“Delta Dawn” is a country/pop song, written by Larry Collins and Alex Harvey, about a middle-aged woman who is obsessed over a sailor who had jilted her years ago. The song was a top-10 hit on the Billboard U.S. Country chart for Tanya Tucker (who was, at the time she recorded it, 13 years old) in 1972, and was a #1 pop hit in the U.S., Canada, and Australia for Helen Reddy in 1973.
Helen Reddy’s Delta Dawn was first offered to Barbra Streisand, who refused it. Reddy’s rendition soared to #1 in the week of 15 September 1973. It remained in the Top Ten for 8 weeks.
The operation to capture former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was named Operation Red Dawn and its targets were dubbed “Wolverine 1” and “Wolverine 2”, a direct reference to the 1984 movie Red Dawn that depicted a guerilla resistance to a Soviet invasion of Colorado. Army Captain Geoffrey McMurray, who named the mission, said the naming “was so fitting because it was a patriotic, pro-American movie.” Milius approved of the naming, saying “I was deeply flattered and honored. It’s nice to have a lasting legacy.”
The Marvel Comics character Wolverine was originally introduced with a cameo appearance in the October 1974 issue (#180) of The Incredible Hulk, before being more fully introduced in the November issue of that same book.
In his original appearance, Wolverine was a superhuman agent of the Canadian government, who had been sent to fight the Hulk.
After that story, Wolverine’s next comic book appearance was the following year, in Giant-Size X-Men #1, in which he was part of a new team of X-Men (to coincide with the re-launch of the title).
“The Rumble in the Jungle” was a heavyweight championship boxing match in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then, Zaire) between undefeated and undisputed heavyweight champion George Foreman and Muhammad Ali.
Foreman, 25 years old, was heavily favored over Ali, 32 years old. It has been called “arguably the greatest sporting event of the 20th century” and was a major upset, with Ali coming in as a 4–1 underdog against the unbeaten, heavy-hitting Foreman.
The Congolese crowd cheered Ali by shouting, “Ali boma ye!”, meaning, “Ali, kill him!” in Lingala.
Ali won by knockout in the eighth round.
The fight occurred in October 1974.
The “Rumble in the Jungle” featured an unusual and rarely seen tactic by the challenger, Muhammad Ali. In fact, some attribute Ali as inventing this maneuver, now known as ‘rope-a-dope’. Ali spent most of the early rounds leaning against the ropes in a completely defensive posture, covering his face and body with his arms and gloves. In this manner, he was able to absorb the blows by the hard-hitting George Foreman, and Ali also managed to conserve his energy while Foreman was spending his. Foreman had won 37 of his 40 professional matches by knockout, most of them in the early rounds, so he was not used to going deep into his matches. As a result, Foreman’s energy was expended and, as noted by @Bullitt, Ali won by knockout in the eighth round.
George Foreman has 12 children: seven daughters and five sons; all of his sons are named George Foreman (followed with a Roman numeral).
George Foreman won the gold medal in the heavyweight division at the 1968 Summer Olympics over the Soviet Union’s Jonas Čepulis. In the first round, Čepulis’s face was bloodied from Foreman’s punches. In the beginning of the second round, Čepulis’s beating continued and he was given a standing 8 count to recover, and later in that second round, because of Foreman’s incessant landing punches, the referee stopped the fight.
Prior to that fight, Foreman had only fought 18 times.
Here is that fight:
In 1968, the long jump record was 27 ft 4.5 in. At the Olympics in Mexico City, Bob Beamon had a perfect jump with the jump skipping 28 feet and setting a new world record of 29 ft 2.5 in (1 ft 10 in longer). 23 years later his record was broken by Mike Powell who beat it by only 2 inches and that is the record as of today.
Bob Dole, Republican of Kansas, served as U.S. Senate Majority Leader from 1985-87 and 1995-96. He was President Gerald Ford’s running mate in 1976, but the Republican ticket lost that year to the Democratic one of Jimmy Carter of Georgia and Walter Mondale of Minnesota. Dole was unable to win the Republican presidential nomination in either 1980 or 1988; he won it in 1996 but was then defeated in November by President Bill Clinton.
The first human to ever be successfully treated with the antibiotic streptomycin was U.S. Army officer Bob Dole, who, in the waning days of World War II, was suffering from a severe infection as a complication from battle injuries. Thanks to the drug, Dole recovered from the infection, and was able to rehabilitate from his injuries, going on to become a successful politician.
Bob Dole’s 1996 running mate was Jack Kemp. Kemp’s son, Jeff Kemp, was an NFL quarterback who played for the Los Angeles Rams, San Francisco 49ers, Seattle Seahawks, and Philadelphia Eagles. His other son, Jimmy Kemp, was a quarterback in the Canadian Football League for the Sacramento Gold Miners, San Antonio Texans, Saskatchewan Roughriders, Montreal Alouettes, Edmonton Eskimos, and Toronto Argonauts.
Their father, Jack Kemp, was a politician but before that he was also a quarterback in the NFL, AFL, and CFL for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Calgary Stampeders, Los Angeles / San Diego Chargers, and Buffalo Bills.
Jack Kemp quarterbacked the Chargers to two AFL Championship games, including the first one in 1960. In both games, his team was defeated by the Houston Oilers. He later played for the Buffalo Bills and led them to AFL championships in 1964 and 1965.
He ended his football career in 1969 as the AFL’s all-time leader in passing attempts, completions and yards.
George Blanda was a quarterback and placekicker, who played professional football for 26 seasons. He was originally drafted by the NFL’s Chicago Bears in 1949, and played for the Bears for ten seasons; he retired from football after the 1958 season, at age 31, primarily because the Bears’ owner/coach, George Halas, preferred to use him only as a kicker.
After being out of football for a year, Blanda joined the new American Football League in 1960, becoming the Houston Oilers’ quarterback and kicker. He played for the Oilers for seven seasons, winning the first two AFL Championship Games over the Los Angeles/San Diego Chargers. He then went to the Oakland Raiders, where he played for an additional nine seasons as their kicker and backup quarterback.
In 1970, at the age of 43, Blanda repeatedly had to come into games as quarterback, replacing the injured Daryle Lamonica, and led the Raiders to several last-minute comeback wins, eventually finishing in second place in the voting for the NFL’s Most Valuable Player for that season. Blanda finally retired at age 48, and still holds the record for being the oldest active player in the NFL.
The longest NFL game in history was on Christmas Day in 1971 between the Dolphins and Chiefs, which went into double overtime and lasted 82 minutes and 40 seconds. The Miami Dolphins defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 27-24 in the AFC Divisional Game. The Dolphins’ Garo Yepremian kicked a 37 yard field goal for the win.
The 1972 Miami Dolphins are the only NFL team to achieve a perfect season (14-0) by winning every game, including the Super Bowl. The 2007 New England Patriots came close to matching that with an 18-0 record before losing to the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII. Each year, surviving teammates of the 1972 team gather to celebrate their record by drinking champagne when the last undefeated team of the current season loses a game.
Don Shula was an American football player and coach. He was a defensive back, who played for seven seasons in the NFL, primarily with the Baltimore Colts, and went into coaching after retiring as a player.
In 1963, at the age of 33, Shula was named the head coach of the Colts. He coached the Colts for seven seasons, leading them to the NFL Championship in 1968, though they lost Super Bowl III to the AFL’s New York Jets. He left Baltimore in 1970, to become the head coach of the Miami Dolphins, which he coached for 26 seasons, winning two Super Bowls, including their undefeated 1972 season.
Dan Marino was an NFL quarterback who played from 1983-1999, all with the Miami Dolphins. Because of injuries in his senior season at Pitt, Marino was the last of the six quarterbacks drafted in the first round in the 1983 draft. Marino quickly established himself as one of the best passers in the game, becoming the first quarterback to throw for more than 5,000 yards in a season, which he accomplished in his second year. His Dolphins team made the playoffs 10 times in his career, but lost in their only Super Bowl appearance, losing to the Joe Montana-led 49ers in Super Bowl XIX.
Super Bowl XIX was the second “home” Super Bowl, where one of the teams were at or near to their home stadium. Super Bowl XIX was played at Stanford Stadium, only 30 miles from Candlestick Park in San Francisco.
The first one was Super Bowl XIV between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Los Angeles Rams. It was played in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.
Not in play / nitpick:
Marino became the first NFL quarterback to throw for more than 5,000 yards in a season: 5,084 in 1984.
Warren Moon, playing for the Edmonton Eskimos, was the first quarterback to throw 5,000 yards (exactly) in 1982.
Moon beat his own record the next year, throwing for 5,648 yards in 1983, a year before Marino.