Joseph J. Pulitzer was a newspaper publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the New York World. Today, his name is best known for the Pulitzer Prizes, which were established in 1917 as a result of his endowment to Columbia University. Pulitzer founded the Columbia School of Journalism by his philanthropic bequest; it opened in 1912.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch was created when Joseph Pulitzer purchased the bankrupt St. Louis Post and merged it with the St. Louis Evening Post. The first edition, which consisted of four pages, appeared on December 12, 1978.
On Feb. 11, 1901, the paper introduced a front-page feature called the “Weatherbird”, a cartoon bird accompanying the daily weather forecast. “Weatherbird” is the oldest continuous cartoon in the United States today.
Not that there’s ever been any favoritism, but the newspaper has received 18 Pulitzer Prizes.
St. Louis‘s Eads Bridge, completed in 1874 over the Mississippi River, was the first arched steel truss bridge in the world. When it was first proposed, it was scoffed at as impossible to build.
James Buchanan Eads, besides designing and building the bridge that holds his name, He got the title “Captain” not from any military exploits, but for his skills as a salvager of wrecked ships on the Mississippi and his knowledge of the river, which led the Riverboat captains of the time to confer the honorific on him.
James Buchanan Eads was an inventor who held more than 50 patents. In the port of New Orleans, Eads built a jetty system that allowed the current to carve out and maintain a deep channel and allow for year-round ship navigation. The towns of Eads TN, Eads CO, and Port Eads LA are named for him. US-50 through Lawrenceburg IN, his hometown, is called Eads Parkway in his honor. The Eads Bridge is the only bridge to be named for its engineer.
When the U.S. Civil War began, New Orleans was the largest city in the Confederacy. It was captured in spring 1862, meaning that for most of the war the Confederacy did not have possession of its own largest city.
New Orleans was twice named the state capital of Louisiana. The title of capital city was moved from New Orleans to Donaldsonville in 1825, then to Baton Rouge in 1846, then back to New Orleans in 1864 (during Reconstruction), and then back to Baton Rouge in 1879.
Treme was an HBO drama series created by David Simon (creator of The Wire) and Eric Overmeyer that rang from 2010 to 2013. It is set in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and centered on the lives of residents of New Orleans’s Tremé area.
Wikipedia’s List of costliest Atlantic hurricanes lists Hurricane Katrina of 2005 as the most costly, at $126B. However, the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 cost $173B. And, the Great Galveston hurricane of 1900 was the deadliest of them all in the US, whereas Katrina only ranks 6th-deadliest.
For the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926, just one year earlier, in 1925, the University of Miami named their sports teams the Hurricanes.
That’s a pretty small newspaper for 1978!
In play:
The Louisiana Supreme Court is the only state supreme court with two official courthouses. It has chambers in both Baton Rouge, the state capital, and in New Orleans, the largest city in the state.
Ninja’d! ETA: Hurricane Katrina hit Nawlins very hard.
Ninja’d…?
ETA — yes, and fixed!
Katrina Holden’s mother Hillary died suddenly. At the time, she was working on a project with actor Jill Ireland, and 15 year old Katrina was taken in and raised to adulthood by Ireland and her husband Charles Bronson. Though never officially adopted, she is now a film producer that goes by the name Katrina Bronson.
My proofreading skills obviously diminish as the amount of rye whiskey I consume increases.
In play: Charles Bronson appeared in fifteen movies with his second wife, Jill Ireland, who he married in 1968. Ireland died in 1990 of breast cancer. In 1998, Bronson married Kim Weeks, and they were married for five years before Bronson’s death in 2003.
Bronson IA is named for Ira D. Bronson, an early settler.
Bronson KS is named for Ira Bronson, a Fort Scott KS attorney.
Bronson MI is named for Jabez B. Bronson, who was its post master in 1830.
Bronson TX is named for Samuel Bronson Cooper (May 30, 1850 – August 21, 1918), who was a US Representative from Texas and a Member of the Board of General Appraisers.
The three members of the Dirty Dozen who survived the raid on the Nazi officers’ chateau meeting were played by Charles Bronson, Richard Jaeckel, and Lee Marvin.
There’s a Big Bang connection there.
Ninja’d
Oh is there? I don’t watch the show.
Sheldon Cooper is from Texas’s Bible Belt. The character was originally going to be from Massachusetts, a Fraiser/Niles Crane type. But when Texan Jim Parsons made such a huge ipression during his audition, Chuck Lorre came up with the idea of a genius from the Bible Belt.
Ninja’d!
(But it was… Lee Marvin is a US Marine. He served during WWII, and his military awards include: the Purple Heart Medal, the Presidential Unit Citation, the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal, Combat Action Ribbon.
Once a Marine, always a Marine.
)
The current play is Annie’s Sheldon Cooper and Texas play.
The actress who plays Mary Cooper in “Young Sheldon”, Zoe Perry, is the daughter of the actress who plays her in “The Big Bang Theory”, Laurie Metcalf. Her father is Jeff Perry, most recently best known as Cyrus Beane on “Scandal”.
Metcalf was briefly a cast member on SNL in the disastrous Lorne Michaels-less 1980-81 Charles Rocket season. When Michaels returned that fall, he commented on-air upon Jean Doumanian’s performance as “No English-speaking person could have done a worse job.”