When Baseball Commissioner Giamatti, a former Yale University president, died of a massive heart attack shortly after his Pete Rose decision, Rose reportedly commented “*Now *look who’s banned from baseball for life.”
Good one, I like it!
The first-ever two-time Super Bowl MVP was also the first-ever player to be awarded it, QB Bart Starr of the Green Bay Packers. It would be another 43 years before another Packer QB would be MVP. Brett Favre never won the award. Desmond Howard was MVP when the Packers won their next Super Bowl 29 years after Bart Starr’s team won.
Aaron Rodgers was the other Packer QB to be awarded MVP, in 2011.
San Francisco 49ers QB Joe Montana is the only 3-time MVP. All the 2-time winners are QBs: Starr, Terry Bradshaw, Tom Brady, and Eli Manning.
The all-time leading QB in passing retired in the off-season this year. Anthony Calvillo played his entire career in the CFL, finishing with 79,816 passing yards.
Second on the list is Damon Allen, at 72,381. Allen also played entirely in the CFL.
It’s not until 3rd spot that it’s an NFL QB: Brett Favre, with 71,838.
Longtime Washington Redskins coach George Allen, who returned from retirement to take over the Long Beach State Forty Niners program, died of ventricular fibrillation shortly after receiving an icy Gatorade shower from his players following the final game of a successful season.
Redskins are a long time favourite, raspberry-flavoured chewy confectionery manufactured in Australia by Nestlé.
Jimmy Nelson was a 50s-60s ventriloquist, best known for his commercials for Nestles with his puppet dog, Farfel. Jimmy would sing, “N-E-S-T-L-E-S, Nestles makes the very best” at which point Farfel would chime in with his low voice singing, "chocolate’ (in two syllables).
Monty Python’s Flying Circus once spoofed the death of Lord Nelson by showing a dummy dressed in Royal Navy uniform falling from a modern London office tower, crying, “Kiss me, Hardy!”
The Circus Maximus is an ancient Roman racing stadium located in Rome, between the Aventine and Palatine hills. In its heyday it was able to accommodate approximately 150,000 spectators.
George Allen coached the team that lost the last game of the season to the Miami Dolphins in their 1972 Perfect Season, the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl VII.
A perfect number is a positive integer that is equal to the sum of its proper, positive divisors. The first five perfect numbers are 6; 28; 496; 8,128; 33,550,336
A happy number is a number defined by the following process: Starting with any positive integer, replace the number by the sum of the squares of its digits, and repeat the process until the number equals 1 (where it will stay), or it loops endlessly in a cycle which does not include 1. Those numbers for which this process ends in 1 are happy numbers, while those that do not end in 1 are unhappy numbers (or sad numbers). The first six happy numbers are 1, 7, 10, 13, 19, 23.
Sir Charles Tupper, a Father of Confederation, was the sixth Prime Minister of Canada. He had the shortest term in office of all the Prime Ministers, serving just over two months.
The shortest term as Australian PM was that of Frank Forde: eight days from 6-13 July 1945.
One of Harry Potter’s first chocolate-frog collectible cards referred to Albus Dumbledore’s defeat of the dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945. The name and year led many to speculate that Grindelwald was somehow connected with Nazi Germany.
A Potter’s Field is a common grave used for the burial of unknown or indigent people.
The name is derived from the Gospel story of the potter’s field purchased by the chief priests of the Temple in Jerusalem, using the blood money which Judas took to betray Jesus.
Pontius Pilate, prefect of Judea would later be recalled to Rome after having put down a Samaritan rebellion, 5 or so years after the cruxifiction.
The unnamed wife of Pilate is mentioned only once in the New Testament, in Matthew’s Gospel, where she warns her husband against condemning the “innocent man” Jesus.
In the later non-canonical gospel of Nicodemus she is given the name Procula.
Pilatus Aircraft, known for its versatile PC-12 turboprop, is named for Mount Pilatus, near its main facility in Stans, Switzerland, in the canton of Nidwalden. Founded during WW2 as part of a national strategy to maintain independence, the original plans were to locate the factory actually inside the mountain. If it had, the plant could not have been the background for the scene of James Bond crashing his Aston-Martin DB5 in Goldfinger.
On a hunting trip, Ward Bond was accidentally shot by John Wayne. Bond left Wayne the shotgun in his will.
Jay Ward, creator if Rocky and Bullwinkle, one conceived of a “Statehood for Moosylvania” promotion and even went to the White House to get publicity. Unfortunately he showed up during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when no one in the building had much of a sense of humor.