Over 700,000 North Americans are living with a brain tumor today. About 70% of them are benign and 30% are malignant, and of the malignant tumors about 35% of those people will survive.
When Jean Nidetch was pregnant for the third time, she weight 190 pounds. Her doctor prescribed amphetamines, fearing her pregnancy weight gain would cause heart troubles. She gave birth to her son Richard, and later founded Weight Watchers.
Richard would die without warning at age 39 of a “brain tumor that burst.” Whether the prenatal drugs had anything to do with it is anyone’s guess.
Watchers (1988) starred Corey Haim and Michael Ironside and was based on a novel of the same name by Dean Koontz, born 1945. In 2008, Koontz was the world’s sixth-most highly paid author, tied with John Grisham, at $25 million annually.
Ironside was a television series that aired on NBC from 1967 to 1975. The show starred Raymond Burr, who played a San Francisco police detective who was forced to retire after being paralyzed from the waist down by a sniper’s bullet. However, the detective, now confined to a wheelchair, is then appointed as a special department consultant, and he and his team manage to solve all the cases assigned to them.
Burr, who was born in Canada in 1917, died of liver cancer in 1993.
In downtown West Hartford CT there is an intersection of streets named Raymond and Burr.
Got Hamilton?, a parody commercial of the classic Got Milk? one
Truth, Lies, and Advertising is a book about the advertising account planning discipline, written by Jon Steel, who was an account planner at the Goodby Silverstein & Partners agency in San Francisco in the 1990s.
In the book, Steel describes how he developed the creative brief for the “Got Milk?” campaign, which was originally created for the California Milk Processor Board in 1993. After conducting research among consumers about milk, he observed that few adults went out of their way to specifically drink milk, but that they often viewed milk as an essential part of eating certain foods, such as breakfast cereal, and peanut butter sandwiches.
The first ad in that campaign, “Aaron Burr,” was directed by Michael Bay (who had just graduated from film school), and is widely praised as being one of the best television ads ever created.
(Full disclosure: I’ve worked as an account planner for nearly 20 years, and Steel’s book was one of the inspirations for me to enter the field.)
Man, I had completely forgotten about that ad. And, yes, it was a great one!
In play: Shel Silverstein (1930 – 1999) was an American writer known for his cartoons, songs, and children’s books. At one time, he was the leading cartoonist for Playboy Magazine, and he also wrote more than 100 one-act plays. Some of the songs that he wrote include “Put Another Log on the Fire”, “A Boy Named Sue”, and “The Cover of the Rolling Stone”.
Yes that is a great commercial. Looking it up, it came out back in 1993.
Marilyn Monroe was on the first cover of Playboy, in 1953. Others on the cover since then include Mariah Carey (2007), Dolly Parton (1978), Barbra Streisand (1977), Suzanne Somers (1984), Jessica Alba (2006), Paris Hilton (2005), Goldie Hawn (1985), Charlize Theron (1999), Lindsay Lohan (2012), Drew Barrymore (1995), Madonna (1985), Joan Collins (1983), Farrah Fawcett (1995), and Anna Nicole Smith (1993).
The Lower Keys marsh rabbit, Sylvilagus palustris hefneri, was named in honor of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. The subspecies was first described in *Journal of Mammalogy *in 1984 by James D. Lazell Jr, after his research in the Florida Keys was funded partly by a large contribution from the Playboy Corporation. Due to shrinking habitat and predatory stray or feral cats, the rabbit is now an endangered species.
The Dry Tortugas, a group of about seven small Florida islands about 70 miles from Key West, form the farthest and westernmost islands in the Florida Keys. The largest island, Loggerhead Key, is about 4,000 ft x 800 ft. The seventh largest, East Key, is about 600 ft x 200 ft. Some smaller “islands” are basically sand bars or shoals that are sometimes submerged depending on the tides.
Spanish explorer Ponce de León gave the Dry Tortugas their name on his first visit in 1513, because of the hundreds of turtles (tortugas) there, and because there were no freshwater springs.
Here is a map of the intersection of Raymond Rd & Burr St (or, Raymond & Burr) in West Hartford CT.
Still in play:
The primary distinguishing feature between the tortoise and the turtle is where they live. The tortoise ordinarily dwells on land while turtles dwell in the water for part or all of their life. Both the turtles and the tortoise can be found on all continents except Antarctica.
Most turtles have a lifespan of 20 to 40 years. Tortoise live much longer, with the average lifespan being about 80 years. The oldest living tortoise is called Jonathan; he lives on the island of Saint Helena in Seychelles, and he is estimated to be 184 years old. Jonathan is still sexually active, which is an indication that he could still live for many more years.
The only country in Africa which is classed as a high-income economy by the World Bank, is Seychelles
With a population of roughly 94,367, Seychelles has the smallest population of any sovereign African country.
SYC is the ISO 3166-1 country code (Alpha-3) for Seychelles.
NGA is the ISO 3166-1 country code (Alpha-3) for Nigeria.
SHN is the ISO 3166-1 country code (Alpha-3) for Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha.
SHN are 3 British Overseas Territories with a combined population of 5,000 - 6,000.
NGA has the highest population in Africa, with over 200 million. That is nearly twice that of ETH, Ethiopia, with 112 million. ETH has the second highest population in Africa.
Tristan da Cunha is an archipelago in the South Atlantic. It consists of the inhabited island Tristan da Cunha (with roughly 250 residents), the wildlife preserves of Gough Island and Inaccessible Island, and the uninhabited Nightingale Islands.
Tristan da Cunha is the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world, lying approximately 1,511 miles from the coast of Cape Town in South Africa.
As there are no airstrips on Tristan da Cunha, it is only accessible by ship.
Point Nemo, the South Pacific Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility, is the place in the ocean that is farthest from land. It lies at latitude/longitude -48.876667, -123.393333 (Google Map, Google Maps), more than 1,400 nmi from the nearest landmass. The place is so remote that sometimes the closest human beings are astronauts aboard the International Space Station when it passes overhead. Point Nemo is also known as a “spacecraft cemetery” because hundreds of decommissioned satellites, space stations, and other spacecraft have been deposited there upon re-entering the atmosphere to lessen the risk of hitting inhabited locations.
In Leslie Meier’s Wicked Witch Murder, a little boy in a fish costume is left at the party when his mother fails to pick him up after the town’s Halloween Party. Protagonist Lucy Stone asks him his name, and he says “Nemo.” She asks him his mother’s name and he says “Ocean.” Where do they live? “In the Aquarium.”
Turns out the boy’s name is Nemo, his mother’s name is “Ocean” and they live in the Aquarizoo, an abandoned tourist attraction now serving as a house. The characters are used again in Meier’s Gingerbread Cookie Murder, when Lucy buys Nemo a gingerbread cookie, right before he gets (supposedly) kidnapped.
The original Ocean’s 11 was a movie released in 1960. It starred five members of the ‘Rat Pack’: Peter Lawford, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Joey Bishop.
The plot revolves around a group of folks who plan a casino robbery. The heist is successful, in that the gang gets away with the money. But they hide the cash in the coffin of one of the conspirators, only to see his remains (and the money) cremated.