American figure skater Peggy Fleming was among the sport’s biggest stars of the 1960s. Fleming won five straight U.S. singles titles (1964-1968), three straight world titles (1966-1968), and the gold medal at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France.
Peggy Fleming was stuck in New York by the flying ban after 9/11. Her agent, who also represented John Madden, put her in touch with the ex-coach and announcer, who gave her a ride back to California on the Madden Cruiser. They were lifelong friends ever after.
Art Fleming (1924-1995) was the first host of the game show Jeopardy. He began his career as an announcer at a radio station in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. His radio career later took him to Akron, Ohio, and then back to his native New York City. He was the first announcer to deliver the slogan “Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should” for Winston cigarettes.
Although many railway men in the 19th century grappled with the idea of a standard time system, Sir Sandford Fleming was the driving force for the implementation of international standard time, dividing the globe into 24 time zones. He is usually credited with pushing for the International Prime Meridian Conference at Washington in 1884. One of the major issues was the choice of the prime meridian, with Britain pushing for Greenwich as the meridian, and France lobbying for Paris. It took several years, but eventually international standard time based on Greenwich was adopted.
In 1884 the Prime Meridian was defined by the position of the large ‘Transit Circle’ telescope in the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. The cross-hairs in the eyepiece of the Transit Circle telescope precisely defined Longitude 0° for the world.
Thor (Chris Hemsworth) fights a giant robotlike monster on the grounds of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England in the 2013 Marvel Comics Universe film Thor: The Dark World.
Thor, Iowa is a town of 186 in the north-central part of the state. The founder of Winnebago trailers and RVs, John K. Hanson (1913-1996), hails from Thor. So does my friend, Gary B.
“Thor” is the nickname of New York Mets pitcher Noah Syndergaard, based on his Danish ancestry and his long, flowing blond hair.
July 22 (UPI) – San Francisco Giants rookie outfielder Mike Yastrzemski ended a crucial four-game series against the New York Mets with a walk-off home run on July 22, 2019. The home run, Yastrzemski’s ninth of the year, clinched a 2-1 victory at Oracle Park.
(And I saw Mike’s grandfather Carl play about a hundred times in Boston’s Fenway Park).
Sigh…it just doesn’t seem possible that Carl Yastrzemski’s grandson is playing in the major leagues.
In play: The San Francisco Giants franchise has won more baseball games than any other team in the history of American baseball. The franchise was founded in 1883 as the New York Gothams, and was renamed three years later to the Giants. They moved to San Francisco in 1958. The franchise has the most National League pennants with 23.
The Giants’ uniforms are echoed by those of the Yomiuri Giants of the Central League in Nippon Professional Baseball. They are the oldest operating franchise, dating to 1934 but who became the Giants in 1947. Sadaharu Oh, the leading home run hitter in major league history (if Japan is included), played his entire career in Tokyo for the Giants.
When Jackie Robinson was signed by Los Angeles, some Dodger players insinuated they would sit out rather than play alongside him. The brewing mutiny ended when Dodgers management took a stand for Robinson. Manager Leo Durocher informed the team, “I do not care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a fuckin’ zebra. I’m the manager of this team, and I say he plays. What’s more, I say he can make us all rich. And if any of you cannot use the money, I will see that you are all traded.”
Roger Angell’s 1972 book The Boys of Summer combined reminiscences of the 1950’s Brooklyn Dodgers with “where are they now” interviews of the players later on, many of whom had struggled with life. The title of the book is taken from a Dylan Thomas poem that describes “the boys of summer in their ruin”.
Mickey Mantle’s All My Octobers: My Memories of Twelve World Series When the Yankees Ruled Baseball recounts, moment by moment, each one of his twelve World Series games from 1951 to 1964, when the New York Yankees proved themselves the greatest team in baseball’s history.
The musical Damn Yankees, which helped make a major star of Gwen Verdon, was written by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop, music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, and based on Wallop’s novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant. It was a retelling of the Faust legend with the protagonist being a long-suffering Washington Senators fan. Ray Walston (“My Favorite Martian”) was the original Mr. Applegate, the devil.
You gotta have heart / Miles and miles and miles of heart …
Just thirteen days before his 107th birthday,legendary theatre producer George Abbott made an appearance at the 48th Tony Awards, coming onstage with fellow Damn Yankees alumni Gwen Verdon and Jean Stapleton at the end of the opening number, a medley performed by the nominees for Best Revival of A Musical, which included Grease, She Loves Me, Carousel, and his own Damn Yankees.
Abbott’s career lasted nine decades, and he lived to be over 107 1/2(June 25, 1887 – January 31, 1995).
Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were an American comedy duo who were the most popular comedy team of the 1940s and early 1950s. They first appeared together in 1935, and made their first radio appearance in 1938. They hosted their own television series in the early Fifties and appeared in over 30 movies. Their routine “Who’s on First?” is one of the best-known comedy routines of all time in the world.
Spiders with furry bodies are known as velvet spiders and one which was recently discovered in Spain is named Loureedia, because it has a velvet body and lives underground.
I know that Lou Reed, lead singer of The Velvet Underground, would have loved this tribute.
The colors of Spain, the U.S. Marine Corps, the Boy Scouts of America, the University of Southern California and Gryffindor House at Hogwarts are all red and gold.
Some USMC cadences (what we sing when we run PT) include the verses,
*My Marine Corps color is red
To show the world the blood we shed
My Marine Corps color is gold
To show the world that we are bold*
Comment: There are other verses too, but are not for mixed company. And I’ve been yelled at for singing certain cadences in the early morning within earshot of civilian houses on base.