‘The Holy Land’ generally refers to the geographic region of the Southern Levant, encompassing modern-day Israel, Palestine, and parts of surrounding countries significant for Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
For Jews, it’s the Biblical Lands of Israel and the site of the ancient Temple. For Christians, it’s the birthplace of Jesus, the location of his ministry, death, and resurrection. Muslims recognize it as the site of the Night Journey of the Prophet Muhammad. The Holy Land is typically understood to be the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, including parts of modern-day Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and potentially extending into parts of Syria and Egypt
The Southern Levant corresponds approximately to present-day Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, and possibly also southern Lebanon, southern Syria and the Sinai Peninsula. The Levant is a subregion of West Asia that borders the Eastern Mediterranean sea to the west and forms the core of the Middle East.
The core region of the Southern Levant (Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt (namely, the Sinai Peninsula)) spans two of the six acknowledged “cradles of civilization”: Mesopotamia to the east and Ancient Egypt to the west. The other four cradles are: Ancient India, Ancient China, the Caral-Supe of coastal Peru, and the Olmec of Mexico.
OJ Simpson became the first NFL player to rush for more than 2,000 yards in a season, and he is the only one to do so in a 14-game regular season. Simpson also holds the record for the single-season yards-per-game average at 143.1.
I was a young kid when he broke 2,000 yards during that 1973 season. I remember him setting the record at Shea Stadium against the hapless NY Jets in 1973 — wow, that’s also the year that Secretariat broke the Triple Crown 25-year drought with his extremely impressive win in the Belmont.
Yes, OJ and Secretariat in 1973. Great runners, they.
In 2007, OJ Simpson published a book detailing his version of the 1994 double-murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. The original title, O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened, was changed to (If) I Did It: Confessions of the Killer following a federal judge’s decision to award proceeds of the book to the Goldman family and subsequent alteration of the book title.
Simpson was interviewed by the Fox Network to promote his book; following a public outcry, the network did not air it, and canceled further interviews. Simpson still tried to promote his book, and appeared on a radio call-in show with a free 800 number. Several callers were able, on air, to prank Simpson with not so subtle jibes about the double-murder.
In play (and interspersed with my commentary, in italics) —
OJ Simpson was one of the greatest NFL running backs of the 1970s and, subsequently, one of the greatest ever in all of NFL history — he is frequently in the top 25 of any reputable list. (Comment: I grew up back east and watched a lot of football, and he was one of my favorite players.)
Simpson went to high school in San Francisco’s Galileo High School and then he played some college ball at CCSF, the City College of San Francisco. (Comment: I later moved to San Francisco where one of my best friends grew up in ‘The City’ and played football; he later played college ball at Cal Poly SLO as a wide receiver. When it was pretty clear that Simpson had abused his wife and later killed her, I was a bit incredulous; I almost couldn’t believe it, mainly because I was a big fan; but my friend and his wife enlightened me of Simpson’s systemically violent ways with his women. Yes, they told me, he frequently abused and beat his women.)
After high school and junior college at CCSF, Simpson played college ball at USC before becoming the overall #1 pick in the 1969 NFL/AFL draft. This was the third and final year that the draft was jointly held by the NFL and the AFL. In the following year the draft was the first of the NFL’s modern era, following the merger of the National Football League with the American Football League.
OJ Simpson is well known for his commercials he did for Hertz. When Simpson was accused of spousal abuse, he called the CEO Frank Olsen personally to say the accusation was overblown. It is suspected by many that Hertz eventually fired Simpson as their spokesman because of the abuse issues. But the real trivium is that Simpson and Olsen died on the same day.
When Simpson was drafted he demanded to be paid $650,000 and be the highest-paid player in the league. The Bills’ owner initially balked, then agreed to pay.
Simpson struggled in the first three years, due to head coach John Rauch having Simpson block instead of run. Rauch was replaced by Harvey Johnson, who focused more on getting Simpson the ball but still his numbers were mediocre. Finally Lou Saban was hired as head coach, and Saban realized the true potential of his star running back by bolstering the offensive line. Once Simpson could break through the line of scrimmage and get into open field he was almost impossible to stop. In 1972 Simpson finally rushed for over 1,000 yards; the following year he became the first player to rush for over 2,000 yards in a single season, and did it in just 14 games.
The song “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” was written by the songwriting team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King for Aretha Franklin. Franklin’s 1967 recording of it reached #8 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart, and became one of her signature songs.
The song has since been covered by many artists, notably Mary J. Blige, Celine Dion, and King herself.
Cécile Dionne, one of the Dionne Quintuplets, died last month. At first glance, many misread her name as Celine Dion, another French Canadian woman. However, when the Dionne Quintuplets were born over 90 years ago, they became a global phenomenon for decades, as the first quintuplets known to survive to adulthood.
Their birth brought the Quintuplets international fame and attention, but it also led to exploitation, loss of privacy and separation from their family.
The vampire squid is a celaphod, the only surviving member of the order Vampyromorphida. It has a webbing between its eight arms. Its dark colour and the cloak-like appearance of the webbing led to its name.
Despite being called a squid, the vampire squid is closely related to the octopodes. That’s right, octopus is Greek for eight-footed thus its plural form would either be the English style (octopuses) or the Greek style (octopodes) but never the Latin style (octopi).
Alvin Lee (1944-2013) was an English musician, best known as the the lead vocalist and guitarist of the blues rock band Ten Years After. Between 1968 and 1973, the group had eight consecutive Top 40 albums on the UK Albums Chart. Their biggest singles hit was “I’d Love To Change the World”, which was part of their 1971 album, A Space in Time.
In November 1971 the American folk pop group The Hillside Singers released the song, I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony). Soon after, working with advertising executive Bill Backer and songwriter Billy Davis, the songwriters rewrote it to become “Buy the World a Coke” for a TV commercial for Cola Cola that portrayed a positive message of hope and love, and featured a multicultural collection of young people on top of a hill singing the song. The commercial was so popular that the song was re-recorded in two versions: one by The New Seekers and another by The Hillside Singers as a full-length song that removed the Coca-Cola references.
The song became a hit record in the US and the UK.
“The Hillside Strangler” was the media-created nickname for a serial killer who was responsible for torturing and murdering twelve girls and women in the Los Angeles area in 1977 and 1978. The nickname stemmed from the fact that many of the victims’ bodies were discovered on hillsides around the city.
Investigators eventually determined that two cousins – Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono – were responsible for their murders.