The Cleveland Spiders were a professional baseball team in the late 19th century; they played in the American Association from 1887-1888, then moved to the National League, where they played from 1889 through 1899.
In 1899, the Spiders’ owners, brothers Frank and Stanley Robison, purchased another National League team, the St. Louis Browns, which had gone bankrupt. The Robisons renamed the franchise the St. Louis franchise as the Perfectos, and moved the Spiders’ best players to the Perfectos, while announcing that they would operate the Spiders as a “sideshow.” Cleveland fans refused to go to the ballpark to watch the pathetic Spiders, and by midseason, the other NL teams refused to travel to Cleveland to play them, as the visitors’ “cut” of the gate wouldn’t be sufficient to cover travel costs.
Between their decimated talent, and having to play most of the second half of the season on the road, the Spiders finished the 1899 season with only 20 wins, versus 134 losses. Their winning percentage of .130 is, by far, the worst in MLB history, and after the season, the Spiders were disbanded by the National League.
When the Cleveland Indians baseball team changed its name in 2021, a fan favorite for a new name was the Spiders, despite the mixed record (to say the least) of the original team. Team leaders eventually chose the Guardians as the new name, and Tom Hanks narrated a short video announcing the change (starting at 0:30 here).
Spencer Tracy was the first actor to consecutively win the Best Actor Oscar twice, for Captains Courageous (1937) and Boys Town (1938). It has only been done one other time. Tom Hanks is the only other actor ever to win consecutive Best Actor Oscars. He won it for Philadelphia (1993) and Forrest Gump (1994).
British author, journalist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote Captains Courageous at Naulakha, his house near Brattleboro, Vermont. The house is now owned by the Landmark Trust and is available for rent (and I spent a great weekend with some high school pals in it).
In 1903, Kipling gave permission to Elizabeth Ford Holt to borrow themes from the Jungle Books to establish Camp Mowglis, a summer camp for boys on the shores of Newfound Lake in New Hampshire. Throughout their lives, Kipling and his wife Carrie maintained an active interest in Camp Mowglis, which still continues the traditions that Kipling inspired. Buildings at Mowglis have names such as Akela, Toomai, Baloo, and Panther. The campers are referred to as “the Pack”, from the youngest “Cubs” to the oldest living in “Den.”
One of the best-selling postcards of the 20th century featured a racy pun, based on Rudyard Kipling’s name. The postcard, created by English graphic artist Donald McGill (likely during the 1930s), depicts a young couple under a tree; its humor comes from a double-entendre on Kipling’s name which was apparently coined several decades earlier.
Rudyard Kipling was played by Christopher Plummer in the 1975 film adaptation of his tale, The Man Who Would Be King, costarring Sean Connery and Michael Caine. The narrator is unnamed in the original 1888 novella.
Rudyard, Staffordshire is a village in central England and about 25 miles SSE of Manchester. It lies on the shore of the reservoir, Rudyard Lake. The parents of Rudyard Kipling met there and liked the place so much they named their son after it.
Kipling is the name of a small town in south-east Saskatchewan. Named after Rudyard Kipling, it is also notable for being the end-point of a series of trades by a Canadian blogger, Kyle MacDonald, that began with a red paper clip in 2005, and ended with MacDonald gaining a two-storey house in Kipling in 2006.
Kipling SK is near some other towns with interesting names, including about 55 miles SSW of Stockholm SK and about 200 miles NE of Big Beaver SK and Big Muddy SK.
Corner Gas was a Canadian situation comedy television series, set in the fictional small town of Dog River, Saskatchewan. The series, which originally ran from 2004-2009, was entirely filmed in Saskatchewan, and won six Gemini Awards (a Canadian analogue to the U.S. Emmy Awards) and nine Canadian Comedy Awards.
Dog River is the nickname for Rouleau SK, a small town near Regina and about 125 miles W of Kipling SK. Rouleau is where filming for Corner Gas was done, where it depicted the fictitious town of Dog River.
In 1992, on 01 February, US President George HW Bush met with Russian President Boris Yeltsin at Camp David and they formally declared that the Cold War was over.
Originally known as “Hi-Catoctin”, being part of the Catoctin Mountain Park in Maryland, Camp David was built as a retreat for federal government agents and their families by the Works Progress Administration. It was renamed “Shangri-La” by FDR, then later renamed “Camp David” after Dwight David Eisenhower.
President Dwight David Eisenhower renamed it after his only grandson, Dwight David Eisenhower II, who was called David.
In play:
Dwight Eisenhower, who had two sons and no daughters, is the last serving US President to have fathered only sons. However, five of his successors have fathered only daughters: Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barak Obama.
Barack Obama’s parents were Barack Obama, Sr. and Ann Dunham, whose first name at birth was actually Stanley. His father grew up in Kenya and in his teen years was a goatherd. Later he won a scholarship to study in the US and he eventually worked in the Kenyan government as a senior economist. His mother grew up in Kansas, Texas, and Washington state before her family settled in Honolulu. She and Barack Sr. met in 1960 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaii, and the couple married less than a year later. Their son Barack, jr was born in 1961. Neither parent lived long enough to see their son become the 44th President.
In 1964 the Obamas divorced, and Dunham later met and married Indonesian businessman Lolo Soetoro. They had one daughter, Maya Kasandra Soetoro, who was born in 1970 and is the only sibling of Barack, Jr.
