Tom McMahon

The Legend Of Jocko, The Black Lawn Jockey

The Legend Of Jocko, The Black Lawn Jockey

Explained by Deanna Dahlsad:

Some claim it is to validate and honor Jocko Graves, the son of a free black soldier named Thomas Graves, who fought with George Washington. The story goes that Washington assigned the youth to safely remain on the Pennsylvania shore with the horses while they crossed the Delaware. Jocko was also to keep a lantern burning so George and the soldiers would know where to return after battle. When Washington and his army returned they discovered Jocko had frozen to death — still holding the horses and the lit lantern.

The story continues that Washington was so moved by Jocko’s devotion that he commissioned a statue in Jocko’s honor. Titled “Faithful Groomsman” the statue stood at Mount Vernon in honor of the young patriot. ...

But Professor Kenneth Goings ... says this legend isn’t true. And in an October interview with ‘The Daily Journal’ Goings says the lawn jockeys are “very, very much racist symbols” and says that he’s amazed people can believe anything else. He continued to say black lawn jockeys are part of the Old South mythology: “They are meant to evoke that Old South, grand plantation, “Gone With the Wind” mythology, and I’m not sure they can evoke anything else.”

(via)

The Hibernian Football Club of Edinburgh, Scotland, Who Last Won The Scottish Cup In 1902 And Have A Longer Championship Drought Than The 1908 World Series Winners, The Chicago Cubs

Here's what you need to know about sports droughts, here's a nice little history of the Hibernian Football Club, here's their official site (this page shows that 1902 victory), and yes, you can order stuff from their souvenir shop.

Rock n Roll Plane Crash Trivia: Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen Performed On Stage The Night Otis Redding Died In 1967

From the Wisconsin State Journal:

By early evening, a police officer called Adamany and described some of the victims. That 's when Adamany knew it was Redding and his band. A long line already formed outside the Factory. The first of two shows was scheduled for 6:30 p.m. None of the fans knew the tragic news. Adamany had an employee use a bullhorn to tell concertgoers from an open window. "No one believed it, of course, " Adamany said. "It was in the era of students not trusting business people. " Radio reports, however, confirmed the news. Police asked Adamany to have a show. He presented a free concert.

In a 2003 interview with the Wisconsin State Journal, Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen said he was a member of one of the acts that performed. "The news spread slowly, " Nielsen said. "People were walking around in a daze. Instead of locked doors, we played. "

In a twisted development one week later, some concertgoers started copying tickets and using fake ones for the $3 ticket refund. "We refunded way more than we sold, " Adamany said, "and we sold about 700 or 800 tickets.

Scotch And Soda: The Musical Connection Between New York Mets Hall Of Fame Pitcher Tom Seaver And The Kingston Trio

Another interesting story from Wikipedia:

Through the years, the most requested song for The Kingston Trio was "Scotch and Soda," which was always performed as a solo number by Bob Shane. The trio discovered this song through Tom Seaver's parents who had first heard it when on their honeymoon. One member of the trio was dating Seaver's older sister at that time, and heard the song on a visit to the Seaver home. Although it is credited to Dave Guard, the trio never did discover the real songwriter's name, though they searched for years.

Wisconsinology Day: The Three Greatest Egos Of The Twentieth Century Were All From Wisconsin

Wisconsinology Day: The Three Greatest Egos Of The Twentieth Century Were All From Wisconsin

With one of these guys, it's personal:

Speaking of Mr. Wright, I can't let him get away for stiffing my great uncle, a small town grocer, for a couple of melons. "I'm on my way to Madison, put it on my tab," the great man supposedly said as he walked out of the Mickelson store in Deerfield, Wisconsin unpaid melons tucked under his arm. We're still looking for that tab.

Alan Cranston, The US Senator Who Was Sued By Adolf Hitler And Lost

From an interview shortly before his death in 2000, the four-term Democratic Senator from California recounted his experience as a young foreign correspondent in the 1930's:

While I was doing my foreign correspondence work, I read Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf, the book he wrote while he was in prison before he became the dictator, outlining his plans for Germany and the terrible things he intended to do in the world. There was no English language version of it. When I quit journalism and came back to try to get involved in activities in the United States, one day in Macy's bookstore in New York I saw a display of Mein Kampf, an English language version, which I'd never seen before, which hadn't existed. I went over to look at it out of curiosity and as I picked it up, I knew it wasn't the real book. It was much thinner than the long book that I had read, which is about 350,000 words. So I bought it to see how come. And delving into it I found that it was a condensed version, and some of the things that would most upset Americans just weren't there as they were in the version I had read, the original, in German.

So I talked to an editor friend of mine in New York, a Hearst editor named Amster Spiro, and suggested that I write and we publish an anti-Nazi version of Mein Kampf that would be the real book and would awaken Americans to the peril Hitler posed for us and the rest of the world. So we did that. I spent eight days [compiling] my version of Mein Kampf from the English language version that I now had, the original German language version, and another copy that had just appeared. A book was then selling for around three dollars normal price. Hitler was getting forty cents royalty for each copy that somebody bought that wasn't [even] the real thing. We proceeded to print in tabloid the version that I wrote, with a very lurid red cover showing Hitler carving up the world, and we sold it for ten cents on newsstands. It created quite a stir. Some Nazis went around knocking down newsstands that displayed it in St. Louis and the German part of New York and elsewhere in the country. We sold half a million copies in ten days and were immediately sued by Hitler's agents on the grounds we had violated his copyright, which we had done. We had the theory that [though] he had copyrighted Mein Kampf in Austria, he had destroyed Austria with his army, so we said he destroyed his copyright at the same time. Well, that didn't stand up in court, and a Connecticut judge ruled in Hitler's favor. No damages were assessed, but we had to stop selling the book. We got what was called an injunction. But we did wake up a lot of Americans to the Nazi threat.

The Symbol Of French Military Valor: The Chicken

The Symbol Of French Military Valor: The Chicken

One of those truth-is-stranger-than-fiction moments from Philip Greenspun. The Wikipedia explanation:

The Gallic rooster (French: le coq gaulois) is a national symbol of France. Its association with France is due to the play on words in Latin between Gallus, meaning an inhabitant of Gaul, and gallus meaning rooster, or cock. Although its use in France dates to the Middle Ages, it gained particular popularity during the French Revolution, and has been a national emblem of the country ever since. The rooster was featured on the reverse of French 20-franc gold pieces from 1899 to 1914. Today, it is often used as a national mascot, particularly in sporting events such as football (soccer) and rugby. 

The Union Bug: Look For It On Every Brochure From All Democratic Party Candidates

The Union Bug: Look For It On Every Brochure From All Democratic Party Candidates

I first learned about this when I was helping out a Democratic candidate 30 years ago. The union bug was essential for George McGovern 35 years ago, and still crucial today. From a loyal reader's email:

One of my business partners is a staunch Democrat. A real believer (actually I would think he would have grown out of that by now but he had not!). Anyway, we own a printing business and he went around and offered to print on his own time, as donations. .... large amounts of printing for Democrats here.

They turned him down! Why? Because, we are not "union" and don't have the little "bug" that union printers place on their printing jobs. So they turned him down for thousands, yes, thousands of dollars of free printing because he is not in the "union". 5 candidates, and the local Democrat party organization all said no to free printing, and go right on paying inflated prices for their printing! Fiscal sanity has never been their strong point! And even even funnier, the local "union" represents such a small percentage of shops and printers that it is totally invisible, just a tiny good old boys club.
   
So much for party dedication.  Now, my partner has become an independent and is leaning Republican. Just for the heck of it, he called some Republicans about donation printing. Each call was along the lines of, "YES!".

So during the long 2008 election campaign, look for the union bug on all Democratic Party brochures you get, and if they don't have it, call up the campaign and yell like hell!

A: Max McGee. Q: Who Scored The First Touchdown In Superbowl History?

From ESPN:

McGee had only four receptions for 91 yards during the 1966 regular season. He didn't plan to play in the title game against the Chiefs because he violated the team curfew and spent the night before partying. The next morning he reportedly told Dowler: "I hope you don't get hurt. I'm not in very good shape."

Dowler separated a shoulder on the Packers' second drive, and Lombardi summoned McGee. He had to borrow a helmet because he left his in the locker room. A few plays later, McGee made a one-handed snare of a pass from Bart Starr and ran 37 yards to score.

"When it's third-and-10," McGee once said, "you can take the milk drinkers and I'll take the whiskey drinkers every time."

After his football career was over, McGee became one of the original investors in Chi-Chi's Mexican Restaurants. He was the color commentary guy for the Packers Radio Network -- I don't know anybody in Wisconsin who listened to the TV sound back then. He had this endearing, low-key but dead-on accurate way of stating the facts. I remember once when a Packer Kenny Stills was called for a late hit McGee remarked nonchalantly "Stills? Oh, he's good for about 4 or 5 of those a season." At a team meeting Vince Lombardi held up a ball and announced "Gentlemen, this is a football." To which McGee replied "Not so fast not so fast." Only Max McGee could get away with that.

What Max McGee couldn't get away with was cleaning the leaves off his roof when he was 75. He fell off and died on Saturday. RIP, Max.

Ted Cassidy: Lurch On The Addams Family, And Reporter In Dallas On November 22, 1963

Ted Cassidy: Lurch On The Addams Family, And Reporter In Dallas On November 22, 1963

Before he became an actor, Ted Cassidy worked as a staff announcer for WFAA radio in Dallas and was part of WFAA's ongoing coverage of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. He was among the first to interview assassination eyewitnesses W.E. Newman Jr. and Gayle Newman.

By the way, don't confuse the late Ted Cassidy (1932-1979) with the still-alive-but-retired Richard Kiel (1939- ).

From Millie Helper in The Dick Van Dyke Show To Grandma Yetta Rosenberg in The Nanny: The Apollo 13 Connection of Milwaukee Native and Actress Ann Morgan Guilbert. Plus, An Extra Special Bonus: Oprah!

From Millie Helper in The Dick Van Dyke Show To Grandma Yetta Rosenberg in The Nanny: The Apollo 13 Connection of Milwaukee Native and Actress Ann Morgan Guilbert. Plus, An Extra Special Bonus: Oprah!

She graduated in 1946 from Milwaukee's Juneau High School with a to-be-famous-in-the-future classmate, Apollo 13 Commander James Lovell. A number of years later Oprah Winfrey graduated from that same high school.

The Pride of Pennsylvania Pretzels: Snyder's of Hanover vs Snyder of Berlin

   
The Pride of Pennsylvania Pretzels: Snyder's of Hanover vs Snyder of Berlin

Now separate companies, you can read about their common early history here.   Each company puts a disclaimer on its packages stating it is not connected with the other Snyder. Back when there was a General Electric  plc in the UK, the US GE had to put a similar disclaimer whenever it advertised in the UK.

Melinda Lou Thomas, The Original Wendy of Wendy's Restaurants

Melinda Lou Thomas, The Original Wendy of Wendy's Restaurants

From capitalistchicks.com:

In the case of Wendy’s restaurant, business and family seem to be inevitably linked. When Dave Thomas opened his first Wendy’s in Columbus, Ohio, he named the hamburger restaurant in honor of his eight-year old daughter Melinda Lou “Wendy” Thomas. Wendy was a nickname given to Melinda Lou by her four siblings, and came to be the name that she preferred for herself. Within a few years, Wendy’s restaurants, and the image of eight-year old Wendy herself, became synonymous with fresh made-to-order food. ...

While her father may have become the heart of the company, Wendy Thomas continued to live up to her role as the franchise’s “daddy’s girl” and remained rather active in her father’s business. She owned several Wendy’s restaurants in the Dallas area until 1999. Following her father’s death in 2002, Wendy chose to reenter the business side of her father’s company. She and her siblings ultimately decided that it was only appropriate to carry on their father’s legacy through Wendy’s restaurants.

Baseball Trivia Treasure Trove

Just a few from a single page (!) over at baseball-fever.com:

• Intentional Walks to the last 3 all time single season home run leaders:
  • 2001 - Barry Bonds - 35 intentional walks
  • 1998 - Mark McGwire - 28 intentional walks
  • 1961 - Roger Maris - 0 intentional walks
  I guess when you have some guy named Mantle hitting after you, you tend to get better pitches to hit.
• Ty Cobb hit 300 in 23 consecutive seasons
• In 1963, Sandy Koufax and Elston Howard won their respective league's MVP Awards. In the NFL, Jim Brown did the same. All three players wore #32.
• Wilbur Wood was the last person to start both ends of a doubleheader. He did this July 20, 1973 against the Yankees and lost both games.
• Lou Gehrig's # 4 was the first number EVER retired by a professional sports franchise.
• Darryl Strawberry is the only player who has appeared in the World Series for the Mets and the Yankees.
• On May 30, 1922, the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs played a doubleheader. In the first game Max Flack played in the outfield for the Cubs, and Cliff Heathcote was in the Cardinal outfield. Between games they were traded for each other, so in the second game Heathcote played in the Cub outfield while Flack did the same for the Cardinals.
• Warren Spahn: Shut out every NL team at least once and HRed in every NL park

Sutton's Law, The Famous Rule Taught To Medical Students Based On A Quote By Bank Robber Willie Sutton, Who Never Said It

From Wikipedia:

Sutton is famously (and probably falsely) known for answering a reporter, Mitch Ohnstad, who asked why he robbed banks by saying, "because that's where the money is." The quote formed the basis of Sutton's law, often taught to medical students.

In his partly ghostwritten autobiography, Where the Money Was: The Memoirs of a Bank Robber (Viking Press, New York, 1976), Sutton dismissed this story, saying:

"The irony of using a bank robber's maxim as an instrument for teaching medicine is compounded, I will now confess, by the fact that I never said it. The credit belongs to some enterprising reporter who apparently felt a need to fill out his copy...

"If anybody had asked me, I'd have probably said it. That's what almost anybody would say...it couldn't be more obvious.

"Or could it?

"Why did I rob banks? Because I enjoyed it. I loved it. I was more alive when I was inside a bank, robbing it, than at any other time in my life. I enjoyed everything about it so much that one or two weeks later I'd be out looking for the next job. But to me the money was the chips, that's all."

"Go where the money is...and go there often."

Tho, Altho, Thru, Thoro: The 41-Year Experiment With Simplified Spelling By The Chicago Tribune 1934-1975

From the late Ken Ives Written Dialects (pdf file):

As early as the 1870's, the Chicago Tribune began using reformed spellings. Joseph Medill, editor and owner, was a member of the Council of the Spelling Reform Association. In 1880 the Chicago Spelling Reform Association met at the Sherman House, and read letters approving the Tribune's efforts. About 50 years later, under Medill's grandson, Robert R. McCormick, and editor James O'Donnell Bennett, the Tribune began a new effort. This "practical test of spelling reform" started in January, 1934, and continued for 41 years, with various changes.

An unsystematic list of 80 respelled words was introduced in four editorials over a two month period, and used thereafter in the paper, which had the largest circulation in Chicago. On January 28, "advertisment, catalog," and seven more "-gue" words were among those shortened. The February 11 list included "agast, ameba, burocrat, crum, missil, subpena." On February 25, "bazar, hemloc, herse, intern, rime, sherif, staf," were among those introduced. On March 11 an editorial reported that "short spelling wins votes of readers 3 to 1." On March 18, the final list included "glamor, harth, iland, jaz, tarif, trafic." An editorial that day, "Why dictionary makers avoid simpler spelling" claimed that they dare not pioneer, "prejudice and competition prevent it." On September 24, 1939, the list was reduced to 40, but "tho, altho, thru, thoro," were added. Addition of "frate, frater," for "freight, freighter," came on September 24, 1945. Changing "ph" not at the start of a word to "f" came on July 3, 1949, with "autograf, telegraf, , philosofy, photograf, sofomore."

In 1970, a new style book was issued which reduced the list substantially, dropping "tarif, sodder, clew, frate," among others. An article in Chicago Journalism Review for September, 1970, reported some reasons for the change: "probably the biggest reason 'is to fall into line with more common practices, especially those taught in college." Five years later, on September 29, 1975, Tribune withdrew from the effort, with an editorial, "Thru is through and so is tho." One reason given was that "the writers of spelling texts would not yield. When Johnny spelled Tribune style, teacher sat him down." They kept the short forms for the "-og" words, and announced that "From now on, Webster's Third will be our guide."

Thus for over 40 years, a substantial proportion of people in the Chicago Metropolitan area have been exposed to a limited but unsystematic list of reformed spellings in daily use. What the effects of the Tribune's spellings have been on the practice of adults in the area seems not to have been studied systematically. Certainly "altho, tho, thru," are more acceptable in that area than elsewhere. A survey of a highschool journalism class in downstate Illinois in 1973 found students favoring "thru" by three to one.

When I was a kid I always thought those spellings were one of the neatest things about the Tribune.

The Muppets Got Their Start On The Jimmy Dean Show

The Muppets Got Their Start On The Jimmy Dean Show

The Muppet Newsflash on the new DVD of The Jimmy Dean Show:

As you may know, The Jimmy Dean Show was an hour-long variety show hosted by country music star Jimmy Dean which ran from 1963 to 1966 on ABC. And you may also recall that it was on The Jimmy Dean Show that Jim Henson got his first national television exposure with the character Rowlf the Dog. Rowlf was a regular on the show, appearing in every show alongside Jimmy in a special 7-15 minute comedy sketch. Jimmy Dean's show was a success for ABC and Jim Henson's budding career. Dean stated in his autobiography that the sketches with Rowlf were the most popular part of the show, and it has even been said that Rowlf drew over two-thousand fan letters a week (which was more than even Jimmy Dean). Rowlf was brought to life through the puppeteering, writing and craftsmanship of Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Jerry Juhl, Jerry Nelson and Don Sahlin. The sketches of Rowlf and Jimmy Dean are comedy gold and real Muppet treasures.

May 2, 1957: Joe McCarthy Died. May 2, 1972: J. Edgar Hoover Died.

Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wisconsin), November 1954

Interesting that these two famous Commie-fighters died 15 years apart, to the day.

Kurt Vonnegut's Brother Bernard Invented Silver Iodide Cloud Seeding While At General Electric

Kurt Vonnegut's Brother Bernard Invented Silver Iodide Cloud Seeding While At General Electric

Explained by everything2.com:

The cloud seeding technique was accidentally discovered by Vincent Joseph Schaefer (1906-1993) at a GE lab in Schenectady. Schaefer was interested in how ice forms on wings as planes pass through clouds. He used a home freezer to create clouds. One day in 1946, he added dry ice to his "cloud hatchery" to cool the internal temperature down. Much to his surprise, the clouds not only formed, but began to rain. Curious if this could be duplicated in Real Life, on November 13, 1946 he had a plane fly into a cloud over Mount Greylock, Massachusetts and seed the cloud with several pounds of dry ice pellets (the term cloud seeding likely got the name because the pellets looked like seeds).

A bit of a joker, Schaefer one day repeated his cloud seeding demonstration for GE brass, and he was able to get the dry ice pellets to disperse such that they "cut" GE's logo into the cloud on a rather massive scale.

Interestingly enough, Bernard Vonnegut (the brother of author Kurt Vonnegut) was an associate of Schaefer. He too was interested in the cloud seeding phenomenon. He suspected that if one could introduce a substance that was molecularly similar to ice, better results could be achieve. A literature search suggested silver iodide, which did indeed prove to be more effective than dry ice.

Bernard Vonnegut's earlier weather-related work was a project for the Army Signal Corps, wherein he worked on a project somewhat opposite of creating rain clouds. The Army wanted him to develop a method for clearing fog and overcast skies. This was probably the basis for Vonnegut's famous Ice-Nine invention in Cat's Cradle.

Muskrat Dinner

Michigan Catholics get a special Lenten dispensation to turn this:

Muskrat

Into this:

Muskrat Dinner

This goes back to the 1800's, to the fur trapper days. One bishop wrote that "anyone who could eat muskrat was doing penance worthy of the greatest of the saints."

Espera De Corti, aka Iron Eyes Cody, the Italian-American Crying Indian From The 1971 Keep America Beautiful Public Service Announcement

Espera De Corti, aka Iron Eyes Cody, the Italian-American Crying Indian From The 1971 Keep America Beautiful Public Service Announcement

OK, OK, so "Iron Eyes Cody" wasn't his real name, so what? I always liked the practical attitude of B-movie critic Joe Bob Briggs with regard to names:

Q: Is Joe Bob Briggs your real name?
A: I wasn't born with it, but when I try to use any other name, I don't make as much money.

Snow Donuts aka Snow Doughnuts aka Snow Rollers

Snow Donuts

From The Seattle Times report with Mike Stanford, an avalanche-control expert with the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT).:

Stanford found frozen doughnuts of snow on the top of Washington Pass in the North Cascades this week when he was doing avalanche-control work. At first he couldn't believe his eyes: Perfectly shaped doughnuts had rolled down the mountainside and frozen in place.

He said it's only the second time in his 30 years of working in the snow that he's seen anything like it. The larger of the snow rollers, as they are commonly called, was about 24 inches tall, he said, large enough for him to put his head through the hole.

Stanford said snow rollers form when there is a hard layer on the snow, covered by several more inches of dense snow. "Then you add a steep slope and a trigger such as a clump of snow falling out of a tree or off of a rock face."

As gravity pulls a clump down, it usually rolls down the hill and collapses, creating what the WSDOT calls a pinwheel. Or it will not roll at all, and come down in an avalanche of snow. But if the snow is the perfect density and temperature, it rolls down leaving a hole in the center, Stanford said.

Back in February 2003 Central Illinois experienced widespread snow rollers. From the National Weather Service report:

Snowfall of 1 to 4 inches occurred across central Illinois the morning of February 11.  That evening, as a strong cold front pushed through the area, wind gusts of 40 to 60 mph were noted in many areas.

Once the initial "seed" of the roller is started, it begins to roll.  It collects additional snow from the ground as it rolls along, leaving trails behind it.  The appearance is similar to building snowmen, except the snowball is more log-shaped rather than spherical, and many times they are hollow.  They can be as small as a golf ball, or as large as a 30 gallon drum, but typically they are about 10 to 12 inches in diameter.

Here's just one of the many great photos from that outbreak:

Central Illinois Snow Rollers February 2003

(via Dvorak Uncensored)

For The First Time In Jeopardy! History, A Three-Way Winning Tie

From Jeopardy.com:

For the first time in Jeopardy! history, a three-way winning tie concluded Friday night's episode after a nail-biting, surprise "Final Jeopardy!" round. All three contestants ended the show with $16,000 and all three were declared winners.

"We've had a lot of crazy things happen on Jeopardy! but in 23 years I've never seen anything like this before!" said an amused host Alex Trebek.

Jeopardy! officials contacted Game Theory expert Dr. David Levine at Washington University in St. Louis, who said the odds of such a three-way tie happening on the show were 1 in 25 million.

The second Jeopardy! show ever hosted by Alex Trebek ended in a 0 - 0 - 0 Tie. The date: Tuesday, September 11, 1984. Everyone bet everything on the Final Jeopardy question and missed it. All three contestants got consolation prizes, and they started the next day with three brand-new contestants.

It's All In The Game: The Number One Hit Song Written By Vice-President of the United States Charles Dawes

An excerpt from Wikipedia:

Dawes was also a self-taught pianist and composer. His 1912 composition "Melody in A Major," became a well-known piano and violin piece, and was played at many official functions as his signature tune. It was transformed into a pop song ("It's All In The Game") in 1951, when Carl Sigman added lyrics. The song was a number one hit in 1958, for Tommy Edwards (Hatfield 1997: 360), and has since become a pop standard recorded hundreds of times by artists including The Four Tops, Van Morrison, Cliff Richard, Brook Benton, Elton John, Barry Manilow, and Keith Jarrett.

(via DADvocate and just muttering ) At while we're on Dawes trivia, I probably should mention this:

Charles G. Dawes, the Chicago banker who served under Calvin Coolidge, had a great-great-grandfather who rode with Paul Revere (the patriot, not the guy who played keyboards for the Raiders). Legend has it that Longfellow memorialized only the silversmith, and not Dawes’ ancestor, because “the name Revere rhymed better.” A later poet, Helen Moore, would write sympathetically:

    ’Tis all very well for the children to hear
    Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere;
    But why should my name be quite forgot
    Who rode as boldly and well, God wot?
    Why should I ask? The reason is clear:
    My name was Dawes and his Revere.

The Grandson Of US President John Tyler (1790-1862) Is Still Alive

From Jiblog:

I am amazed by this. The grandson of our tenth President, John Tyler, is still alive.

John Tyler was born in 1790. Lyon Gardiner Tyler, his fourteenth child of fifteen (eight children by his first wife, seven by his second) was born in 1853, when President Tyler was 63. Harrison Tyler, Lyon Tyler’s fifth child of six (three children by each of his two wives) was born in 1928, when Lyon Tyler was 75. And Harrison Tyler, now 79, still inhabits Sherwood Forest Plantation, the Tyler family home.

From grandfather to grandson, 217 years…and counting.

For the record, John Tyler was born while Washington was still alive, and his presidency lasted from 1841 to 1845. I'm not sure I can count the number of generations that have passed in my family during that time.

Bill Cosby's Father Speaks Fluent Norwegian

Bill Cosby's Father Speaks Fluent Norwegian

His TV father, that is. Actor Earle Hyman has spent a lot of time in Norway since the 1950s. A big fan of Henrik Ibsen, he even acted in a Norwegian-language sitcom, Seier'n er vår.

The Night I Saw Hank Aaron Hit Home Run Number 756

The Night I Saw Hank Aaron Hit Home Run Number 756

It was August 18, 1965, and I remember it like it was yesterday 40 years ago. Because of baseball's insanely detailed record-keeping, I know the game started at 8:00 PM, and there were 13,903 people there. Some sources say it was a Sportman's Park in St. Louis, but by then it was really called Busch Stadium. The old Busch Stadium, or more precisely the old old Busch Stadium. Two stadiums before the one they have there now. An August evening in St. Louis, the weather is usually hot and humid. Or humid and hot. A subtle difference to be sure, but one you could eventually pick up on if you lived there long enough. But that particular evening was quite pleasant, a great night for Fun At The Old Ballpark as Cardinals broadcaster Harry Caray used to say,

We went to the game to see the Cardinals play the lame duck Milwaukee Braves. 1965 was the Braves last year in Milwaukee, but they were really messing things up by making a run for the National League pennant.  It was me, my brother Tim, our neighborhood friends Kevin and Mark O'Donnell, and Mr. O'Donnell. We were going to see Curt Simmons pitch, because Curt Simmons lived in our subdivision and we played baseball with his kids. (Not organized Little League baseball but rather the neighborhood sandlot choose-sides-by-flipping-the-bat type of baseball, the type of baseball you seldom see played any more.) Simmons had been one of the 1950 Philadelphia Phillies Whiz Kids who won the pennant that year, but now nearing the end of his career with his fastball gone, he relied on his skill and experience as a pitcher. That is to say, he threw a lot of junk. But he was still a very effective pitcher, and had helped the Cardinals win the World Series the previous year. A sort of cosmic justice you might say, because he missed the entire 1950 World Series because his National Guard unit had been activated.

Curt Simmons was about the only pitcher who had Hank Aaron baffled. Before a game one time Aaron asked one of Curt Simmons' kids, "Why can't your father throw like everyone else?"  What Aaron meant was throwing like the blazing fastballer Don Drysdale, who ended up serving 17 home runs to Aaron in his career. But to Simmons that was pure folly. He said "Trying to sneak a fastball past Henry Aaron is like trying to sneak a sunrise past a rooster." So he threw lots of slow, breaking stuff to Aaron. Which leads us to the Mythical Home Run 756.

Most of you know the basic details about Aaron's home runs. He first tied, and then broke, Babe Ruth's all-time home run record in April of 1974 with the now-Atlanta Braves. After the 1974 season Aaron was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers, where he hit his 755th and last home run at Milwaukee's County Stadium on July 20, 1976.

We got a preview of Number 756 in the 6th inning. Simmons threw one ssllllowwwwwww curve ball after another to Aaron. I remember watching them and thinking "Gee, even I could hit one of those." Aaron was pouncing on them, almost cartoon-style, fouling one off after another until he flied out to center. The crowd was going nuts, it was a terrific show by two great ball players.

But all that was nothing compared to what was in store when Aaron came to bat with the score tied 3-3 in the 8th inning. The whole crowd was completely mesmerized by the show Simmons was putting on. One slow curve after another. It was almost as if he were placing the ball on a T-ball standing and daring Aaron to try to hit it. Aaron was fouling off pitch after pitch. Sometimes the baseball geeks talk about "the game within the game", and I think I could live to be 150 years old and never see a better example than what I saw that night. Finally on one pitch Aaron did kind of a hop, skip, and double shuffle, lunging at the ball and with a flick of his quick wrists, powering the ball over the right field roof. Home run 756.

But home plate umpire Chris Pelekoudas ruled that Aaron had violated rule 6.06(a), which as you know states that a batter must keep both feet within the batter's box (some say that Cardinals catcher Bob Uecker pointed this out to Pelekoudas). So instead of a home run, Aaron was ruled out. And yes, he was out of the batter's box, no doubt about it. Everyone in the park knew it. In fact, Aaron had stepped out of the batter's box on the previous at-bat, but Pelekoudas hadn't called it because he had flied out anyway.

So that's the story, pretty much. Milwaukee ended up winning the game on a 9th-inning pinch-hit home run (his only home run of the year, I might add) by a fellow from South Carolina named Don Dillard, playing in his last major league season. We could certainly understand losing a game due to a home run by Aaron, Mathews, or Torre. But Dillard? Dillard?

The next year the Cardinals moved into the new Busch Stadium, the one they just tore down. The Simmons kids moved away when their dad was traded to the Cubs. When he retired in 1967, Curt Simmons was the last major league pitcher to have played in the 1940's. And Hank Aaron still holds the career record for home runs: 755.

Sam Lacy, The First Black Sports Writer

Sam Lacy, The First Black Sports Writer

Or to be more precise about it, the first black member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, which he joined in 1947 or 1948, depending on who you read. Remember a few years ago when they retired Jackie Robinson's number and all the sportswriters made such a hoo-hah that the Era of Racial Segregation was such a shameful chapter in baseball history? Well, their pressbox was every bit as segregated, but you never heard even a mention of that, did you? More on Sam Lacy from Answers.com:

The sportswriter inherited his pioneering spirit from his grandfather, Henry Erskine Lacy, who was the first black detective on the Washington, D.C., police force. Perhaps the most amazing thing about Lacy's story is not that he covered all the giants of the twentieth-century sporting world - Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Muhammed Ali, to name a few - but that he continued to cover sports well into his nineties. He left home for the office at the Afro-American at three o'clock in the morning. to do three weekly columns and supervise the layout of the paper. When he became too old to drive after suffering a stroke in 1999, his son brought him to work. When his fingers became too riddled with arthritis to type, he wrote out his column longhand, continuing until shortly before his death in May, 2003. Lacy's story began with his selling peanuts to the Jim Crow section of old Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C., and it continued until he reached a place of honor in the writers' wing at baseball's ultimate shrine, the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

If you're a student and you have to write a paper for Black History Month, I think Sam Lacy would be a fascinating subject. 

Jane Skinner

Jane Skinner

Fox News Channel's Jane Skinner is married to NFL Commisioner Roger Goodell.

Leslie Easterbrook: Sgt. Debbie Callahan in Police Academy, Sang The National Anthem In Super Bowl XVII

Leslie Easterbrook: Sgt. Debbie Callahan in Police Academy, Sang The National Anthem In Super Bowl XVII

True Police Academy fans will immediately recognize the "Who wants to go next?" scene in the tastefully-cropped photo above. You can see the complete list of Super Bowl National Anthem Performers if you're curious. And for just $45, you can have Leslie herself send an autographed copy of the photo above directly to you! A great conversation piece for your living room or office cubicle.

Minnesota Supreme Court Justice And Former Minnesota Viking Alan Page: He Built The NFL Hall Of Fame. Literally.

Not all by himself, you understand. But he did work on its construction. Makes sense, since he was born in Canton, Ohio, the site of the NFL Hall of Fame. According to Wikipedia, he's the only member of the NFL Hall of Fame to have worked on its construction.

And Page is not the only NFL Supreme Court Justice. Former Chicago Bears placekicker Bob Thomas is not only on the Illinois Supreme Court, he's the Chief Justice. But he's not in the NFL Hall of Fame. Nor did he work on its construction.

And while we're at it, let's not forget another great football player, the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron "Whizzer" White, who served on the high court from 1962 to 1993. Now Byron was never a Chief Justice, nor was he in the NFL Hall of Fame, and he was too old to have worked on its construction.  But he was a Navy inteligence officer in the Pacifc during World War II, and in fact wrote the intelligence report on the sinking of the PT-109 under the command of John F. Kennedy, who later appointed him to the Supreme Court. Pretty neat, eh?

Quiz: What Do These Men Have In Common?

• Poet Archibald MacLeish
• Publisher Henry Luce
• Swimmer Don Schollander
• Legendary Football Coach Amos Alonzo Stagg
• Actor James Whitmore

Answer here.

Warner Sallman's Head of Christ: The Most Popular Picture Of Jesus Of All Time

Warner Sallman's Head of Christ: The Most Popular Picture Of Jesus Of All Time

Excerpts from GodWeb:

With the possible exception of Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper, no picture of Jesus is etched so deeply into our imaginations than the Head of Christ, painted in 1940 by Warner Sallman. Perhaps this is because Sallman's image of Christ has been reproduced in so many different media; it has been used to illustrate the pages of the Bible, Sunday school literature, calendars, posters, church bulletins, lamps, buttons and even bumper stickers. The Head of Christ has been reproduced over 500 million times, making it one of the most popular art works of all time.

For many of us this image is part of our childhood, having been hung on the walls of Sunday School classrooms and the halls and offices of the churches where we received our nurture in the faith. Countless Christians have recognized in Sallman's picture the personal savior whose intimacy and tenderness is at the heart of their faith. ... As one woman put it, the picture appeals to her simply because it shows, "just what Jesus looked like." ...

Art critics generally see it as pure kitsch. Among the most vociferous critics are clergy and professors who see in it the naive, sentimental and culturally backward faith in which they were raised and which an education helped them leave behind.

From Christianity Today:

A pious man by all accounts, Sallman worked as a freelance illustrator, producing religious imagery for a variety of publications including the Evangelical Covenant Church's denominational magazine Covenant Companion in the 1920s and the Salvation Army's War Cry in the 1930s. The charcoal sketch called "The Son of Man," which appeared on the cover of the Covenant Companion in 1924, attracted enough admirers over the years that Sallman painted an oil version in 1940. The image was titled "The Head of Christ." For many people, this image of Jesus, composed like a photographic portrait, looked like the serene "best friend" they wanted in their Savior. ...

After the war, groups in Oklahoma and Indiana conducted broad campaigns to distribute the picture across private and public spheres. A Lutheran organizer of the effort in Indiana said that there ought to be "card-carrying Christians" to counter the effect of "card-carrying Communists." Copies of Sallman's "Head of Christ" were placed in public libraries, schools, police departments, community centers, and even in courtrooms. One photograph from 1962 shows Vice President Lyndon Johnson posing reverently beside a copy of the picture sent to him in Washington. Today, the portrait of Jesus is still found in both Protestant and Catholic churches, enjoys fond use among Mormons, Latinos, Native Americans, and African Americans, and hangs in Christian homes in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe.

Probably like you, I've seen this painting a million times and never once gave a thought to who drew it. (via  the evangelical outpost)

Wheat Cents vs Lincoln Memorial Cents: Total Number of Pennies Minted

1909 - 1958	1959 - 2006
25,963,890,963	413,153,288,390
Wheat Cents vs Lincoln Memorial Cents: Total Number of Pennies Minted

The production of Lincoln Memorial Cents will continue through 2008. And then:

In 2009 the cent will get a one-year, four-coin commemorative program marking the 100th anniversary of Lincoln being placed on the cent (and the 200th anniversary of his birth). This redesign was passed as part of the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005, which also mandates that in 2009, numismatic cents will be issued for collectors that have the metallic copper content of cents minted in 1909. In 2010, the cent will be completely redesigned, with a new, permanent design being released into circulation. Lincoln, however, will remain on the coin. The composition will return to copper plated zinc.

Words That Are Only Used One Way

Like avail, for instance. It's only used these days like his efforts were to no avail. It's always used in the form to no avail, and not in avail themselves of these opportunities. Or take the feverishly. It's always used in some form of working feverishly. Just something I noticed.

Football Trivia: Yes, The Defense Can Score On An Extra-Point Conversion Attempt

And when they do, it's technically called a "safety", even though it's nothing like a normal safety. Here's a nice summary from Wikipedia:

In U.S. college and Canadian football, a team scores two points if it gets control of the ball on a conversion attempt by the other team and returns it all the way into the other team's end zone. For example, say Team A scores a touchdown to go ahead 6-0. A player on Team B then blocks Team A's extra point attempt, picks up the ball and runs into Team A's end zone. The score is now 6-2, and Team A kicks off to Team B from its own 35-yard line (as it would have if there had not been a safety).

College football's rules allow either team to score a one-point safety after a touchdown. Say that Team B blocks Team A's extra-point attempt, and a player on Team B picks up the ball on the 1-yard line. Looking for an opening, the player with the ball runs backwards two yards, where he is tackled. Team A receives one point, and the score is now 7-0. Team A then kicks off from its own 35-yard line.

Another scenario would be if Team B had blocked the kick and began to run it back for two points, but at the last moment a persuer from Team A knocked the ball loose. If he were to pick up the ball, run into the endzone and be tackled, T