Life is like a cup of tea – it’s all in how you make it!

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Stephen O’Shannessy O’Brien McMurphy Patrick Michael O’Kowalski back again, with some fun sayings, blessings and inspirations straight out of Ireland for you to use this St. Patrick’s Day. So, pick your favorite sayings (email them to friends), get green, smile, laugh and look for your pot ‘o gold and lucky leprechauns. To our friends, families, customers, employees, vendors, partners, neighbors and loved ones – may all the blessings of Saint Patrick behold you, in this simple poem – (special thanks to irishcentral.com for all ye fun tidbits below).

 

 

 

 

Legend, Teamwork & The Impossible

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Ever set a crazy goal … and then reach it?  Ever been told “oh, that’s impossible”, then feeling larger than life when it happens?  Ever convince a small group, that even though the goal is crazy (BHAG’s as the motivation experts like to call them today), you overcome the odds, and deliver.  That drive, passion and purpose, lives everyday here at KHT –  it’s the engine behind our PIA (Pain in the @%$) Jobs solutions – digging, testing, discovering and delivering.  It’s an amazing feeling for sure.  Last week a legend passed away at the age of 88 – Sir Roger Bannister, famously known as the first person to break the four-minute mile barrier, an accomplishment, at its time, most felt was “simply impossible”.  Being a bit of a running junkie, I dug into the history books a bit, and found out some things I never knew – like the fact that two other runners were chasing the same dream and pushing Bannister to hit his goal – like the fact that Roger had a pack of runners help him during the race to set the correct pace – that prior to breaking the record, Roger finished far behind in the pack of runners in many of his previous races, was unsure of this ever happening, and even thought of not running at all that glorious day, and about a month later, another runner broke Mr. Bannister’s record time.  Special thanks to The Guardian and Wikipedia and for the info, and congratulations Roger for reminding us all that sometimes, the impossible is possible.

 

  • Sir Roger Gilbert Bannister was a British middle-distance athlete, doctor and academic who ran the first sub-4-minute mile (3 minutes 59.4 seconds) on 6 May 1954 at Iffley Road track in Oxford, with Chris Chataway and Chris Brasher providing the pacing.
  • Bannister was born in Harrow, England. He went to Vaughan Road Primary School in Harrow and continued his education at City of Bath Boys’ School and University College School, London; followed by medical school at the University of Oxford Exeter College and Merton College and at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School, now part of Imperial College London.
  • Bannister started his running career at Oxford in the autumn of 1946 at the age of 17. He had never worn running spikes previously or run on a track. His training was light, even compared to the standards of the day, but he showed promise in running a mile in 1947 in 4:24.6 on only three weekly half-hour training sessions.
  • He was selected as an Olympic “possible” in 1948 but declined as he felt he was not ready to compete at that level. Inspired to become a great miler by watching the 1948 Olympics, he set his training goals on the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki.
  • In 1949, he improved in the 880 yards to 1:52.7 and won several mile races in 4:11. By 1950 Bannister saw more improvements as he finished a relatively slow 4:13 mile on 1 July with an impressive 57.5 last quarter. Then, he ran the AAA 880 in 1:52.1, losing to Arthur Wint, and then ran 1:50.7 for the 800 m at the European Championships on 26 August, placing third. Chastened by this lack of success, Bannister started to train harder and more seriously.
  • His increased attention to training paid quick dividends, as he won a mile race in 4:09.9. In 1951 at the Penn Relays, Bannister broke away from the pack with a 56.7 final lap, finishing in 4:08.3. In his biggest test to date, he won a mile race on July 14 in 4:07.8 at the AAA Championships at White City before 47,000 people. The time set a meet record as he defeated defending champion Bill Nankeville in the process.
  • Bannister avoided racing after the 1951 season until late in the spring of 1952, saving his energy for Helsinki and the Olympics. He ran an 880 on May 28 in 1:53.00, then a 4:10.6 mile time-trial in June, proclaiming himself satisfied with the results. At the AAA Championships, he skipped the mile and won the 880 in 1:51.5. Then, 10 days before the Olympic final, he ran a ¾ mile time trial in 2:52.9, which gave him confidence that he was ready for the Olympics as he considered the time to be the equivalent of a four-minute mile.
  • His confidence soon dissipated as it was announced there would be semifinals for the 1500 m (equal to 0.932 miles) at the Olympics, and he knew that this favored runners who had much deeper training regimens than he did. The 1500 m final would prove to be one of the more dramatic in Olympic history. The race was not decided until the final meters, with Josy Barthel of Luxembourg prevailing in an Olympic-record 3:45.28 (3:45.1 by official hand-timing) and the next seven runners all under the old record.  Bannister finished fourth, out of the medals, but set a British record of 3:46.30 in the process.
  • After his relative failure at the 1952 Olympics, Bannister spent two months deciding whether to give up running. He set himself on a new goal: to be the first man to run a mile in under four minutes. Accordingly, he intensified his training and did hard intervals, a type of training that involves a series of low- to high-intensity workouts interspersed with rest or relief periods
  • On 2 May 1953, he made an attempt on the British record at Oxford. Paced by Chris Chataway, Bannister ran 4:03.6, shattering Wooderson’s 1945 standard. “This race made me realize that the four-minute mile was not out of reach,” said Bannister.
  • Other runners were making attempts at the four-minute barrier and coming close as well. American Wes Santee ran 4:02.4 in June, the fourth-fastest mile ever. And at the end of the year, Australian John Landy ran 4:02.0, and matched his time again early in 1954. Bannister had been following Landy’s and Santee’s attempts and was certain a rival would likely succeed, Bannister knew he had to make his attempt soon.
  • The historic event took place on May 6, 1954 during a meet between British AAA and Oxford University at Iffley Road Track in Oxford, watched by about 3,000 spectators. With winds up to 25 miles per hour (40 km/h) before the event, Bannister had said twice that he favored not running, to conserve his energy and efforts to break the 4-minute barrier; he would try again at another meet. However, the winds dropped just before the race was scheduled to begin, and Bannister did run.
  • The pace-setters from his major 1953 attempts, future Commonwealth Games gold medalist Chris Chataway and Olympic Games gold medalist Chris Brasher combined to provide pacing on this historic day. Bannister had begun his day at a hospital in London, where he sharpened his racing spikes and rubbed graphite on them so they would not pick up too much cinder ash. He took a mid-morning train from Paddington Station to Oxford, nervous about the rainy, windy conditions that afternoon.
  • The race went off as scheduled at 6:00 pm, and Brasher and Bannister went immediately to the lead. Brasher, wearing No. 44, led both the first lap in 58 seconds and the half-mile in 1:58, with Bannister, No. 41, tucked in behind, and Chataway a stride behind Bannister.  Chataway moved to the front after the second lap and maintained the pace with a 3:01 split at the bell. Chataway continued to lead around the front turn until Bannister began his finishing kick with about 275 yards to go, running the last lap in just under 59 seconds.  Said Bannister, “The world seemed to stand still, or did not exist. The only reality was the next 200 yards of track under my feet. The tape meant finality – extinction perhaps.  I felt at that moment that it was my chance to do one thing supremely well. I drove on, impelled by a combination of fear and pride.”
  • The stadium announcer for the race was Norris McWhirter, (who went on to co-publish and co-edit the Guinness Book of Records). He excited the crowd by delaying the announcement of the time Bannister ran as long as possible.

“Ladies and gentlemen, here is the result of event nine, the one mile: first, number forty one, R. G. Bannister, Amateur Athletic Association and formerly of Exeter and Merton Colleges, Oxford, with a time which is a new meeting and track record, and which—subject to ratification—will be a new English Native, British National, All-Comers, European, British Empire and World Record. The time was three…” (the roar of the crowd drowned out the rest of the announcement – “minutes, 59.4 seconds.”

  • The claim that a four-minute mile was once thought to be impossible by “informed” observers was and is a widely propagated myth created by sportswriters. The reason the myth took hold was that four minutes was a round number which was slightly better (1.4 seconds) than the world record for nine years, longer than it probably otherwise would have been because of the effect of the Second World War in interrupting athletic progress in the combatant countries.
  • Just 46 days later, on 21 June in Turku, Finland, Bannister’s record was broken by his Australian rival John Landy, with a time of 3 min 57.9 s, which the IAAF ratified as 3 min 58.0 s due to the rounding rules then in effect.
  • On August 7, at the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, B.C., Bannister, running for England, competed against Landy for the first time in a race billed as “The Miracle Mile”. They were the only two men in the world to have broken the 4-minute barrier, with Landy still holding the world record. Landy led for most of the race, building a lead of 10 yards in the third lap (of four), but was overtaken on the last bend, and Bannister won in 3 min 58.8 s, with Landy 0.8 s behind in 3 min 59.6 s. Bannister and Landy have both pointed out that the crucial moment of the race was that at the moment when Bannister decided to try to pass Landy, Landy looked over his left shoulder to gauge Bannister’s position and Bannister burst past him on the right, never relinquishing the lead.
  • Bannister went on that season to win the so-called metric mile, the 1500 m, at the European Championships in Bern, Switzerland, with a championship record in a time of 3 min 43.8 s. He retired from athletics late in 1954 to concentrate on his work as a junior doctor and to pursue a career in neurology.
  • Bannister later became the first Chairman of the Sports Council (now called Sport England) and was knighted for this service in 1975. Under his aegis, central and local government funding of sports centers and other sports facilities was rapidly increased.  He also initiated the first testing for use of anabolic steroids in sport.
  • Retiring from athletics, Bannister spent forty years practicing medicine. He ultimately published more than 80 papers, mostly concerned with the autonomic nervous system, cardiovascular physiology, and multiple system atrophy.  Bannister married the artist Moyra Jacobsson, daughter of the Swedish economist Per Jacobsson, who served as Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund.  In 2011, Bannister was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and died on March 3, 2018 at the age of 88.
  • On the 50th anniversary of running the sub-4-minute mile, Bannister was interviewed by the BBC’s sports correspondent Rob Bonnet. At the conclusion of the interview, Bannister was asked whether he looked back on the sub-4-minute mile as the most important achievement of his life. To the contrary, Bannister replied essentially that he instead saw his subsequent forty years of practicing as a neurologist and some of the new procedures he introduced as being more significant.
  • For his efforts, Bannister was made the inaugural recipient of the Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year award for 1954. Later runners inspired by Bannister and his achievement, included Phil Knight who says that Roger Bannister inspired him to start Nike.
  • Today, according to The IAAF, the official body which oversees the records, Hicham El Guerrouj of Moracco is the current men’s record holder of the mile with his time of 3:43.13, while Russian Svetlana Masterkova has the women’s record of 4:12.56.

 

 

 

“Yea, That’s My Country too!”

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(row one left) Francis Scott Key. (row one top right) The first sheet-music issue of “The Star-Spangled Banner” was printed by Thomas Carr’s Music store in Baltimore in 1814. (row one bottom right) The flag over Ft. McHenry (painter unknown) (row two left) 120,868,500 commemorative postage stamps were issued August 9, 1948. One of these in mint condition is worth around 60 cents today. 15 cents for a used one. (row two right) an engraving of a younger Francis Scott Key. They probably called him Frankie. (row three) The original Fort McHenry flag (15 stars and 15 stripes) measured 30 feet by 42 feet. It’s being preserved and restored in Washington, DC. (row four) Glorious isn’t it?

 

We’ve all been lucky to watch an amazing Olympic competition these past few weeks, with athletes from all over the world doing amazing things on the ice and snow.  Each one, of course, has their own story – some competing for the first time, some competing in their third of fourth Olympics (can you imagine) and others wrapping up their Olympic careers.  Consistently, every athlete talked about sacrifice, hardship and overcoming the odds, with a small few prevailing to stand on the podium, medal on chest, tears on their cheeks and hand over heart, proudly representing their county while listening to their respective national anthem.  I don’t know about you, but I feel really proud when the anthem plays, and get choked up seeing the athletes realize their accomplishments.

We all know our “official” USA anthem is the Star Spangled-Banner, but what you probably didn’t know is it took 40 attempts to get it through Congress (talk about perseverance) – tomorrow, March 3th is the anniversary of the adoption of the anthem.  For my trivia buds, here’s some interesting history and cool trivia about the great anthem we’ve all come to know as the strength and sound of the United States of America. Enjoy, and thanks Wikipedia, historian Mark Leepson and History.com for the info.

 

  1. A song is written.  By the dawn’s early light on September 14, 1814, Francis Scott Key peered through a spyglass and spotted an American flag still waving over Baltimore’s Fort McHenry after a fierce night of British bombardment. In a patriotic fervor, the man called “Frank” Key by family and friends penned the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner.” When he composed his verses, he intended them to accompany a popular song of the day. “We know he had the tune in mind because the rhyme and meter exactly fit it,” says Marc Leepson, author of the Key biography “What So Proudly We Hailed.” The first broadside of the verses, printed just days after the battle, noted that the words should be sung to the melody of “To Anacreon in Heaven.” (ironically an English song composed in 1775 that served as the theme song of the upper-crust Anacreontic Society of London and a popular pub staple).  Key was quite familiar with the tune, having used it to accompany an 1805 poem, which included a reference to a “star-spangled flag,” he had written to honor Barbary War naval heroes Stephen Decatur and Charles Stewart.
  2. Key was not imprisoned on a British warship when he penned his verses.  In his capacity as a Washington, D.C., lawyer, Key had been dispatched by President James Madison on a mission to Baltimore to negotiate for the release of Dr. William Beanes, a prominent surgeon captured at the Battle of Bladensburg. Accompanied by John Stuart Skinner, a fellow lawyer working for the State Department, Key set sail on an American sloop in Baltimore Harbor, and on September 7 the pair boarded the British ship Tonnant, where they dined and secured the prisoner’s release under one condition—they could not go ashore until after the British attacked Baltimore. Accompanied by British guards on September 10, Key returned to the American sloop from which he witnessed the bombardment behind the 50-ship British fleet.
  3. The flag Key “hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming” did not fly “through the perilous fight.” In addition to a thunderstorm of bombs, a torrent of rain fell on Fort McHenry throughout the night of the Battle of Baltimore. The fort’s 30-by-42-foot garrison flag was so massive that it required 11 men to hoist when dry, and if waterlogged the woolen banner could have weighed upwards of 500 pounds and snapped the flagpole. So as the rain poured down, a smaller storm flag that measured 17-by-25 feet flew in its place. In the morning, experts believe, they most likely took down the rain-soaked storm flag and hoisted the bigger one … and that’s the flag Key saw in the morning.
  4. The song was not originally entitled “The Star-Spangled Banner.” When Key scrawled his lyrics on the back of a letter he pulled from his pocket on the morning of September 14, he did not give them any title. Within a week, Key’s verses were printed on broadsides and in Baltimore newspapers under the title “Defence of Fort M’Henry.” In November, a Baltimore music store printed the patriotic song with sheet music for the first time under the more lyrical title “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
  5. The national anthem has four verses.  The version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” traditionally sung on patriotic occasions and at sporting events is only the song’s first verse. All four verses conclude with the same line: “O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” In 1861, poet Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a fifth verse to support the Union cause in the Civil War and denounce “the traitor that dares to defile the flag of her stars.
  6. Key opposed American entry into the War of 1812.  Ironically, the man who created one of the lasting patriotic legacies of the War of 1812 adamantly opposed the conflict at its outset. Key referred to the war as “abominable” and “a lump of wickedness.” However, his opposition to the war softened after the British began to raid nearby Chesapeake Bay communities in 1813 and 1814, and he briefly served in a Georgetown wartime militia.
  7. Key was a consummate Washington insider.  Although Key loathed politics, he was a prominent figure in Washington, D.C. –  an important player in the early republic, He was a very successful and influential lawyer at the highest levels in Washington.  Key ran a thriving law practice, served as a trusted advisor in Andrew Jackson’s “Kitchen Cabinet” and was appointed a United States Attorney in 1833. He prosecuted hundreds of cases, including that of Richard Lawrence for the attempted assassination of Court.
  8. Key was a one-hit wonder who might have been tone deaf.  Key was much more adept in his legal day job than he was as an amateur poet. Most of the odes he composed were never meant to be seen beyond family and friends, and none came remotely close to realizing the popular fame of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” In addition to being a middling poet, Key also had a hard time carrying a tune. “Key’s family said he was not musical,” Leepson says, “which means he likely was tone deaf.”
  9. It did not become the national anthem until more than a century after it was written. Along with “Hail Columbia” and “Yankee Doodle,” “The Star-Spangled Banner” was among the prevalent patriotic airs in the aftermath of the War of 1812. During the Civil War, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was an anthem for Union troops, and the song increased in popularity in the ensuing decades, which led to President Woodrow Wilson signing an executive order in 1916 designating it as “the national anthem of the United States” for all military ceremonies.
  10. Song becomes national anthem.  On March 3, 1931, after 40 previous attempts failed, a measure passed Congress and was signed into law that formally designated “The Star-Spangled Banner” as the national anthem of the United States.
  11. The flag restored and on display.  Nearly two centuries later, the flag that inspired Key still survives, though fragile and worn by the years. Experts at the National Museum of American History completed an eight-year conservation treatment with funds from Polo Ralph Lauren, The Pew Charitable Trusts and the U.S. Congress.  With the construction of the conservation lab completed in 1999, conservators clipped 1.7 million stitches from the flag to remove a linen backing that had been added in 1914, lifted debris from the flag using dry cosmetic sponges and brushed it with an acetone-water mixture to remove soils embedded in fibers. Finally, they added a sheer polyester backing to help support the flag.  Said Brent D. Glass, the Museum’s Director – “The Star-Spangled Banner is a symbol of American history that ranks with the Statue of Liberty and the Charters of Freedom,” “The fact that it has been entrusted to the National Museum of American History is an honor.”

 

 

 

 

“Road Trip”

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(row one left) When the Indian’s trucks roll out, spring training is right around the corner. (row one top right) Cleveland Indians fan Jon Brittan looks on before the game against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Goodyear Ballpark Mar 19, 2017. (row one bottom right) Kids along the foul line try to snag a grounder. (row two) Goodyear Ballpark’s 1 Millionth Fan, Jean Wilson. Excited much? (row three) Getting autographs is a huge part of the game. (row four) I just had to share these: The little t-baller is just so darn cute! And the little dude on the right, Christian Haupt was the youngest person to ever throw a first pitch at a Major League Baseball game a few days after his 4th birthday. See his throw HERE. (It’s near the end of the video if you want to zoom to it). (row five) Play ball, baby! Can’t wait for opening day!

 

As the ice starts to shift on the lake, and we hit some warm days in NE Ohio, I love to reconnect with one of my favorites – spring training.  Like all athletes, it’s a time when I harken back to pre-season workouts, long runs, weight training and working on fundamentals.  As a business owner, I like to review our “basics” – those things that’s made us successful for so many years – making sure we’re ready for your “routine grounders” and “pop ups” – responding promptly to inquiries, making deliveries on time, and just consistently solving your pesky PIA (Pain in the @%$) Jobs.  I like to open the doors, let in the fresh air, and spend some time with each of the crew, finding those little things we can work on to serve you better.  While not the consistent warmth of Florida or Arizona, it does give us time to train and prep for the upcoming season.  For those who have the time, jump on a flight, or in the car, and hit some spring training camps – fun relaxed, and you never know where the next Babe will emerge.  Thanks Wikipedia for the trivia.

 

  1. In Major League Baseball (MLB), spring training is a series of practices and exhibition games preceding the start of the regular season. Spring training allows new players to try out for roster and position spots, and gives existing players practice time prior to competitive play.
  2. Spring training has always attracted fan attention, drawing crowds who travel to the warmer climates to enjoy the weather and watch their favorite teams play, and spring training usually coincides with spring break for many US college students.
  3. Spring training typically starts in mid-February and continues until just before Opening Day of the regular season, traditionally the first week of April. In some years, teams not scheduled to play on Opening Day will play spring training games that day. Pitchers and catchers report to spring training first because pitchers benefit from a longer training period. A few days later, position players arrive and team practice begins.
  4. Spring training by major league teams in sites other than their regular season game sites first became popular in the 1890s and by 1910 was in wide use. Hot Springs, Arkansas has been called the original “birthplace” of Spring Training baseball. The location of Hot Springs and the concept of getting the players ready for the upcoming season was the brainchild of Chicago White Stockings (today’s Chicago Cubs) team President Albert Spalding and Cap Anson. In 1886, the White Stockings traveled to Hot Springs to prepare for the upcoming season. Practicing at the Hot Springs Baseball Grounds, the White Stockings had a successful season and other teams took notice and began holding spring training in Hot Springs.
  5. The Cleveland Spiders, Detroit Tigers, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds, Brooklyn Dodgers and Boston Red Sox followed the White Stockings to Hot Springs. Whittington Park/Ban Johnson Park (1894), Majestic Park (1909) and Fogel Field (1912) were all built in Hot Springs to host Major League teams.
  6. Famously, a young pitcher named Babe Ruth of the Boston Red Sox was playing an emergency game at first base on St. Patrick’s Day, 1918, his first time playing the field. Ruth would hit two home runs that day in Hot Springs, and the second was a 573-foot shot that landed across the street from Whittington Park in a pond of the Arkansas Alligator Farm and Petting Zoo. Soon he was playing the field more often.
  7. Over 130 Major League Baseball Hall of Famers, including such names as Ruth, Cy Young, Cap Anson, Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Walter Johnson, Rogers Hornsby, Mel Ott and Jimmie Foxx were involved in Hot Springs Spring Training games.
  8. The Detroit Tigers are credited with being the first team to conduct spring training camp in Arizona. They trained in Phoenix at Riverside Park at Central Avenue and the Salt River in 1929.
  9. The Philadelphia Phillies were the first of the current major-league teams to train in Florida, when they spent two weeks in Jacksonville, Florida in 1889. Spring training in Florida began in earnest in 1913, when the Chicago Cubs played in Tampa, and the Cleveland Indians in Pensacola. One year later, two other teams moved to Florida for spring training, the real start of the Grapefruit League.
  10. Except for a couple of years during World War II, when travel restrictions prevented teams training south of the Potomac and Ohio rivers, Florida hosted more than half of the spring training teams through 2009. Since 2010, major league teams have been equally divided during spring training, with 15 teams in Florida and 15 teams in Arizona.
  11. According to the autobiography of former Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck, the avoidance of racism was one reason the Cactus League was established. In 1947, Veeck was the owner of the minor league Milwaukee Brewers and the team trained in Ocala, Florida. Veeck inadvertently sat in the Black section of the segregated stands and engaged in conversation with a couple of fans. According to Veeck’s book, the local law enforcement told Veeck he could not sit in that section, and then called the Ocala mayor when Veeck argued back. The mayor finally backed down when Veeck threatened to take his team elsewhere for spring training and promised to let the country know why.
  12. The Brooklyn Dodgers trained in Havana, Cuba in 1947 and 1949, and in the Dominican Republic in 1948. The New York Yankees also trained in the early 1950s in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Spring training camps and games were also held in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and various cities of northern Mexico, sometimes by visiting major league teams in the 1950s and 1960s.
  13. During World War II, most teams held an abbreviated spring training within easy reach of their cities. In order to conserve rail transport during the war, 1943’s Spring Training was limited to an area east of the Mississippi River and north of the Ohio River. The Chicago White Sox held camp in French Lick, Indiana; the Washington Senators in College Park, Maryland; and the New York Yankees in Asbury Park, New Jersey.
  14. Before and shortly after big league baseball reached the West Coast, a number of teams trained in the state of California or along the state boundary. The Chicago Cubs trained on Catalina Island in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s. For example, early in their history, the then-California Angels held spring training in Palm Springs, California from 1961 to 1993, the San Diego Padres in Yuma, Arizona from 1969 to 1993, the Oakland Athletics in Las Vegas in the 1970s, and various major league teams had trained in Riverside, San Bernardino, and El Centro near the Mexican border.
  15. The concept of spring training is not limited to North America; the Japanese professional baseball leagues’ teams adopted spring training and preseason game sites across East Asia such as South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan; the Pacific Islands (most notably in Hawaii); and two cities in the United States: Salinas, California and Yuma, Arizona on the Mexican border.

Grapefruit League – Florida

 

Cactus League – Arizona

 

 

 

WOW

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(top) Wow!!! (row two left) Elon Musk and his son watch the lift-off (row three left) “Starman” floating in space. (row three right) A tweet by Jon Fusco makes the point: “Tesla playing Bowie (2018)” and Bowie playing Tesla (2006). David Bowie actually played Nikola Tesla in the Christopher Nolan film “The Prestige”. (row four) Check out the screen on the Tesla dashboard. (bottom) These booster rockets dropped of the main rocket and landed upright…at the same time. Wow!!!!

 

Every once in a while, events happen that just take my breath away.  Last week, as you probably read, Elon Musk’s Space X vehicle had a successful launch.  I was intrigued, not just as a curiosity seeker, but also as a business owner.  Think about it – here’s a guy, Elon Musk, who decided he wanted to go to Mars.  He creates a company, recruits an incredible team, overcomes ridiculous odds, and then includes things never before tried, like landing the rocket boosters safely back on earth, and landing the rocket booster safely on a floating drone ship in the middle of the ocean … really.  So, on behalf of all of us business owners, dreamers, daily masters of PIA (Pain in the @%$) Jobs!, employers, and Americans, I salute you, your staff, your vision and passion to make this happen.  Take the time today to watch the launch (and re-entry) of the vehicle parts, and then watch the footage of Elon’s reaction, and then enjoy the Tesla Starman views … WOW !!

 

Launch and side booster landings:

 

Elon Musk Emotional Reaction To Falcon Heavy Launch and Interview:

 

“Starman” – in space:

 

 

And… Check out these “14 things you might not know about the SpaceX rocket launch” from c|net —> HERE

 

 

 

 

Those Famous Five Rings

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(top three photos) In 2011, International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge announces Pyeongchang as the winning city for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games; There’s nothing like a map to show where exactly Pyeongchang, South Korea is located; The slopes at night. Magical. (montage of images) The events are all exciting and so much fun to watch; (bottom right) Britain’s Ethel Muckelt won the bronze medal for singles figure skating at the very first Winter Olympics in 1924. My, how fashions have changed.

 

Get the current local time in Pyeongchang HERE

See NBC’s full coverage schedule HERE

Check out the official Winter Olympics website HERE

 

Now that I’ve finally settled down from the exciting Super Bowl finish, one of my favorite events kicked off this week – the Olympic Games, hosted in Pyeongchang, South Korea, about 80 miles (125 kilometers) east of Seoul and about 60 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea.  Jackie and I especially love the Winter Olympics – from the opening ceremony all the way to the final events.  With the time change this year, we’ll be able to see many of the events live.  Not only do I like the main sports like side by side downhill skiing and luge (what are those people thinking???) but I also find myself glued to the television, hoping to see if the Canadian skip can “soft rock a draw turn-in kizzle kazzle hammer off the hack to tuck just inside the 6-footer back end to blank the Ukrainians (not bad, eh?). I also love to watch the young bucks tackle the half pipe and do those insane triple flips off the super free-style ramps.  For my trivia buffs, and those who want to be the “Cliff Klaven’s” in the room when it comes to Olympic trivia, here you go.  Special thanks to History.com, CNN and Wikipedia for the goodies.  (before you start, email me if you know what the five rings stands for….)

 

  1. The Olympic Games, which originated in ancient Greece as many as 3,000 years ago, were revived in the late 19th century and have become the world’s preeminent sporting competition.
  2. The first written records of the ancient Olympic Games date to 776 B.C., when a cook named Coroebus won the only event–a 192-meter footrace called the stade (the origin of the modern “stadium”)–to become the first Olympic champion. However, it is generally believed that the Games had been going on for many years by that time.
  3. Legend has it that Heracles, son of Zeus and the mortal woman Alcmene, founded the Games, which by the end of the 6th century B.C had become the most famous of all Greek sporting festivals.
  4. The ancient Olympics were held every four years between August 6 and September 19 during a religious festival honoring Zeus. The Games were named for their location at Olympia, a sacred site located near the western coast of the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece. Their influence was so great that ancient historians began to measure time by the four-year increments in between Olympic Games, which were known as Olympiads.
  5. After 13 Olympiads, two more races joined the stade as Olympic events: the diaulos (roughly equal to today’s 400-meter race), and the dolichos (a longer-distance race, possibly comparable to the 1,500-meter or 5,000-meter event). The pentathlon (consisting of five events: a foot race, a long jump, discus and javelin throws and a wrestling match) was introduced in 708 B.C., boxing in 688 B.C. and chariot racing in 680 B.C. In 648 B.C., pankration, a combination of boxing and wrestling with virtually no rules, debuted as an Olympic event.
  6. Participation in the ancient Olympic Games was initially limited to freeborn male citizens of Greece; there were no women’s events, and married women were prohibited from attending the competition.
  7. After the Roman Empire conquered Greece in the mid-2nd century B.C., the Games continued, but their standards and quality declined. In one notorious example from A.D. 67, the decadent Emperor Nero entered an Olympic chariot race, only to disgrace himself by declaring himself the winner even after he fell off his chariot during the event.
  8. The first modern Olympics were held in Athens, Greece, in 1896. In the opening ceremony, King Georgios I and a crowd of 60,000 spectators welcomed 280 participants from 13 nations (all male), who would compete in 43 events, including track and field, gymnastics, swimming, wrestling, cycling, tennis, weightlifting, shooting and fencing.
  9. The 1896 Games also featured the first Olympic marathon, which followed the 25-mile route run by the Greek soldier who brought news of a victory over the Persians from Marathon to Athens in 490 B.C. Fittingly, Greece’s Spyridon Louis won the first gold medal in the event. In 1924, the distance would be standardized to 26 miles and 385 yards.
  10. All subsequent Olympiads have been numbered even when no Games take place (as in 1916, during World War I, and in 1940 and 1944, during World War II). The official symbol of the modern Games is five interlocking colored rings, representing the continents of North and South America, Asia, Africa, Europe and Australia. The Olympic flag, featuring this symbol on a white background, flew for the first time at the Antwerp Games in 1920.
  11. The Olympics truly took off as an international sporting event after 1924, when the VIII Games were held in Paris. Some 3,000 athletes (with more than 100 women among them) from 44 nations competed that year, and for the first time the Games featured a closing ceremony.
  12. The Winter Olympics debuted in 1924 as well, including such events as figure skating, ice hockey, bobsledding and the biathlon.
  13. According to the IOC, the host city is responsible for, “…establishing functions and services for all aspects of the Games, such as sports planning, venues, finance, technology, accommodation, catering, media services etc., as well as operations during the Games.” Due to the cost of hosting an Olympic Games, most host cities never realize a profit on their investment. To mitigate these concerns the IOC has enacted several initiatives, agreeing to fund part of the host city’s budget for staging the Games, limiting the qualifying host countries to those that have the resources and infrastructure to successfully host an Olympic Games without negatively impacting the region or nation, and finally, requiring cities bidding to host the Games to add a “legacy plan” to their proposal. (if you’ve watched the news, Brazil’s Olympic Village, infrastructure, housing and stadiums are in shambles and abandoned)

If you really want to impress your friends, here is the long history and trivia of the winter games … I now hold the gold medal world record for the longest Olympic trivia blog post J … did you know:

  1. A predecessor to the Olympic games were the Nordic Games, organized by General Viktor Gustaf Balck in Stockholm, Sweden in 1901. Balck was a charter member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and a close friend of Olympic Games founder Pierre de Coubertin.
  2. The 1916 Games, which were to be held in Berlin, Germany as a winter sports week with speed skating, figure skating, ice hockey and Nordic skiing was planned, but cancelled after the outbreak of World War I. The first Olympics after the war, the 1920 Summer Olympics, were held in Antwerp, Belgium, and featured figure skating and an ice hockey tournament.
  3. The Games proved to be a success when in France more than 250 athletes from 16 nations competed in 16 events. Athletes from Finland and Norway won 28 medals, more than the rest of the participating nations combined.
  4. Moritz, Switzerland, was appointed by the IOC to host the second Olympic Winter Games in 1928. The opening ceremony was held in a blizzard while warm weather conditions plagued sporting events throughout the rest of the Games.  Sonja Henie of Norway made history when she won the figure skating competition at the age of 15, and became the youngest Olympic champion in history, a distinction she held for 70 years.
  5. The next Winter Olympics held in Lake Placid, New York, was the first to be hosted outside of Europe. Seventeen nations and 252 athletes participated. This was less than in 1928, as the journey to Lake Placid was long and expensive for most competitors, who had little money in the midst of the Great Depression. Virtually no snow fell for two months before the Games. Eddie Eagan of the United States, who had been an Olympic champion in boxing in 1920, won the gold medal in the men’s bobsleigh event to become the first, and so far only, Olympian to have won gold medals in both the Summer and Winter Olympics.
  6. World War II interrupted the holding of the Winter Olympics. The 1940 Games had been awarded to Sapporo, Japan, but the decision was rescinded in 1938 because of the Japanese invasion of China. The Games were then to be held at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, but the 1940 Games were cancelled following the German invasion of Poland in 1939. Due to the ongoing war, the 1944 Games, originally scheduled for Cortina D’Ampezzo, Italy, were cancelled too.
  7. In 1948, St. Moritz became the first city to host a Winter Olympics twice. Twenty-eight countries competed in Switzerland, but athletes from Germany and Japan were not invited. Controversy erupted when two hockey teams from the United States arrived, both claiming to be the legitimate U.S. Olympic hockey representative. The Olympic flag presented at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp was stolen, as was its replacement.
  8. The Olympic Flame for the 1952 Games in Oslo, was lit in the fireplace by skiing pioneer Sondre Nordheim, and the torch relay was conducted by 94 participants entirely on skis. Norwegian athlete Hjalmar Andersen won three gold medals in four events in the speed skating
  9. In 1944, Cortina d’Ampezzo was selected to organise the 1956 Winter Olympics (the first games to be televised). At the opening ceremonies the final torch bearer, Guido Caroli, entered the Olympic Stadium on ice skates. As he skated around the stadium his skate caught on a cable and he fell, nearly extinguishing the flame. He was able to recover and light the cauldron. The Soviet Union made its Olympic debut and had an immediate impact, winning more medals than any other nation.
  10. The IOC awarded the 1960 Olympics to Squaw Valley, USA, an undeveloped resort in 1955 and built up at a cost of US $80,000,000.The opening and closing ceremonies were produced by Walt Disney, and these Olympics were the first to have a dedicated athletes’ village, the first to use a computer (courtesy of IBM) to tabulate results, and the first to feature female speed skating events.
  11. The Austrian city of Innsbruck was the host in 1964. Although Innsbruck was a traditional winter sports resort, warm weather caused a lack of snow during the Games and the Austrian army was asked to transport snow and ice to the sport venues. Soviet speed-skater Lidia Skoblikova made history by sweeping all four speed-skating events. Her career total of six gold medals set a record for Winter Olympics athletes.  Luge was first contested in 1964, although the sport received bad publicity when a competitor was killed in a pre-Olympic training run.
  12. Held in the French town of Grenoble, the 1968 Winter Olympics were the first Olympic Games to be broadcast in color. There were 37 nations and 1,158 athletes competing in 35 events. Frenchman Jean-Claude Killy became only the second person to win all the men’s alpine skiing events. The organizing committee sold television rights for US $2 million.
  13. The 1972 Winter Games, held in Sapporo, Japan, were the first to be hosted outside North America or Europe. Three days before the Games IOC president Avery Brundage threatened to bar a number of alpine skiers from competing because they participated in a ski camp at Mammoth Mountain in the United States, reasoning that the skiers had financially benefited from their status as athletes and were therefore no longer amateurs. Eventually only Austrian Karl Schranz, who earned more than all the other skiers, was not allowed to compete.
  14. The 1976 Winter Olympics had been awarded in 1970 to Denver, US, but the voters of the state of Colorado voted against public funding of the games by a 3 to 2 margin. The IOC turned to offer the Games to Vancouver-Garibaldi, British Columbia, but a change in provincial government did not support the Olympic bid, so the offer was rejected. Despite only having half the time to prepare for the Games, Innsbruck accepted the invitation to replace.  Two Olympic flames were lit because it was the second time the Austrian town had hosted the Games.
  15. In 1980 the Olympics returned to Lake Placid, which had hosted the 1932 Games, where the first boycott of a Winter Olympics took place, when Taiwan refused to participate after an edict by the IOC mandated that they change their name and national anthem because China wanted to use the same. American speed-skater Eric Heiden set either an Olympic or world record in each of the five events he competed in, breaking the record for most individual golds in a single Olympics (both Summer and Winter). Hanni Wenzel won both the slalom and giant slalom and her country, Liechtenstein, became the smallest nation to produce an Olympic gold medalist. And of course, in the “Miracle on Ice” the American hockey team comprised of college players and coach Brooks beat the favored seasoned professionals from the Soviet Union, and then went on to win the gold medal.
  16. Sarajevo, Yugoslavia hosted the games in 1984. The Games were well-organized and not affected by the run-up to the war that engulfed the country eight years later.  Host nation Yugoslavia won its first Olympic medal when alpine skier Jure Franko won a silver in the giant slalom. British free ice dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, skating to  Ravel’s Boléro, earned the pair the gold medal after achieving unanimous perfect scores for artistic impression.
  17. In 1988 the Canadian city of Calgary hosted the first Winter Olympics to span 16 days. New events were added in ski-jumping and speed skating; while future Olympic sports curling, short track speed skating and freestyle skiing made their appearance as demonstration sports. East German Christa Rothenburger won the women’s 1,000 metre speed skating event. Seven months later she would earn a silver in track cycling at the Summer Games in Seoul, to become the only athlete to win medals in both a Summer and Winter Olympics in the same year.
  18. The 1992 Games were the last to be held in the same year as the Summer Games. Political changes of the time were reflected in the Olympic teams appearing in France: this was the first Games to be held after the fall of Communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Germany competed as a single nation for the first time since the 1964 Games; former Yugoslavian republics Croatia and Slovenia made their debuts as independent nations; most of the former Soviet republics still competed as a single team known as the Unified Team, but the Baltic States made independent appearances for the first time since before World War II.  At 16 years old, Finnish ski jumper Toni Nieminen made history by becoming the youngest male Winter Olympic champion.
  19. In 1986 the IOC had voted to separate the Summer and Winter Games and place them in alternating even-numbered years. This change became effective for the 1994 Games, held in Lillehammer, Norway, which became the first Winter Olympics to be held separately from the Summer Games. American skater Nancy Kerrigan was injured in an assault planned by the ex-husband of opponent Tonya Harding.  Both skaters competed in the Games, but the gold medal was controversially won by Oksana Baiul, becoming Ukraine’s first Olympic champion (Kerrigan won silver).
  20. The 1998 Winter Olympics were held in the Japanese city of Nagano and were the first Games to host more than 2,000 athletes. The men’s ice hockey tournament was opened to professionals for the first time, and women’s ice hockey made its debut (the United States won the gold). Tara Lipinski of the United States, age 15, became the youngest female gold medalist in an individual event ever.  New world records were set in speed skating because of the introduction of the clap skate.
  21. The 2002 Winter Olympics were held in Salt Lake City, US, the first to take place since the September 11 attacks of 2001, which meant a higher degree of security to avoid a terrorist attack. The opening ceremonies of the games saw signs of the aftermath of the events of that day, including the flag that flew at Ground Zero, NYPD officer Daniel Rodríguez singing “God Bless America”, and honor guards of NYPD and FDNY German Georg Hackl won a silver in the singles luge, becoming the first athlete in Olympic history to win medals in the same individual event in five consecutive Olympics.  Canada achieved an unprecedented double by winning both the men’s and women’s ice hockey gold medals.
  22. The Italian city of Turin hosted the 2006 Winter Olympics, the second time that Italy had hosted the Winter Olympic Games. South Korean athletes won 10 medals, including 6 gold in the short-track speed skating events. Sun-Yu Jin won three gold medals while her teammate Hyun-Soo Ahn won three gold medals and a bronze. In the women’s Cross-Country team pursuit Canadian Sara Renner broke one of her poles and, when he saw her dilemma, Norwegian coach Bjørnar Håkensmoen decided to lend her a pole. In so doing she was able to help her team win a silver medal in the event at the expense of the Norwegian team, who finished fourth. Claudia Pechstein of Germany became the first speed skater to earn nine career medals. Years later she tested positive for “blood manipulation” and received a two-year suspension and was precluded her from competing in Vancouver.
  23. The 2010 Winter Olympics went to Vancouver, the largest metropolitan area to host. Over 2,500 athletes from 82 countries participated in 86 events. The death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili in a training run on the day of the opening ceremonies resulted in the Whistler Sliding Centre changing the track layout on safety grounds. The games were notable for the poor performance of the Russian athletes and President Dmitry Medvedev called for the resignation of top sports officials immediately after the Games.
  24. Sochi, Russia, was selected as the host city of the 2014 Winter Olympics, the first time that Russia hosted a Winter Olympics. Over 2800 athletes from 88 countries participated in 98 events. The Games were the most expensive so far, with a cost of £30 billion (USD 51 billion). Following their disappointing performance at the 2010 Games, and an investment of £600 million in elite sport, the host nation initially topped the medal table, taking 33 medals including 13 golds.  However Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of the Russian national anti-doping laboratory, subsequently claimed that he had been involved in doping dozens of Russian competitors for the Games, and that he had had the assistance of the Russian Federal Security Service in opening and re-sealing bottles containing urine samples so samples with banned substances could be replaced with “clean” urine. A subsequent investigation concluded that a state-sponsored doping program had operated in Russia from “at least late 2011 to 2015” across the “vast majority” of Summer and Winter Olympic sports.  As of 23 December 2017, the IOC Disciplinary Commission has disqualified 43 Russian athletes and stripped 13 medals, knocking Russia from the top of the medal table, and putting Norway in the lead.

And as they say… after all this… “let the games begin!”

 

 

 

Guess What Day This Is

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(top) Phil checking the weather (row two) Punxsutawney Phil with one of his handlers, John Griffiths; A great illustration; The 1993 Movie poster (row three) Four of the thirty-two “Phil” statues around town, (row four) Two of the thousands of Phil fans that come out to see the little guy every year. (Nice hats!); Phil and his adoring fans; (row five) This lady really, really wanted to see Phil at least once (I wish her luck with the other three on her list); Print this out to be a card-carrying Phil fan. (bottom) Phil’s wife Phyllis and their triplets Phil Jr, Phil 2nd and Phil 3rd on vacation last summer at Mahoning Creek behind the Tractor Supply Store.

As we turn the calendar to February, the 1st being one of my daughters birthdays, I’m always amazed just how quickly January flies by – a whole month that starts slowly with holiday returns, and then just explodes with new projects, out-of-town trips (Vegas baby), and your new PIA (Pain in the @%$) Jobs!  Everyone seems to be buzzing around, dodging snow drifts and thinking, just a little bit, about spring.  I love the day when “the Tribe” packs up the semi’s and heads south, another indicator that the cold and snow will be fading.  Today is a special day, too – officially Groundhog Day, when we watch the news with anticipation that spring may come a bit early.  For me, it’s not that hard to predict, as my office window look out across Lake Erie.  Fortunately this year, all I can see is miles of beautiful blue water which usually means, it’s gonna be an early start to spring. This means more time to play golf! Oh well, here’s some fun facts about Groundhog Day – enjoy, and thanks to Wikipedia and On This Day websites for the info.

 

  1. On this day, February 2, 1887, Groundhog Day, featuring a rodent meteorologist, was officially celebrated for the first time at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. According to tradition, if a groundhog comes out of its hole on this day and sees its shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter weather; no shadow means an early spring.
  2. Groundhog Day has its roots in the ancient Christian tradition of Candlemas Day, when clergy would bless and distribute candles needed for winter. The candles represented how long and cold the winter would be. Germans expanded on this concept by selecting an animal–the hedgehog–as a means of predicting weather. Once they came to America, German settlers in Pennsylvania continued the tradition, although they switched from hedgehogs to groundhogs, which were plentiful in the Keystone State.
  3. The Pennsylvania Dutch were immigrants from German-speaking areas of Europe. The Germans already had a tradition of marking Candlemas (February 2) as “Badger Day” (Dachstag), where if a badger emerging found it to be a sunny day thereby casting a shadow, it foreboded the prolonging of winter by 4 more weeks. The weather-predicting animal on Candlemas was usually the badger, although regionally the animal was the bear or the fox (original weather-predicting animal in Germany had been the bear, another hibernating mammal, but when they grew scarce the lore became altered).
  4. The German version, with the introduction of the badger (or other beasts) was an expansion on a more simple tradition that if the weather was sunny and clear on Candlemas Day people expected winter to continue. The simpler version is summarized in the English (Scots dialect) couplet that runs “If Candlemas is fair and clear / There’ll be two winters in the year“, with equivalent phrases in French and German.
  5. Clymer Freas (1867-1942), who was city editor at the Punxsutawney Spirit is credited as the “father” who conceived the idea of “Groundhog Day”. It has also been suggested that Punxsutawney was where all the Groundhog Day events originated, from where it spread to other parts of the United States and Canada.
  6. The Groundhog Day celebrations of the 1880s were carried out by the Punxsutawney Elks Lodge. The lodge members were the “genesis” of the Groundhog Club formed in 1899, which continued the Groundhog Day “Feast” tradition. The lodge started out being interested in the groundhog as a game animal for food, actually serving groundhog at the lodge (yuck!) and organized a hunting party on a day each year in late summer.  The “hunt” portion became a ritualized formality, because the practical procurement of meat had to occur well ahead of time for marinating. (oh boy, marinated ground hog – Can’t say I’ve tried that yet!).
  7. A drink called the “groundhog punch” was also served. The flavor has been described as a “cross between pork and chicken”. The hunt and feast did not attract enough outside interest, and the practice discontinued. (oh, surprise!)
  8. Groundhogs, also called woodchucks, whose scientific name is Marmota monax, typically weigh 12 to 15 pounds and live six to eight years. They eat vegetables and fruits, whistle when they’re frightened or looking for a mate and can climb trees and swim. They go into hibernation in the late fall; during this time, their body temperatures drop significantly, their heartbeats slow from 80 to five beats per minute and they can lose 30 percent of their body fat. In February, male groundhogs emerge from their burrows to look for a mate (not to predict the weather) before going underground again. They come out of hibernation for good in March.
  9. In 1887, a newspaper editor belonging to a group of groundhog hunters from Punxsutawney called the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club declared that Phil, the Punxsutawney groundhog, was America’s only true weather-forecasting groundhog. The line of groundhogs that have since been known as Phil might be America’s most famous groundhogs, but other towns across North America now have their own weather-predicting rodents, from Birmingham Bill to Staten Island Chuck to Shubenacadie Sam in Canada.
  10. The largest Groundhog Day celebration is held in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, where crowds as large as 40,000 gather each year (nearly eight times the year-round population of the town). The average draw had been about 2,000 until the year after the movie screened in 1993, after which attendance rose to about 10,000.  The official “Phil” is pretended to be a supercentenarian, having been the same forecasting beast since 1887.
  11. In southeastern Pennsylvania, Groundhog Lodges (Grundsow Lodges) celebrate the holiday with fersommlinge, social events in which food is served, speeches are made, and one or more g’spiel (plays or skits) are performed for entertainment. The Pennsylvania German dialect is the only language spoken at the event, and those who speak English pay a penalty, usually in the form of a nickel, dime, or quarter per word spoken, with the money put into a bowl in the center of the table.
  12. Punxsutawney Phil’s statistics are kept by the Pennsylvania’s Groundhog Club which cares for the animal. Phil has predicted 103 forecasts for winter and just 17 for an early spring. As it turns out, Phil’s predictions have been recorded as only 39% accurate according to Stormfax Alamanac’s data.  (About as accurate as our forcasts here in Cleveland!)
  13. For reference, other poor results from analysis are reported by the Farmer’s Almanacas “exactly 50 percent” accuracy, and The National Geographic Society reporting only 28% success. But a Middlebury College team found that a long-term analysis of temperature high/low predictions were 70% accurate, although when the groundhog predicted early spring it was usually wrong.
  14. Other famous groundhogs include: Staten Island Chuck as the official weather-forecasting woodchuck for New York City, General Beauregard Lee of Lilburn, Georgia, known to have the most accurate prediction, standing at 94%, Wiarton Willie of Wiarton, Ontario, Canada, Shubenacadie Sam in Nova Scotia celebrating “Daks Day” and in French Canada, Fred la marmotte of Val-d’Espoir is the representative forecaster for all of Quebec
  15. Groundhog Day is a 1993 American fantasy-comedy film directed by Harold Ramis, starring Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, and Chris Elliott and written by Ramis and Danny Rubin, based on a story by Rubin. Murray plays Phil Connors, an arrogant Pittsburgh TV weatherman who, during an assignment covering the annual Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, finds himself caught in a time loop, repeating the same day again and again. he finally begins  begins to re-examine his life and priorities ending up a better man for the experience.
  16. On its release,Groundhog Day was a modest success and garnered generally positive reviews. It gained stronger appreciation among critics and film historians over time and is now often listed among the best comedy films ever. It further entered into the public consciousness, where the term “Groundhog Day” can represent a situation that seems to repeat over and over in government and military arenas, as well as influencing other entertainment. In 2006, the film was added to the United States National Film Registry as being deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.  A stage musical version of the story premiered in 2016.

 

 

 

“Sock It to Me!”

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(top row) Number one in 1968 making the cover of TV Guide;  The writing session with founding writer Digby Wolfe at far left. Can you imagine this being your job?? (row two) Cast members Judy Carne, Goldie Hawn and Chelsea Brown on the Nov. 30, 1968 cover of Saturday Evening Post (50 cents, by the way); An Arte Johnson publicity photo. His inscription on this one reads: “Smoking will make you short!!”; The announcer, Gary Owens. (row three) Ruth Buzzy as Gladys and Arte Johnson as the dirty old man; Joanne Worley in 1969;  Lily Tomlin as Ernestine. (row four) Many, many guest stars made cameo appearances including Richard Nixon while running for president, Nancy Sinatra (not running for president) and Ringo Starr who’s scene with Teresa Graves caused NBC affiliates in 7 states to “experience technical difficulties.”  (row five) Everyone had to have a copy of the Funk & Wagnalls dictionary; The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award; A Laugh-In lunch box and waste basket. (row six) The “Joke Wall” front; And the “Joke Wall” backside. (row seven) Nobody wanted to miss Laugh-In. Not even at a beach vacation. That’s what they did before streaming video.

 

Some Video Links to Occupy the Rest of Your Afternoon:

Goldie Hawn Explains Taxes

Sock It To Me Time

Gladys Asks Raquel Welch For Glamour Tips

Edith Ann Wants Tonsils Out

Writing a fun and thought-provoking blog is really something each week.  I love to scour the news, look at calendars and history, poke around recipes, check the news wire and see what might make you ponder or just smile.  This week, I hit upon some history trivia that made me laugh out loud, and took me way, way back to my early childhood, namely the show we all remember as Laugh-In, which aired for the first time 50 years ago this week – yikes!  It totally changed the future of television, with so many offshoots to come afterwards.  I remember my younger brothers and sisters watching it with me a few years after its debut and in reruns,  so many lines and characters come to mind – (one of my favorites was Arte Johnson on his tricycle in a rain coat).  I went to one of my amazing reference centers (Wikipedia) and found some tidbits for you to reminisce.  After reading, be sure to click all the links, and enjoy some great comedy sketches.  Enjoy, and thanks Wikipedia and YouTube for the references.

Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In is an American sketch comedy television program that ran for 140 episodes from January 22, 1968, to March 12, 1973, on the NBC television network. It was hosted by comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin.

It originally aired as a one-time special in 1967, and was such a success that NBC brought it was brought back as a series, replacing The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (now that was a great show!! I loved the gadgets! – email me if you know what U.N.C.L.E. stood for, or if you know Illya Kuryakin’s real name).

The title of the show was a play on the “love-ins” or “be-ins” of the 1960s hippie culture, terms that were, in turn, derived from “sit-ins”, common in protests associated with civil rights and antiwar demonstrations of the time.

The show was characterized by a rapid-fire series of gags and sketches, many of which conveyed sexual innuendo or were politically charged. The co-hosts continued the exasperated straight man (Rowan) and “dumb” guy (Martin) act, which they had established as nightclub comics

Stars on the show at various times included announcer Gary Owens, Goldie Hawn, Arte Johnson, Richard Pryor, Ruth Buzzi, Judy Carne, Jo Anne Worley, Henry Gibson, Alan Sues, Lily Tomlin, Teresa Graves, Larry Hovis, Chelsea Brown, Sarah Kennedy, Jeremy Lloyd, Dave Madden, Pigmeat Markham, Pamela Rodgers, Jud Strunk, Richard Dawson, Moosie Drier, Barbara Sharma, and Johnny Brown. Of over three dozen entertainers to join the cast, only Rowan, Martin, Owens, and Buzzi were there from beginning to end.

Each show started with a short dialogue between Rowan and Martin. Shortly afterward, Rowan would intone: “C’mon Dick, let’s go to the party”. This live to tape segment comprised all cast members and occasional surprise celebrities dancing before a 1960s “mod” party backdrop, delivering one-and two-line jokes interspersed with a few bars of dance music.  The show then proceeded through rapid-fire comedy bits, taped segments, and recurring sketches.

At the end of every show, Rowan turned to his co-host and said, “Say good night, Dick”, to which Martin replied, “Good night, Dick!”. The show then featured cast members’ opening panels in a psychedelically painted “joke wall” and telling jokes. As the show drew to a close and the applause died, executive producer George Schlatter’s solitary clapping continued even as the screen turned blank and the production logo, network chimes, and NBC logo appeared.

The show often featured guest stars. Sometimes, the guest had a prominent spot in the program, at other times the guest would pop in for short “quickies” (one- or two-line jokes) interspersed throughout the show – as was done most famously by Richard Nixon, when running for president.

Catchphrases you’ll likely remember…

  • “Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls!
  • “You bet your sweet bippy!”
  • “Beautiful downtown Burbank”
  • “One ringy-dingy … two ringy-dingies …”
  • “A gracious good afternoon. This is Miss Tomlin of the telephone company. Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?”
  • “I just wanna swing!”
  • “Is that a chicken joke?”
  • “Sock it to me!”
  • “Blow in my ear and I’ll follow you anywhere.”
  • “Now, that’s a no-no!”
  • “Morgul the Friendly Drelb”
  • “Want a Walnetto?”.
  • “Here come da Judge”
  • “Verrry Interesting”
  • “And that’s the truth – PFFFFT!”
  • “Say Good Night Dick – Good Night Dick”

Now, close your eyes, and see if you can remember these skits:

  • “Sock it to me“; Judy Carne was often tricked into saying the phrase (“It may be rice wine to you, but it’s still sake to me!”), which almost invariably led to her (and other cast members) falling through a trap door, being doused with water, or playfully assaulted in various other manners.
  • “The Party“, in which Dan would invite the audience to a wild party attended by the regulars and the guest stars. The orchestra would play a few bars of a dance song, only to temporarily stop while the cast and guests would exchange one-liners.
  • “The Joke-Wall“, near the end of every episode, the regulars along with the guests would poke out of shuttered windows (or through holes in the floor) in a psychedelically-designed wall and exchange one-liners.
  • “Mod, Mod World” comprised brief sketches on a theme interspersed with film footage of female cast members go-go dancing in bikinis, their bodies painted with punchy phrases and clever wordplay.
  • “The Farkel Family“, a couple with numerous children, all of whom had bright red hair and large freckles similar to their “good friend and trusty neighbor” Ferd Berfel (Dick Martin). The sketch employed diversion humor, the writing paying more attention to the lines said by each player, using alliterative tongue-twisters (“That’s a fine-looking Farkel flinger you found there, Frank”).
  • “The Judge“, originally portrayed by British comic Roddy Maude-Roxby, was a stuffy magistrate with a black robe and oversized judge’s wig. Each sketch featured the unnamed judge bantering with a defendant brought before the court. For a time guest star Flip Wilson would introduce the sketch saying “Here come da judge!”, which was a venerable catchphrase by nightclub comedian Pigmeat Markham.
  • “Laugh-In Looks at the News“, a parody of network newscasts, introduced by the female cast members in a highly un-journalistic production number. The sketch itself featured Dick humorously reporting on current events, which then segued into Dan reporting on “News of the Past” and “News of the Future”.   “SNL” has nothing on these guys!
  • “New Talent Time” introduced oddball variety acts, most notably of which was Tin Pan Alley musician Tiny Tim. Laugh-In writer Chris Bearde took the “New Talent” concept and later developed it into The Gong Show.
  • “The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award” sardonically recognized actual dubious achievements by public individuals or institutions, the most frequent recipients being members or branches of the government. The trophy was a gilded left hand mounted on a trophy base with its extended index finger adorned with two small wings.
  • “The Wonderful World of Whoopee Award” was a counterpart to the “Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award”, described by Rowan as a citation “for the little man who manages to outfight or outfox the bureaucracy”; the statue was similar to the Finger of Fate, only it was a right hand (without wings on the index finger) pointing straight up, and with a hidden mechanism that when activated caused the finger to wave in a circular motion.

Now, see if you remember these characters:

  • Dan Rowan – in addition to hosting, appears as a character known as General Bull Right, a far-right-wing representative of the military establishment and outlet for political humor.
  • Announcer Gary Owens standing in an old-time radio studio with his hand cupped over his ear, making announcements, often with little relation to the rest of the show, such as (in an overly-dramatic voice), “Earlier that evening …”
  • Arte Johnson as: – Wolfgang the German soldier – Wolfgang would often peer out from behind a potted palm and comment on the previous gag saying “Verrry interesting”, sometimes with comments such as “… but shtupid!”
  • – Tyrone F. Horneigh (pronounced “hor-NIGH”, presumably to satisfy the censors) was a dirty old man coming on to Gladys Ormphby (Ruth Buzzi) seated on a park bench, who almost invariably clobbers him with her purse.
  • – Piotr Rosmenko, the Eastern European Man, stands stiffly and nervously in an ill-fitting suit while commenting on differences between America and “the old country”, such as “Here in America, is very good, everyone watch television. In old country, television watches you!” This type of joke has come to be known as the Russian reversal.
  • – Rabbi Shankar (a pun on Ravi Shankar) was an Indian guru who dresses in a Nehru jacket dispensing pseudomystical Eastern wisdom laden with bad puns. He held up two fingers in a peace sign whenever he spoke.
  • – An unnamed character in yellow raincoat and hat, riding a tricycle and then falling over, was frequently used between sketches. The character was portrayed by many members in the cast including Johnson.
  • Ruth Buzzi as:
  • – Gladys Ormphby – A drab, relatively young spinster, she is the eternal target of Arte Johnson’s Tyrone. She typically hit people repeatedly with her purse.
  • – Doris Swizzle – A seedy barfly, she is paired with her husband, Leonard Swizzle, played by Dick Martin.
  • – Busy Buzzi – A cold and heartless old-style Hedda Hopper-type Hollywood gossip columnist
  • Henry Gibson as:
  • – The Poet held an oversized flower and nervously read offbeat poems. He pronounced his name “Henrik Ibsen”.
  • – The Parson – A character who makes ecclesiastical quips, in 1970, he officiated at a near-marriage for Tyrone and Gladys.
  • Goldie Hawn as:
  • – the giggling “dumb blonde”, stumbling over her lines, especially when she introduced Dan’s “News of the Future”. In the earliest episodes, she recited her dialogue sensibly and in her own voice, but as the series progressed, she adopted a Dumb Dora character with a higher-pitched giggle and a vacant expression, which endeared her to viewers.
  • Lily Tomlin as:
  • – Ernestine/Miss Tomlin – An obnoxious telephone operator, she has no concern for her customers. Tomlin later performed Ernestine on Saturday Night Live and Happy New Year, America.
  • – Edith Ann – A 5  1⁄2-year-old child, she ends each of her short monologues with: “And that’s the truth”, followed by “Pbbbt!”. Tomlin performs her skits in an oversized rocking chair that makes her appear small.
  • – Mrs. Earbore (the “Tasteful Lady”) – A prim society matron, Mrs. Earbore expressed quiet disapproval about a tasteless joke or remark, and then rose from her chair with her legs spread, and sometimes got doused with a bucket of water.
  • – Dotty – A crass, and rude grocery checker who tended to annoy her customers at the store she worked at.
  • – Lula – A loud and boisterous woman with a Marie Antoinette hair-do who always loved a party.
  • – Suzie Sorority of the Silent Majority – clueless hippie college student who ended each bit with “Rah!”
  • – Fast Talker – A steady stream of broken, incomprehensive, non-pause monologue by Tomlin.
  • Judy Carne as:
  • – Mrs. Robot in “Robot Theater” – A female companion to Arte Johnson’s “Mr. Robot”, both are equally inept and a satire of Shields and Yarnell (popular mimes of the period) who performed a routine as a robotic couple called “The Clinkers” & the talking Judy Doll – She is usually played with by Arte Johnson, who never heeded her warning: “Touch my little body, and I hit!”
  • – The Sock-it-to-me girl in which she would end up being splashed with water and/or falling through a trap door.
  • Jo Anne Worley as:
  • – sometimes sings off-the-wall songs using her loud operatic voice, but is better remembered for her mock outrage at “chicken jokes” and her melodic outcry of “Bo-ring!”. At the cocktail parties, she would talk about her never-seen boyfriend/husband “Boris”.
  • Alan Sues:
  • – Big Al – A clueless and fey sports anchor, he loves ringing his “Featurette” bell, which he calls his “tinkle”.
  • – Uncle Al, the Kiddies’ Pal – A short-tempered host of a children’s show, he usually goes on the air with a hangover: “Oh, kiddies, Uncle Al had a lot of medicine last night.” Whenever he got really agitated, he would yell to “Get Miss Twinkle on the phone!”
  • – Boomer – A self-absorbed “jock” bragging about his athletic exploits
  • – Ambiguously gay saloon patron – while the tough guys ordered whiskey, he would saunter up to the bar and effeminately say “I’ll have a frozen daquiri!”
  • Richard Dawson appears as Hawkins the Butler, who always started his piece by asking “Permission to …?” and proceeded to fall over.
  • Flip Wilson would appear as his character “Geraldine”, originating the catchphrases “What you see is what you get” and “The devil made me do it”.

The show won dozens of awards – seven Emmies, two Golden Globes and was the number one show on TV in ’68 and ’69.

 

 

 

“Let’s Play”

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(top five images) The board games my family love to play. (next row) The inventor of Scrabble, Alfred Butts. (more on Alfred below); “GEAR” I’ve played this word a thousand times. (next six images) Young and old can play this game at home, in tournaments. I love those two bottom pictures of “Street Scrabble” from a tournament in Seattle. (bottom row) An easy 19 raw points. Actually, it’s possible to get as many as 60 points with this name! Email me if you know where on the board you’d have to be or if you just want me to tell you.

 

When the thermometer drops like it has these past few weeks, and my motivation to go outside drops too, I like to call the whole family together, head to the closet and pull out one of our favorite board games. Usually we like to make a cozy fire, serve up some hot cocoa (or “adult beverages” depending on the time of day), put out the snacks and head off on some good spirited competition.  Our favorites include (Monopoly – Jackie usually wins, Ticket to Ride – Michelle and Jennifer usually win, Taboo – Katie and Nathan crush us all and while playing Taboo or Scattergories NO ONE WANTS TO BE MY PARTNER!  Jackie has to because she married me!) … and finally  Scrabble – Colleen wins 90% of the time because she is “majoring in words”! Actually, she doesn’t just win she destroys us! I still think this game is one of my favorites! So, I was poking around on the internet this week and discovered that this day in history is when Scrabble formally debuted as a board game.  So, in good KHT fashion, and honoring our coveted PIA (Pain In The @%$) mindset (I’m often found saying “oooh, this is a real pia/hard tile rack to solve”), I dove in and found some fascinating history, rules and fun tips about Scrabble – enjoy, and thanks Wikipedia, howstuffworks.com and onthisday.com for the tidbits.

 

  1. Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles bearing a single letter onto a board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words which, in crossword fashion, read left to right in rows or downwards in columns, and be defined in a standard dictionary or lexicon.
  2. The name is a trademark of Hasbro, Inc. in the United States and Canada; outside the United States and Canada, it is a trademark of Mattel. The game is sold in 121 countries and is available in 29 languages; approximately 150 million sets have been sold worldwide.
  3. In 1938, American architect Alfred Mosher Butts, we talked about him more here, created the game as a variation on an earlier word game he invented called Lexiko. The two games had the same set of letter tiles, whose distributions and point values Butts worked out by performing a frequency analysis of letters from various sources, including The New York Times. The new game, which he called “Criss-Crosswords,” added the 15×15 game board and the crossword-style game play. He manufactured a few sets himself, but was not successful in selling the game to any major game manufacturers of the day.
  4. In official club and tournament games, play is between two players or, occasionally, between two teams each of which collaborates on a single rack (the selected letters in play). The board is marked with “premium” squares, which multiply the number of points awarded: eight dark red “triple-word” squares, 17 pale red “double-word” squares, of which one, the center square (H8), is marked with a star or other symbol; 12 dark blue “triple-letter” squares, and 24 pale blue “double-letter” squares (colors may vary).
  5. In an English-language set, the game contains 100 tiles, 98 of which are marked with a letter and a point value ranging from 1 to 10. The number of points of each lettered tile is based on the letter’s frequency in standard English writing; commonly used letters such as vowels are worth one point, while less common letters score higher, with Q and Z each worth 10 points. The game also has two blank tiles that are unmarked and carry no point value. The blank tiles can be used as substitutes for any letter; once laid on the board, however, the choice is fixed. Other language sets use different letter set distributions with different point values. The capital letter is printed in black at the center of the tile face and the letter’s point value printed in a smaller font at the bottom right corner.
  6. In 1948, James Brunot, a resident of Newtown, Connecticut – and one of the few owners of the original Criss-Crosswords game – bought the rights to manufacture the game in exchange for granting Butts a royalty on every unit sold. Though he left most of the game unchanged, Brunot slightly rearranged the “premium” squares of the board and simplified the rules, and changed the name of the game to “Scrabble”, a real word which means “to scratch frantically.
  7. In 1949, Brunot and his family made 2,400 sets in a converted former schoolhouse in Dodgingtown, a section of Newtown, but still lost money.  According to legend, Scrabble‘s big break came in 1952 when Jack Straus, president of Macy’s, played the game on vacation. Upon returning from vacation, he was surprised to find that his store did not carry the game. He placed a large order and within a year, “everyone had to have one.”
  8. In 1952, unable to meet demand himself, Brunot sold the manufacturing rights to Long Island-based Selchow and Righter, one of the manufacturers who, like Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley Company, had previously rejected the game. In its second year as a Selchow and Righter-built product, nearly four million sets were sold. Over the years, distribution grew worldwide, through purchase trademarks by Mattel and Hasbro.
  9. Players decide the order in which they play. The normal approach is for players to each draw one tile at a time, and place seven tiles on their “rack”, concealed from the other players.  The player who picks the letter closest to the beginning of the alphabet goes first, with blank tiles taking precedence over the letter ‘A’.
  10. There are around 4,000 Scrabble clubs around the world.
  11. The first played word must be at least two letters long, and cover H8 (the center square). Thereafter, any move is made by using one or more tiles to place a word on the board. This word may or may not use one or more tiles already on the board, but must join with the cluster of tiles already on the board.  On each turn, the player has three options: Pass, forfeiting the turn and scoring nothing; Exchange one or more tiles for an equal number from the remaining tiles, scoring nothing, (an option available only if at least seven tiles remain); Play at least one tile on the board, adding the value of all words formed to the player’s cumulative score
  12. Numerous records exist, based on points, length of words and multiplier squares.  To find the tops ones, I suggest you google Top Scrabble Scores.  For example, two men set three records for sanctioned Scrabble in North America: the most points in a game by one player (830), the most total points in a game (1,320), and the most points on a single turn (365, for the play of QUIXOTRY).
  13. If a player has made a play and has not yet drawn a tile, any opponent may choose to challenge any or all words formed by the play. The player challenged must then look up the words in question using the selected source a specified word source and if any one of them is found to be unacceptable, the play is removed from the board, the player returns the newly played tiles to his or her rack and the turn is forfeited.
  14. The penalty for a successfully challenged play is nearly universal: the offending player removes the tiles played and forfeits his or her turn. “Double Challenge”, is when an unsuccessfully challenging player must forfeit the next turn. Because loss of a turn generally constitutes the greatest risk for an unsuccessful challenge, it provides the greatest incentive for a player to “bluff”, or play a “phony” – a plausible word that they know or suspect to be unacceptable, hoping his or her opponent will not call him on it. Or a player can put down a legal word that appears to be a phony hoping the other player will incorrectly challenge it and lose their turn.  I must admit that I have been known to play a word or two or three that might be considered “suspect”!
  15. Under North American tournament rules, the game ends when either: one player plays every tile on his or her rack, and there are no tiles remaining in the pile (regardless of the tiles on his or her opponent’s rack); at least six successive scoreless turns have occurred and either player decides to end the game; either player uses more than 10 minutes of overtime.
  16. An introduction to tournament Scrabble and its players can be found in the book Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis. In the process of writing, Fatsis himself progressed into a high-rated tournament player.  The Scrabble Player’s Handbook, edited by Stewart Holden and written by an international group of tournament players, gives the information a serious player needs to advance to successful tournament play.
  17. For the top 20 “must know” big point words, like “za” (accepted for pizza), “muzjinks” (West Indie tribes), and “faqir” (Sufi sect monks) go to: https://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/leisure/brain-games/20-words-to-learn-for-scrabble2.htm.  Just reading the list made me laugh out loud…”syzygy” – really??

 

 

OVERTIME

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(top row left) In the first season of Gordie Howe’s incredible hockey career, the Detroit Redwings played for a record six overtimes in the Stanley Cup Playoffs semifinals. (top row middle) At the 1931 US Open, Billy Burke needed four full rounds to defeat George Von Elm in what remains the longest playoff in the history of golf. (top row right) In the 1936 World Table Tennis Championship, the match lasted 59 hours. And it took over two hours for the first point to be scored. My neck is sore just thinking about watching that match. (row two) In the 1912 Olympics, Estonian wrestler Martin Klein (right) grappled for nearly 12 hours against Alfred Asikainen in the semi-finals. He was so exhausted he couldn’t wrestle in the final but Estonia still loved this guy so much they honored him with his image on their postage stamp. (row three l to r) An epic game of chess in 1989 took over 20 hours only to finish in a stalemate. Really?? See all the moves in 16 minutes HERE. (16minutes, 46 seconds) And it took over two hours for the badminton final at the 1997 World Championships in Glasgow, Scotland to be decided. Watch the whole match HERE. (2 hours, 30 minutes)  (row four l to r) So, sometimes these overtime matches are too much for the fans — and the players at a long Texas Rangers game. (row five left) These folks waited four long years to get to the 2012 Olympics…for a nap. (row five right) The Kansas City Royals knocked off the Oakland Athletics 9-8 in an extra-innings Wild Card game to advance to the next round of the 2014 MLB Playoffs but this guy missed Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer’s 12th inning triple that would ultimately win it. (row six left) In 2014 a courtside seat in front of cheerleaders couldn’t keep this guy awake during a long Sixers game. (row six right) This guy was fast asleep in the fourth inning of a 2014 Red Sox/Yankees game apparently because these teams are really bOOOOOORing. See the awesome TV commentary HERE. (1 minute, 42 seconds)  (bottom) Not even a 2009 playoff game against his arch rival Eagles could keep this guy awake. Perhaps his tailgating session went into overtime??

 

It happened again.  The “big college game” was an epic battle between two powerful teams, evenly matched, and tied at the end of regulation. So, to determine a winner, the contest went into what we know as “overtime”. For me, “overtime” at the office is sort of normal.  Unlike most work crews, who track their time hourly, business owners like me, sales staff, and management typically spend more time than the traditional 8 hour day.  Add to this the 24/7 use of cell phones, email and instant messaging, a “regular work day, designed at the turn of the century, seems like a thing of the past.  With my crazy habit of coming into the office super early, I think I invented a new time of the day … “undertime” – it’s my time when I can organize my thoughts, reshuffle what’s on my day’s agenda, and address those wonderful PIA (pain in the @#$) Jobs! you send our way. I love it, and find it’s just the way I roll. I also get to play my favorite music really loud and sing along without getting reported to HR! In our KHT way, here are some fun facts and trivia about extra-long contests, and a bit about the history of the workday and overtime.  Enjoy, and special thanks to electro-mech.com, Wikipedia, MSN.com and replicon.com.

CRAZY SPORTS CONTESTS

  1. During the 2010 Wimbledon Championship, John Isner and Nicolas Mahut played out a first round match of epic proportions. The American and the Frenchman were at it for 11 hours and five minutes – a mammoth 183 games across three rain-interrupted days of absorbing tennis. Isner eventually triumphed 6–4, 3–6, 6–7, 7–6, 70–68 in what is the longest match in tennis history.
  2. In baseball, the 1981 game between the Rochester Red Wings and the Pawtucket Red Sox, in Rhode Island at the Red Sox stadium broke the record. It started at 7 pm and continued until 4:07 AM, lasting 32 innings. Oddly, the game was stopped and it didn’t start back up again for two months. It was not only the longest game in baseball history, but set the record for 60 total strikeouts, 219 total at-bats, and 14 at-bats by a single player in a game.
  3. Basketball also has its own record, set on January 6, 1951 between the Rochester Royals and the Indianapolis Olympians. While the score was 73-75, the game had six overtimes, lasting 78 minutes, (which equates to two basketball games)! Both teams, combined, had only 23 shot attempts during overtime, which is less than an average team would take in a quarter. During this game, there wasn’t any shot clock, which slowed the scoring chances.
  4. March 24, 1946 set a hockey record between the Detroit Red wings and the Montreal Maroons for the Stanley Cup Playoffs semifinal round. In the 1st game, the score was tied at ‘0’, and that led into overtime. The rule in playoffs in hockey is that games cannot end in a tie, so the teams must continue to play until someone wins. In this case, both teams played for six overtimes. Lasting 176 minutes; which is three times the duration of the average hockey game.
  5. American football also has its records. On December 25, 1971, the Miami Dolphins were playing the Kansas City Chiefs at what became the longest football game in the NFL history. The game duration was set at 82 minutes, 40 seconds; seven minutes longer than any other NFL game played. The Miami Dolphins finally won at a score of 27-24, and I am sure the attending fans were quite relieved.
  6. During their 1938/39 tour of South Africa, England played five test matches. Wally Hammond’s men won the third test, but the other four finished as draws. The last match of the series was a timeless Test (meaning the match would go on until a winner was decided) but even after 12 days (two of which were rest days) there was no result in sight and the England team had to leave in order to ensure they caught their boat back home! In full disclosure, still not sure about the whole “futbol” thing!
  7. Shiso Kanakuri, the father of Japanese marathon-running, took 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes and 20.3 seconds to finish the marathon he started at the 1912 Olympics. Kanakuri went “missing” from the race after suffering from exhaustion and never finished. Years later, Swedish authorities invited him to the celebrations commemorating 55 years since the Stockholm Olympics and requested him to finish the race he couldn’t all those years ago. The affable runner duly obliged.
  8. Peter Rasmussen and Sun Jun played out an epic 124 minute badminton final at the 1997 World Championships in Glasgow, Scotland. In the end, the Dane triumphed 16-17, 18-13, 15-10 over his Chinese opponent to be crowned world champion.
  9. In 1912, Martin Klein, an Estonian who fought for the Russian empire at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics in Sweden, grappled for an astonishing 11 hours and 40 minutes against the then reigning world champion Alfred Asikainen in the semi-final, before winning what remains the longest wrestling match in history. Klein was so exhausted after the clash that he had to forfeit the final match against Swedish wrestler Claes Johansson and settle for the silver medal.
  10. At the 1931 US Open, Billy Burke vs. George Von Elm, Burke needed 72 holes (four full rounds) to defeat Von Elm in what remains the longest playoff in the history of golf. At the time, there was no provision for sudden death, something that is part of the game now, meaning that the Burke-Von Elm battle will remain hard to beat.
  11. Highlighting the 1936 World Table Tennis Championship in Prague, the match between Alex Ehrlich and Paneth Farcas lasted 59 hours, and it remains the longest table tennis match in history. In this epic battle, the first point itself lasted an unbelievable two hours and 12 minutes.
  12. In 2015, two 11-a-side teams from Testlands Support Project (a Southampton charity), in Southampton, 36 players played out a marathon 101-hour long match last summer to set a world record for the longest football( SOCCER FOR FOLKS LIKE ME!) match ever played, and it was all done to raise money for charity. The players took breaks to get physiotherapy, food and sleep on their way to the record books.
  13. In 1893, Andy Bowen and Jack Burke played out a marathon bout that lasted 111 rounds – each round was three minutes long – that lasted seven hours and 19 minutes until the referee called “no contest” after both men were too dazed and tired to continue.
  14. Ivan Nikolic and Goran Arsovic Belgrade played out an epic game in Belgrade Yugoslavia in 1989 that lasted 269 moves and took 20 hours and 15 minutes: it ended in a stalemate. At the time, the chess governing body FIDE had modified the fifty-move rule to allow 100 moves to be played without a piece being captured in a rook and bishop versus rook endgame, which allowed the match to go on for so long. FIDE has rescinded the rule since, meaning that the Nikolic-Arsovic record will be hard to surpass.

ON THE WORKFRONT

The concept of “overtime” as we understand it existed long before the word came into being. When the U.S. began tracking workers’ hours in 1890, it found the average workweek for a full-time manufacturing worker to be a staggering 100 hours! The inception of overtime results from the tireless efforts of labor organizations, like the National Labor Union and the Knights of Labor, who simply wanted to curtail the long working hours of the average American worker.  We should all be careful pining for a return of the “good old days”