Tuesday, October 17, 2006

 

Spotlight: Happy 68th birthday to daredevil Evel Knievel. The man who made a career out of jumping his motorcycle over cars, vans and gorges seemed to crash-land almost as frequently as he landed safely. Knievel holds the Guinness record for his forty broken bones. He had proposed jumping the Grand Canyon, but decided to scale that back to jumping Idaho's Snake River Canyon in 1972. When the drogue parachute deployed early, Knievel's motorcycle didn't make it across the canyon; he and the bike landed partly in the water of the river below. Knievel was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1999.

Quote: "The helmet law's a good law and that's all there is to it." — Evel Knievel

Word of the day: quiddity -- [from L. quid, what]
1) the essence of a thing or person: whatness  2) a trifling point: quibble (© )

Today's News:

• Lynne Stewart: Black Panthers' lawyer sentenced to prison for message smuggling (story)
• Ken Macha: fired as Oakland A's manager (story)
• Disney: to serve healthier food at theme parks (story)
• Hawaii: electricity back after earthquake (story)
• Arnold Schwarzenegger: expands green initiatives to east coast (story)

Today's History:

• Battle of Saratoga: ended with first major British surrender in the American Revolutionary War (1777)
• Al Capone: mobster was convicted of income tax evasion (1931)
• Albert Einstein: immigrated to the US as a refugee from Nazi Germany (1933)
• OPEC: cut oil supplies to nations that supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War, sparking the 1973 Oil Crisis

Today's Birthdays:

• Arthur Miller: author of The Crucible (1915-2005)
• Rita Hayworth: film star (1918-1987)
• Mae C. Jemison: the first black woman in space (50)
• Eminem: rapper, The Slim Shady LP (34)