The first formal Winter Olympics were held in 1928, and continued to be held in the same calendar year as the Summer Olympics for almost 70 years. Due to rising costs, the IOC voted in 1986 to alter the schedule. Thus, in 1994, the Winter Olympics were held two years after the 1992 Olympics, and have been held every four years since that time.
Norwegian ice skater Sonia Henie was only 16 when she won her first Olympic championship in the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Sonia Henie has won more Olympic and World titles than any other ladies’ figure skater. She died in 1969 of leukemia at the young age of 57.
On February 13, 1961 US Women’s figure skating champion Laurence Owen was featured on the front cover of Sports Illustrated. Two day later she would die in a plane crash along with all of the other members and coaches of the US World Championship team.
Sabena Flight 548 was the Boeing 707 that crashed on approach to Zaventem Airport, Brussels, Belgium, on February 15, 1961. The crash killed All eighteen members of the 1961 US Figure Skating team, including Laurence “Laurie” Owen.
The flight, which had originated at Idlewild International Airport, killed all 72 people on board and one person on the ground. Another person on the ground was also hit by flying debris which amputated part of his leg.
Peggy Fleming was 12 years old at the time of the crash. Her coach William Kipp died in the plane crash. She became a symbol of the rebirth of US Figure Skating when she went on to win gold at the 1968 Winter Olympics.
“I Lost on Jeopardy” is a 1984 song by “Weird Al” Yankovic, and is a parody of the Greg Kihn Band’s song, “Jeopardy.” The music video of the song, which depicts Yankovic as a hapless contestant on the television game show “Jeopardy!”, features cameo appearances by Art Fleming (the original host of “Jeopardy!”), announcer Don Pardo, novelty song disc jockey Dr. Demento (who helped to launch Yankovic’s career), and singer Greg Kihn.
None of the people in the “I Lost on Jeopardy” video have even been in my kitchen.
John Ratzenberger (Yes, that is a link to above) built an estate and lived on Vashon Island in the 1990s. Vashon is and has been a popular place for Seattle-based celebrities to live.
Out Of Play: I’ve met John Ratzenberger. Very stand-offish.
Cheers costar John Ratzenberger has, to date, provided a voice in almost every Pixar movie released. One studio staffer said he’s practically Pixar’s audio good-luck charm.
The computer-animation studio Pixar can trace its roots back to 1974, when the Computer Graphics Lab was established at the New York Institute of Technology. In 1979, members of the Computer Graphics Lab moved to Lucasfilm, where they became the Graphics Group. Lucasfilm then spun Pixar off as an independent company in 1986, with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs as its majority shareholder.
In 1978, when he was 23 years old, Steve Jobs’ net worth was just over a million dollars. Two years later, when Apple went public, his net worth jumped to 250 million dollars. When he died in 2011, his net worth was estimated at 10.2 billion dollars. Much of his wealth at that time was Disney stock, which he received when Disney bought Pixar in 2007.
Pixar has, to date, released 25 full-length films since their first, Toy Story, in 1995. Their latest, Turning Red, was released on March 11 of this year.
In 1995 NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope discovered a population of comets dwelling at the fringe of the solar system. From these then newly-discovered Kuiper belt objects, astronomers could estimate that the Kuiper belt contains at least 200 million comets which have remained essentially unchanged since the birth of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.
Pluto, the former planet now designated a dwarf planet, is located within the Kuiper belt. The belt is typically considered to extend 30 to 50 astronomical units (AUs) from the Sun. (The Earth is just a single AU, 93 million miles, from the Sun). The belt’s outermost edge is recognized in some astrophysical models as being the border of the Solar System.
A Van Allen radiation belt is an area of charged particles around a planet – it primarily consists of particles originating from the solar wind, which are captured by the planet’s magnetosphere.
The Earth has two primary Van Allen belts. The logo of Universal Pictures often features stylized versions of these belts surrounding the Earth.
The Kuiper belt is named for Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper, though he did not predict its existence. He only suggested it may exist but he also thought. that gravitational forces from other planets would have cleared its contents. In 1992 when minor planet Albion was discovered, it was the first Kuiper belt object discovered since Pluto in 1930 and Charon in 1978.
“Albion” is an alternative and archaic name for Great Britain, derived from the Greek. It was used by many classical writers. There have been nine warships named HMS Albion to serve in the Royal Navy, the most recent of which is an amphibious transport dock commissioned in 2003 and still in service.
Albion’s Fatal Tree is a fascinating collection of essays on crime and society in 18th century England.
The two oldest trees in the world are both located in the White Mountains of California. The trees, both of which are Great Basin bristlecone pines, are believed to be over 4800 years old.
The world’s tallest tree is in California. It is a California coastal redwood tree, Sequoia sempervirens. It was discovered in 2006, is over 375 feet tall, and has been named Hyperion. Shortly after it was measured as the tallest tree, Richard Preston, a writer for the New Yorker climbed close to the top and described what it was like to stand there. Preston wrote of his experience being over 350 feet in the air, “A wind had begun to blow, and the top of Hyperion swayed back and forth. The branches here were spindly, and were encrusted with many kinds of lichen.”
Hyperion is also the name of a moon of Saturn. It was discovered in 1848 and has an unusual and, as yet, unexplained spongelike appearance: Hyperion (moon) - Wikipedia
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