Eugene Schieffelin meant well. All he wanted to do was honor his favorite playwright. The German-born immigrant – and Shakespeare obsessive – yearned to introduce to America all the birds mentioned in the Bard’s plays. At great personal expense, he imported hundreds of breeding pairs of non-native species and released them in New York City’s Central Park. No one was… Read more »
When I was 10 years old, the coach of my summer softball team spoke to me some of the most heartening words I have ever heard. “You have been chosen to be on the All-Star team. And the other coaches and I have been talking, and we want you to be the starting pitcher.” It just doesn’t get much better… Read more »
Journalist Arthur Lubow called it “an icon of modern art, a Mona Lisa for our time.” If The Scream is representative of the spirit of our age, then we live in a deeply unsettling period of history. The Norwegian artist Edvard Munch never concealed his insecurities. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was five. His favorite sister Sophie… Read more »
The average American may think that the “Big Game” is the Super Bowl, the seventh game of the World Series, or that magical hoops contest back in high school when he/she won the state championship with a three-pointer at the buzzer. But the game with the greatest stakes has always been the Honor Game – a dramatic public spectacle that’s… Read more »
“It’s all a big lie.” That’s how Wall Street icon Bernie Madoff broke the news on December 10, 2008, to his two sons that his world-renowned investment fund was actually a gigantic Ponzi scheme – the biggest financial fraud in American history. Tens of thousands of investors had entrusted Madoff with their treasure, many of them betting their life savings that… Read more »
It seemed like such a great idea. The creators of Happy Days, America’s top-rated TV show, decided to launch their fifth season by sending the fictional Cunningham family and their closest friends to Hollywood. What adventures might ensue? Arthur Fonzarelli (“the Fonz”), played by Henry Winkler, had originally been merely an eccentric background character. But after a few years he… Read more »
The origins of state nicknames are a bit of a mystery. As social historian Bill Bryson points out in Made in America: “No one can say for sure why Iowans are called Hawkeyes, why North Carolinians are Tarheels, why Kansans are Jayhawkers (there is no such bird), or why Indianans are Hoosiers.” From time to time Arkansas has been called… Read more »
Viktor Frankl yearned to make a contribution to humanity. As a respected young psychiatrist in Vienna before World War II, he had meticulously prepared the manuscript for a book that he dared to believe might help change the world. Since he and his wife were not yet parents, he called it “my mental child.” Then the Nazis came to power. … Read more »
On two occasions more than 40 years ago, the whole world almost had a very bad day. At mid-morning on November 9, 1979, watch officers at the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) inside Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, were shocked to see their early warning screens glowing with the unmistakable images of 1,400 Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles streaking toward the United… Read more »
Tombstone epitaphs fall into several categories. There are the silly ones that don’t really exist: Perry Mason: The defense restsHumpty Dumpty: “I was pushed!”Elvis Presley: A hunk, a hunk of rotting bonesThe Pillsbury Dough Boy: “I will rise again” There are epitaphs that people have been assured are real, but are just urban legends: W.C. Fields: “On the whole, I’d… Read more »
