder…five times. According to Wikipedia, Tony Burrows sang the lead vocals on several one-hit wonder songs under different group names: Edison Lighthouse’s “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)”; White Plains "My Baby Loves Lovin’ ";The Pipkins novelty song "Gimme Dat Ding; and The First Class “Beach Baby.”
What’s even more remarkable was that Nuxall returned to the big leagues eight years later and played for 15 more years.
Seems they’re a little off:
On a family note, the sister of Bledsoe’s wife, Mollie Turner, was married to James Medley Winegar, brother of Charles Edward Winegar
Not sure about killer songs, but in the killer commercials I’d put the one about Kids and Cars in the top spot (not going to say it out loud to prevent ear-worms, but “Cars for Kids”).
I just now found out the reason the theme music of Star Trek-TOS, composed by Alexander Courage, wasn’t used in the Animated Series or the movies. From Wikipedia:
Writing on Facebook’s Starlog Magazine official page in March 2021, Gerrold revealed that the reason for this was a longstanding feud between Courage and Roddenberry over residual payments for airings of Star Trek: TOS episodes using the original theme: “When Courage turned in the original music, Roddenberry added his own lyrics to it, thereby depriving Courage of half his residuals. Courage never forgave Roddenberry and refused to give permission for the reuse of the theme. That’s why new music was written for the animated series and again for the movies.”
Bob Crewe was co-producer of the Four Seasons and co-wrote most of their songs. The Bob Crewe Generation did “Music to Watch Girls By.” Almost all of his output was in that light-rock offend-no-one vein. (Now, of course, such a title would offend everyone. Such is irony.)
In 1974 he co-wrote two successive number one hits. The forties-ish treacle “My Eyes Adored You” for Frankie Valli was followed by… Labelle’s “Lady Marmalade,” probably the dirtiest number one song of its era.
Golf is one of two sports played on the moon. The other is javelin throwing. Or so says Alexa.
Cracking fact. His Wikipedia page has more, but its significance may not be obvious if you’re not British:
A published interview with Burrows claims that he became the first (and still the only) recording artist to appear on BBC Television’s Top of the Pops fronting three different group acts appearing almost sequentially in a single broadcast show: Edison Lighthouse (the #1 British-charted hit that week), White Plains, and Brotherhood of Man. However records show that this did not happen. He did, however, have two of his bands on the same Top of the Pops four times between 29 January and 26 February 1970. Appearing alongside Edison Lighthouse on the shows were Brotherhood of Man (29-01-70 and 19-02-70) and White Plains (12-02-70 and 26-02-70).
My bold. At that time Top Of The Pops was the pop music show on British TV, almost to the exclusion of anything else*. This is a hell of strange achievement. I assume it must have been commented on much like a running joke at the time, but I have no memory of it.
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* - The Old Grey Whistle Test was a much more serious affair (man).
Today I learned that Centipedes have between 15 and 191 body segments. The number published varies with source but it is always odd. Since some species add segments during molt they would always have to add pairs to maintain an odd count.
Judith Miller, the reporter who got caught up in the WMD intrigue during the early days of the war in Iraq was the half-sister of Rolling Stones’ producer Jimmy Miller. (famously mentioned in You Can’t Always Get What You Want: “I sung my song to Mister Jimmy…”)
So just like corn kind of. Except corn always has an even number of rows so it’s like the exact opposite. Not sure where I’m going with this since I haven’t had my first cup of coffee.
Still interesting that either even or odd would be preserved in any organism like that. It’s a sort of meta-symmetry that’s beyond the obvious like each centipede segment has the same number of legs on left and on right.
Millipedes still have a million legs right?
1/1000th of a leg.
I sing it as “Retarded Kids”.