A Brief History On October 17, 2001, Jay Livingston, American composer of famous songs for movies and television, died at the age of 86.  Livingston is one of several famous musicians that died on October 17th, and today we honor these wonderful writers and singers by telling you a little about them.  Even if you do not know the people, you almost assuredly know the music.  (Okay, some are before your time.) Digging Deeper 1. Jay Livingston, composer, 2001. Born Jacob Levison in Pennsylvania in 1915, Jay wrote famous songs featured in movies such as “Tammy” (Patti Page), “Mona Lisa” (Nat…

A Brief History On October 16, 1991, a disturbed man crashed his pick-up truck into a Luby’s cafeteria in Texas, and proceeded to shoot and kill 24 people, including himself.  George Hennard wounded another 27 with gunshots, which up until June 11, 2016 had been the worst non-school mass shooting in United States history.  (On that day 49 people were gunned down at the Orlando, Florida gay nightclub called “Pulse.”)  When Stephen Paddock, age 64, opened fire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel and casino in Las Vegas on a crowd attending a country music concert and…

A Brief History On October 15, 2017, people all across the world celebrate Global Handwashing Day, a day to encourage sanitary hand washing behavior in an effort to cut respiratory (notably pneumonia) and diarrheal diseases.  Getting people to wash their hands as prescribed can save an estimate half million lives of children per year, and of course, reducing the amount of people with diarrhea by 30+% is darn near worth the effort alone! Digging Deeper Global Handwashing Day was started in 2008 by a consortium of producers of soap products and medical associations.  The Public Private Partnership for Handwashing initiated…

A Brief History On October 14, 1938, the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk made its first flight, leading to an eventual production run of 13,738 of the rugged fighters.  Although often referred to as “obsolete” at the beginning of World War II, and famously rejected by the British for combat in the Northern European theater, the plane flown by the Flying Tigers with its intimidating shark mouth paint job became one of the main Allied fighters of World War II.  (Previously, on November 6th we featured an article, The Hawker Hurricane: The Most Underrated Fighter Plane of World War II, and on…

A Brief History This article provides an incomplete list of hideouts, bases, and headquarters in comics and animation.  Such locations are a staple of the genre, and they are at times almost as iconic and well-recognized as the characters that own them. Digging Deeper Comics For a more comprehensive list, see List of locations of the DC Universe § Sites. DC Comics Apokolips – Planet ruled by the evil New God Darkseid. Arrowcave – Former base of operations of the Green Arrow and Speedy. It was subsequently abandoned following Green Arrow’s death. When Ollie went back to reclaim sentimental memorabilia, he found Solomon Grundy was living there. Batcave – Batman’s secret base of operations.…