In college, the Notre Dame sports information director convinced future Washington Redskins quarterback and NFL MVP Joe Theismann to change the pronunciation of his name from “THEEZ-man” to “THIGHS-man” so it would rhyme with Heisman. The new Mr. Thighsman never won Heisman. He finished second to Jim Plunkett.
O.J. Simpson won the 1968 Heisman Trophy winner. There is also a touching story about his meeting his football hero Jim Brown by waiting outside the stadium since he didn’t have the money to purchase a ticket in the original 1993 book Chicken Soup for the Soul. When Brown asks him “What is your name, son?” he replies “Orenthal James Simpson.”
What a difference a year makes!
Sherrod Brown, a Democrat and one of Ohio’s two U.S. senators, is married to Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz. She worked at The Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland from 1993 to 2011. Her first novel is expected to be published next year.
Charles Schulz, creator of Charlie Brown and the Peanuts cartoons, was drafted during World War II, at age 21 and served as a staff sergeant with the 20th Armored Division in Europe, as a squad leader on a .50 caliber machine gun team. His unit saw combat only at the very end of the war. Schulz said that he only had one opportunity to fire his machine gun but forgot to load it. Fortunately, he said, the German soldier he could have fired at willingly surrendered.
The largest commercially produced revolver is the Smith & Wesson Performance Center Model 500. It fires the .500 Smith & Wesson Magnum cartridge which has a .50 caliber bullett. One variant has a 10½” barrel. That gun weighs 5 lbs dry.
The Beatles’ 7th album, Revolver, has appeared high up in many lists of the best albums ever made, often in the top position. In 1997 it was named the third greatest album of all time in the BBC’s “Music of the Millennium” poll. In 2000, Q magazine placed it at number 1 in its list of the “50 Greatest British Albums Ever”; four years later, the album topped the same magazine’s list “The Music That Changed the World”. In 2001, the VH1 network named it the greatest album in history, and Colin Larkin ranked it first in his book All-Time Top 1000 Albums.
Colin Powell learned quite a bit of Yiddish when he worked in his youth at his father’s dime store in New York City; they had many Orthodox Jewish customers. Powell later became the first black National Security Advisor to a U.S. President, the first black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the first black Secretary of State. His wife, Alma, is widely believed to have dissuaded him from running for President in 1996, as she feared he would be assassinated if he did.
Colin Powell’s Rules is a list of 13 points for leadership.
Colin Powell’s Rules
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It ain’t as bad as you think. It will look better in the morning.
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Get mad, then get over it.
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Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
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It can be done!
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Be careful what you choose. You may get it.
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Don’t let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision.
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You can’t make someone else’s choices. You shouldn’t let someone else make yours.
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Check small things.
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Share credit.
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Remain calm. Be kind.
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Have a vision. Be demanding.
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Don’t take counsel of your fears or naysayers.
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Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.
Powell’s aphorism “6. Don’t let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision.” was reflected in his speech to the United Nations on February 5, 2003, dismissing adverse factuality and inventing a new one based on inventions about Weapons of Mass Destruction to support the “good decision” to invade Iraq. Earlier in his Army career, he was responsible for whitewashing the My Lai Massacre.
Couldn’t leave it alone, could ya Elvis?
In play:
Powell Island is a narrow island lying between Coronation and Laurie Islands in the central part of the South Orkney Islands of Antarctica. The island was discovered in the course of the joint cruise by Captains George Powell and Nathaniel Palmer in December 1821.
That’s his place in history.
In play:
The British soap opera “Coronation Street” has been produced by Granada Television and aired on ITV since 1960. The programme centres on Coronation Street in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on inner-city Salford, its terraced houses, café, corner shop, newsagents, building yard, taxicab office, salon, restaurant, textile factory and the Rovers Return pub. In the show’s fictional history, the street was built in 1902 and named in honour of the coronation of King Edward VII.
Actress Annabella Sciorra hails from Wethersfield, Connecticut. Many records from colonial times spell the name Weathersfield.
Not one but two meteorites have hit houses in Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 1971 and 1982. Honolulu is the only other US city or town with two recorded meteorite strikes, in 1825 and 1949.
NM
Meteor Crater near Winslow AZ is about 3,900 ft in diameter, some 560 ft deep, and is surrounded by a rim that rises 148 ft above the surrounding plains. It was created about 50,000 years ago by a nickel-iron meteorite about 160 feet across. The speed of the impact has been a subject of some debate. Modeling suggests that the meteorite struck at between 8 and 12 miles per second. It is believed that about half of the impactor’s bulk was vaporized during its descent. The meteorite was mostly vaporized upon impact, leaving few remains in the crater. The impact energy has been estimated at about 10 megatons — more than 600 Hiroshima atomic bombs (15 kilotons). One of its interesting features of the crater is its squared-off outline. This is believed to be caused by existing regional jointing (cracks) in the strata at the impact site.
A krater was a Greek mixing bowl used for diluting wine. Those made in the shape of flowers were calyx kraters. In 1972, New York’s Metropolitan Museum announced its acquisition of a 2,500‐year‐old calyx krater signed by its creators, the painter Euphronios and the potter Euxitheos, that he said was of such high quality that “the histories of art will have to be rewritten.” Later investigation by the New York Times showed it to have been dug up in Etruria (Italy) by looters and smuggled out of the country.
The inhabitants of ancient Etruria, the Etruscans, were regularly referenced in the 1980s and 90s episodes of “Jeopardy!”, under the category “Those Darned Etruscans”.
“Jeopardy!” was invented by Merv Griffin, also the composer of the Final Jeopardy music “Think!”, originally titled “A Time for Tony”, a lullaby for his son. Although Griffin was best known as a talk show host, with British actor Arthur Treacher as his sidekick, he also was the young singer of “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts” with Freddy Martin & His Orchestra.
Sailors (possibly aboard Vasco de Gama’s ships) gave the coconut its name. They called it “Coco”, named after a grimacing face or hobgoblin. The brown, hairy husk and three face-like dimples made them think the seed looked like a sort of spirit. When the “coco” came to England, the suffix of nut was added and that’s how the name came about.
While Da Gama is credited with discovering the sea route from Europe to India in his 1497-99 expedition, the sea route from China to India and on to Arabia and Africa had been established, and already abandoned by then, by the Ming Dynasty fleets of eunuch Admiral Zheng He.