Tuesday: August 15, 2006
YouTube: British
widower, 79, becomes surprise video star (story)
Segway: 2 new scooters provide
ride like skiing (story)
Spotlight:
Sir Walter Scott,
the author of Ivanhoe and
"Lochinvar," was
born on this date in 
1771
in Edinburgh, Scotland; his special intrests were in Scotland's history and
culture. Known as the father of the historical novel, Scott didn't even claim
credit for his earliest novels, the Waverley
novels, until several years after they were first published. He wrote ballads
and poems, including "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" (1805), "Marmion"
(1808 – including the famous verse on Lochinvar) and "The Lady of the Lake"
(1810).
Quote: "Breathes there the man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land!" – Sir Walter Scott, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel"
Monday August 14, 2006
Joseph
Lieberman: Connecticut senator faces calls to quit race as Independent (story)
V-J Day: still
celebrated in Rhode Island,
controversially (story)
Today in History
Sunday August 13, 2006
Mexico City: then known
as Tenochtitlán,
fell to Spanish conquistador
Hernando Cortez, along
with the entire Aztec Empire (1521)
taxicabs: first appeared
on the streets of NYC
(1907)
Berlin: was divided by barbed
wire, which soon became the Berlin
Wall (1961)
Spotlight: Film director Cecil B. DeMille was born on this date in 1881. Known for his epic films, including Samson and Delilah (1949), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) and The Ten Commandments (1956), DeMille delighted audiences with extravagant productions such as the splitting of the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments and the toppling of the pagan temple in Samson and Delilah. A Golden Globe lifetime achievement award, given annually by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, was named for DeMille.
Quote:"What do you want me to do?
Stop shooting now and release it as The Five Commandments?" – Cecil
B. DeMille, on running over budget on The Ten Commandments
Alzheimer's:
researchers find cells that clean out beta-amyloid
(story)
"We give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain." - William R. Alger
Oslo: world's most expensive city; London is No. 1 if you count housing costs (story)
Wednesday August 9, 2006
BP: Alaskan oil field
shutdown may be the sign of things to come as corrosion problem worsens (story)
August 6, 2006
Susan Butcher: champion Iditarod dog musher dies of leukemia (story)
Relax, the news just gets us upset anyway......Maybe, later today, we will find out what's happening.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006: (that's right I completly ran through Wednesday without even knowing it -- do we dare say "no news is good news"?) We just can't get too serious about anything right now.
gasoline: US average hits all-time high at over $3 per gallon
(story)
Blue Origin: Jeff Bezos's space flight company files plans with the FAA (story)
signing statements: ABA task force takes President Bush to task for writing
exceptions to laws he has signed (story)
Titan: flyby by Cassini spacecraft spots lakes of methane and ethane near
north pole of Saturn's moon (story)
Asatru: pagan religion rooted in Viking mythology gains
followers among prison inmates (story)
Richard Hatch: Survivor starts 51 months in Oklahoma prison
for failure to pay tax on his $1 million prize (story)
Monday, July 24, 2006
In the News: July 10, 2006
Shamil Basayev:
Chechen rebel leader is killed in "deserved retribution" as Russian
President Vladimir Putin
prepares to host the G8 summit
in St. Petersburg
(story)
Hurricane Katrina: first insurance company lawsuit goes to trial; at issue is
whether flooding or wind caused the homeowner's damage (story)
All-Star Game: pitchers Kenny Rogers of the Tigers and Brad Penny of the Dodgers
will face off in Pittsburgh tonight (story)
Toyota: recalls 160,000 Tundra trucks (story)
In the News: Sunday July 9, 2006
Saturday July 8, 2006: In the News:
Wednesday June 7, 2006
Spotlight: Vatican City became an independent, sovereign state when the Lateran Treaty was signed in Rome on this date in 1929. Italy had annexed the Papal States in 1871, restricting papal business to a few buildings and paying a yearly compensation. But the Church never accepted the annexation or the payments and the popes considered themselves prisoners in the Vatican. The Lateran Treaty ended this status and also established Roman Catholicism as the only official religion of Italy.
Word: concordat: an agreement between the pope and a government, having to do with religious affairs; the Lateran Treaty was a concordat between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy.
Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia
is a fear found in the Western Christian world, which originates in the belief
that the Biblical verse, Revelation
13:18, indicates that the number 666
is linked to Satan or the Anti-Christ.
Outside the Christian faith, the phobia has been further popularized as a leitmotif
in various horror films.