In April 2013, Dick Van Dyke revealed that for seven years he had been experiencing symptoms of a neurological disorder, in which he felt a pounding in his head whenever he lay down; but despite his undergoing tests, no diagnosis had been made. He had to cancel scheduled appearances due to fatigue from lack of sleep because of the medical condition. In May 2013, he tweeted that it seemed his titanium dental implants may be responsible.
The Dick Van Dyke Show co-star Morey Amsterdam penned lyrics to the show’s theme song:
*So you think that you’ve got trouble.
Well trouble’s a bubble.
So tell old mister trouble to get lost.
Why not hold your head up high and
Stop cryin’, start tryin’.
And don’t forget to keep your fingers crossed.*
Amsterdam’s status as the Dutch capital is mandated by the Constitution of the Netherlands, although it is not the seat of the government, which is The Hague. Amsterdam has a population of 842,343 within the city proper, 1,340,725 in the urban area, and 2,431,000 in the Amsterdam metropolitan area. Its flag features three white Xs.
Amsterdam Avenue in New York City is the name for the northern section of what is actually 10th Avenue in the city’s grid plan of numbered streets and avenues. Notable landmarks on the avenue are the High Line (along Tenth Avenue), the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (at the intersection of West 111th St), the eastern edge of the Columbia University Campus (between West 114th and 120th streets) and Yeshiva University (at West 187th St)
While the name Amsterdam is supposed to recall the city’s Dutch roots, the section of the avenue with that name is far to the North of the early Dutch settlements in lower Manhattan.
Amsterdam has over 1,200 bridges, and over 160 canals that total to a length of 60 miles.
The first edition of CBS’s news magazine 60 Minutes, which aired on September 24, 1968, featured the following segments:
A look inside the headquarters suites of presidential candidates Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey during their respective parties’ national conventions that summer;
Commentary by European writers Malcolm Muggeridge, Peter von Zahn, and Luigi Barzini, Jr. on the American electoral system;
A commentary by political columnist Art Buchwald;
An interview with then-Attorney General Ramsey Clark about police brutality;
“A Digression,” a brief, scripted piece in which two silhouetted men (one of them Andy Rooney) discuss the presidential campaign;
An abbreviated version of an Academy Award-winning short film by Saul Bass, Why Man Creates; and
A meditation by Wallace and Reasoner on the relation between perception and reality. Wallace said that the show aimed to “reflect reality”.
After 20 years of mime, Charlie Chaplin finally spoke on the air. When much of America first heard his voice when he did this, it was on CBS.
Teller, the mine sidekick in Penn and Teller magic shows, has occasionally been heard to speak. He was born Raymon Joseph Teller, but has legally changed his name to Teller, and his US passport bears only the mononym “Teller”.
I would not suggest giving any mine a side kick!
In play: Teller taught English and Latin at Lawrence High School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. In 2001, he was selected to be a member of the Central High School Hall of Fame.
Baseball fan Ralph Carhart is on a quest to connect with all 312 members of the Baseball Hall of Fame, living and dead, by putting the “Hall Ball”, a single baseball, in the hand of every living member and visiting the grave of every deceased member, and taking a commemorative photograph.
He has already visited the grave sites or other significant locations for 227 inductees, and has met 60 living members. He hopes to complete his meetings with living members and visits to gravesites of dead members by Summer 2017. So far he has spent $25000 on travel expenses to 29 states, as well as Puerto Rico and Cuba.
For Ted Williams, who died in 2002, Mr. Carhart visited the Alcor Life Extension Foundation cryonics lab in Scottsdale, Ariz., where the player’s body is suspended in liquid nitrogen. A tour guide would narrow down the location of Williams’s body only to several metal containers, which Mr. Carhart photographed with the Hall Ball.
Of the remaining living players, including Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Sandy Koufax, Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan, Mr. Carhart acknowledged the challenge of getting them to be part of his project, especially because he cannot afford to pay the autograph fees most players charge today. He is not seeking an autograph, but an addition to something he plans to donate to the Baseball Hall of Fame for public display.
The complete story is in the New York Times, October 3: With a Single Baseball, Seeking to Connect All 312 Hall of Famers - The New York Times
It’ll be interesting to see what he does with Ed Delahanty, whose body was never recovered, and is believed to have been swept over Niagara Falls in 1902. Delahanty seems to have been kicked off the train for drunkenness and tried to walk across the railroad bridge above the falls.
Not in play and just FYI – jtur88, interestingly enough Ed Delahanty’s body was recovered:
Ed Delahanty Obituary (warning, gruesome details)
His grave is in Cleveland:
Hall of Fame Baseball Gravesites
This is what the Hall of Fame ball project is doing for dead players with no gravesites:
For the handful of members who do not have a publicly accessible grave site, Mr. Carhart tried to find a location with an intimate connection to the inductee. For the umpire Al Barlick, it was the shaft of a coal mine in Illinois where Mr. Barlick worked as a young man. For Phil Rizzuto, it was a commemorative ball field at Hillside High School in New Jersey.
For two inductees whose ashes were spread in Lake Michigan — the team owner Bill Veeck, and the catcher Mickey Cochrane — Mr. Carhart put the ball on the shoreline and commemorated them together with one photo.
A cenotaph is an empty tomb or a monument erected in honor of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere. A cenotaph for the defenders of the Battle of the Alamo stands in front of the Alamo mission chapel in San Antonio, Texas. The cenotaph is empty because the remains of the fallen were cremated.
Contrary to popular belief, cremated remains are not ashes in the usual sense. After the incineration is completed, the dry bone fragments are swept out of the retort and pulverised by a machine called a Cremulator — essentially a high-capacity, high-speed blender — to process them into “ashes” or “cremated remains”, although pulverisation may also be performed by hand. This leaves the bone with a fine sand like texture and color, able to be scattered without need for mixing with any foreign matter, though the size of the grain varies depending on the Cremulator used. Their weight is approximately 4 pounds (1.8 kg) for adult human females and 6 pounds (2.7 kg) for adult human males. There are various types of Cremulators, including rotating devices, grinders, and older models using heavy metal balls.
The grinding process typically takes about 20 minutes.
Dem Bones — also called Dry Bones and Dem Dry Bones — is a well-known spiritual song. The lyrics are inspired by Ezekiel 37:1-14, where the Prophet visits the “Valley of Dry Bones” and prophesies that they will one day be resurrected at God’s command.
The Delta Rhythm Boys developed the song in recordings for Decca in the 1940s to the version known today by increasing the pitch by a semi-tone with each bone connected and decreasing for each bone disconnected.
The Badwater Ultramarathon describes itself as “the world’s toughest foot race”. It is a 135-mile course starting at 279 feet below sea level in the Badwater Basin, in California’s Death Valley, and ending at an elevation of 8360 feet at Whitney Portal, the trailhead to Mount Whitney. It takes place annually in mid-July, when the weather conditions are most extreme and temperatures can reach 130 °F.
The pilot episode of The Big Valley TV show, filmed in 1964, used the locomotive Sierra Railway Engine #3 from the old Jamestown, California Depot from Railtown 1897 State Historic Park.
The sole rail connection to Petticoat Junction was the Hooterville Cannonball, an 1890s abbreviated train with a steam locomotive and single combination car (with a baggage and passenger section), running on an abandoned spur between Hooterville and Pixley. Sierra Railway Engine #3 also portrayed the Cannonball, and appeared in Clint Eastwood’s films Pale Rider and Unforgiven.
At the Golden Spike National Historic Site in Utah, about an hour’s drive north from Salt Lake City, replicas of the two locomotives that met there when the transcontinental railroad was finished on 10 May 1869, Union Pacific No. 119 and the Jupiter, can be seen today.
The Jupiter was built in September 1868 by the Schenectady Locomotive Works in Schenectady NY.
In Holst’s suite, The Planets, Jupiter is described as the “Bringer of Jollity.”
Holst based his suite on the values associated with the planets in astrology, rather than Greek or Roman mythology.