Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis first began performing as a duo in 1945. They soon found success at an Atlantic City nightclub, then their own radio program, and then starring on TV variety shows. They quickly began starring in movies and made an astonishing 14 movies in the years 1950 through 1956. But a series of disagreements led to their breakup in mid 1956, and they never worked together again.
That was good to see. I’m not so sure I’d have recognized him if you hadn’t pointed him out.
In play: “Lewy”, as in Lewy body, rhymes with Louie which is a form of the name Lewis. Lewy bodies are abnormal clumps of protein that form inside nerve cells and displace normal cells, and lead to Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia. They are named after Frederic Lewy, a neurologist who identified them in 1910 and noticed that people with them acted and thought differently than the norm. Lewy worked in Alois Alzheimer’s Munich laboratory and was contemporary with neurologists Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt and Alfons Maria Jakob. Creutzfeldt and Jakob were possibly the first to describe Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a fatal neurocognitive disorder.
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known “mad cow disease,” is believed to manifest in human beings as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. As Creutzfeldt-Jakob cannot be detected except after death, the American Red Cross’s current policy prohibits anyone who spent a cumulative six months or more in the United Kingdom during the 1980s, when he or she may have consumed meat from infected cattle, from donating blood.
Blood banks in North America are working to encourage younger donors, since baby boomers, historically the largest donor group, are “aging out”. For example, New York Blood Center is running a campaign with the slogan “OK Boomers, We got this!” aimed at Gen-Z donors ages 16-24.
(I’m at the tail-end of the baby boom generation and my son is Gen-Z. He gets the “OK Boomers” mailings while I get standard ones)
Jim Covert (a.k.a. “Jimbo” Covert) was an All-American offensive tackle at the University of Pittsburgh, then had a Hall of Fame career as a tackle for the NFL’s Chicago Bears.
After he retired from football, Covert went into medical sales, then transitioned into the blood bank industry. He is in senior management with Vitalant, which operates blood bank and blood testing in several cities, including Chicago and Pittsburgh.
The first blood bank is believed to have been in Moscow in 1930, where it stored blood from freshly-expired cadavers. The first blood bank that accepted blood from live donors opened in March of 1937, at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital. It facilitated 1,354 blood transfusions in its first year of existence.
Cuyahoga County, Ohio, with about 1.2 million people, comprises the Greater Cleveland area and is bordered to the north by Lake Erie.
Kalawao County, located on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, is the country’s least populated county. A former leper colony, the population of the county is less than 90 residents.
Chicago crime writer Scott Turow sets many of his books, including his first and arguably best-known novel Presumed Innocent, in a fictional Kindle County that sounds a lot like Cook County, Illinois (the greater Chicago area).
The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle was the second album released by Bruce Springsteen, in late 1973. Though the album sold poorly on its release (due, in part, to a lack of promotion by the record label), it was well-received by critics, and several of its songs, particularly “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” were frequently performed by Springsteen and the E Street Band during concerts.
E Street, in Belmar NJ, runs mainly south to north as a short, one way street. It is about ¾ mile long, and it runs
from 1501 E Street, Belmar NJ (at 16th Ave)
to 501 E Street, Belmar NJ (at 5th Ave)
Here is a map of it —
This is the E Street of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. The band was founded in October 1972, but it was not formally named until September 1974.
The band took its name from the street where band member David Sancious’ (keyboards) mother lived. She allowed the band to rehearse in her garage.
From wiki: Tourists to the area seeking sight of early Springsteen haunts often mistakenly believe the house was on the corner of E Street and 10th Avenue, perhaps due to the song “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” about the band’s beginnings. The Sancious house was at 1107 E Street with the garage squeezed between the house and the southside fence.
The Sancious house is mapped in the link provided above.
A popular legend tells of the marriage of the parents of Robert the Bruce, king of Scotland. His father, 27-year-old Robert de Brus, was a handsome young warrior in the Ninth Crusade. When Adam de Kilconquhar, one of his companions-in-arms, fell in 1270, at Acre, it was Robert who delivered the sad news to Adam’s widow, Marjorie of Carrick. Supposedly, Marjorie was so taken with the messenger that she had him held captive until he agreed to marry her.
The crusades were a series of medieval military expeditions made by Europeans to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims over 200 years in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. The first crusade recovered Jerusalem in 1099.
In late 2001, the Bush White House specifically directed the State and Defense departments not to refer to the U.S. and allied military efforts against the Al Qaeda and the Taliban as a “crusade,” to avoid any implication that the War on Terror was once again pitting Christianity against Islam.
Following the taking of Jerusalem at the end of the First Crusade, four “Crusader states” were established to maintain control of the conquered territories. These states were located in Jerusalem, Edessa, Antioch and Tripoli. Edessa, the northernmost state, fell to a Muslim force in 1144; this action led to the Second Crusade, which began in 1147.
The first line of the Marines’ Hymn (the official hymn of the United States Marine Corps) is:
“From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli”
The line refers to two 19th century battles in which the Marine Corps participated. The first half of the line refers to the Battle of Chapultepec, in 1847, during the Mexican-American War. The second half of the line refers to the Battle of Derna, in 1805, during the First Barbary War.
The U.S. Marine Corps is the only American military service with a scarlet or red flag. It was adopted in early 1939, the year World War II broke out, during the Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The official emblem of the Marine Corps is the eagle, globe, and anchor, or the EGA. An early version of the EGA was used in 1776, and was updated in the 18th and 19th centuries. The current version was approved in 1868.
The official emblem of the British Admiralty from 1707 to 1964 was a foul anchor, with rope entangling it, which would be impractical for use aboard a ship, but has a pleasing appearance on a seal or a flag. In his Hornblower saga, C.S. Forester describes “the foul anchor of the Admiralty [as] the most inappropriate emblem conceivable for a nation that ruled the sea.”
A fouled anchor is one whose lines are entangled or entwined around its stock or flutes.